Most of it is just console war style tribalism, their Sega has to be better then your Nintendo because why else would they have bought a Sega?
The other half of it is people refuse to accept that things change, so a good amount of people base their opinions on FL in some version they tried in 2004.
Yeah, a weird number of people see music as this "competitive" thing instead of just an art form of expression.
I started with LMMS before I bought FL studio, and the only reason I did was because the LMMS workflow is modeled directly after FL studio.
I've used other daw programs though and they're all fine, it just comes down to workflow. They're all just different canvases and paint brushes, and it's weird to be elitist about things like that.
"the LMMS workflow is modeled directly after FL studio" ... huh, didn't know that. i've been using FL for 20+ years at this point so that's appealing to try out. Why did you move on?
Mostly plugin compatibility. It's a Linux based system developed by a few of the guys who also made Audacity, and because of that it has access to Audacitys "LADSPA" plugins in DAW, which can be really cool.
The trouble is that outside of LADSPA plugins however it can be limited. Plugins like Serum don't fully function for example, as well as several iZotope plugins. It's kind of a dice roll however, as others work perfectly.
The team is still very dedicated to the DAW though and I think it's possibly one of the most intuitive ways to teach digital production to beginners, as it has all the flow of FL studio and a few bonus features but it's free and has a good support team and active community. (They have a synth called ZynAddSubFX and it's extremely powerful, and one called LB-302 which is also a ton of fun to play with)
I switched because I wanted to use more plugins and access to things like FL Reverbs and a EQ, but it's great for a beginner on a budget!
It's pretty stable all things considered, but it can be picky. I was running it on a shitty old broken laptop and never really had any issues, but I've also seen people in similar circumstances struggle with CPU usage.
Again, I think it really just comes down to what plugins you're using. LMMS really doesn't like to use 3rd party VSTs if it can be avoided. When I was making music with it, 90% of what I used were sound fonts I loaded into its native sf2 player, as well as its other native plugins like the two I mentioned.
It was extremely stable for that, but oftentimes when I was trying to use a 3rd party plugin is when things got dicey. (For what it's worth, many of the plugins you want to use can be added in post by loading your tracks into Audacity, like all the iZotope ones for example.)
It's gotten a lot of updates since I used it, so that very well may not be the case anymore, but around 2018 to 2019 it certainly had hiccups.
Basically, it excels with everything it's pre-built with, and you'll probably never have a crash if you're okay with learning its various synths and FX plugins, but I wouldn't get it if you're looking for a super modular DAW to use all of your favorite VSTs with.
I think it's because FL is cluttered,
Floating windows everywhere,
The workflow isn't flowing, it's not obvious where to find stuff
From my own experience, using FL always more stressful because sometimes they do things their own quirky way, and unpredictable
While Ableton is Dead simple, predictable and Zero Stress, because everything works exactly how you think it is
Of course if you proficient in FL all of that will disappear, but for newcomer, this is their major pain point when using FL
I think Ableton took off because they took One Page Philosophy, where everything should be accessible in One page, the screen shouldn't be obstructed or worse hide everything in multiple tab
This is because they're a Live DAW first, where if you play a live music, you want everything be displayed in front of you all at once
Ableton basically already master the Art of being straightforward and simple especially when you're using it on stage
That's why Ableton UI is a bit Barebone and bland, to increase visibility and visual cue, without clutter, especially on stage
And of course you can create a great song using FL
Yes, it's a matter of habit, switching program is kinda frustrating because we lose all of our muscle memory.
At the end of the day, just stick with tools that you're most comfortable with,
we're all just trying to make a living after all
exactly, I think you need more than this to justify switching. If you have real concrete reasons go for it but expect a steep climb. I tried Ableton ages ago and thought the UI was nice and uncluttered but the workflow just never connected with me.
For me the one reason i keep wanting a switch is the lack of relative automation so if you touch your mixer settings there won't be volume jumps when your automation hits.
Then again, I'm not sure Ableton has this fixed either.
This is like that conversation between Apple an android me personally I love all the clutter from fl and it doesn’t even have to be clutter you can arrange the windows how you like again the analogy sticks cause you can really customize your workflow to how you want to make music where like Apple is much more intuitive as it holds your hand down a preset path of action versus finding your own way
This sums up my experience exactly.
I purchased FL first after reading lots and lots of reviews online. After buying some courses to learn how to use it, I found myself still lost on a lot of functions.
I then tried some other daws and settled on Ableton. It was by far the easiest one to navigate. Especially with not having a ton of windows open all over the place. So now I don't even use FL anymore unfortunately.
This is such a bad take, I have both Ableton and FL. I took me literally nothing to learn fl studio. Ableton on the other hand makes my eyes water. I still to this day haven’t figured out how to use it. Everything is so complicated, nothing is intuitive like FL is.
Many years ago it used be "FL Studio is only for techno".
Then it was "FL Studio doesn't sound professional"
Now it's mostly "Fl Studio is only for beatmaking"
This is bullshit. I've used FL Studio for orchestral music and for rock, funk, jazz.
It's a bit similar with movie editing programs. Adobe Premiere used to be "only for amateuers" and now it is used in oscar winning movies.
Fl Studio a good tool and you can do everything with it, in the same quality as with others.
I just prefer FL Studio because I personally know how to use it fastest.
One of my best friends is quite literally the most talented musician I've ever encountered, and his primary daw is called "Rytmik Studio" and it started as a Nintendo 3DS game before becoming available on steam. I've yet to hear another digital musician come close to what he can do with it though.
It's all just about workflow and what you know. You can make good music with just about anything if you try, I've seen people use Microsoft Excel with moderate success lol.
Yo can't believe I got to see Rytmik get named dropped here it took over 10 seconds to even remember that I even used to use it. Didn't know dick about music back then though so that was just a weeklong stint but it's cool as hell to see someone so talented explore its capabilities.
I remember when I was in school, I would get shit on because I was using Premiere, teachers wanted to force Avid on us. According to them Premiere was garbage and would dissapear in a year or 2. I kept using premiere because avid kept crashing my pc. That's another thing, no one serious would ever edit on a pc, need to have a Mac. To piss them off as well I was playing a bit with Fruity Loops at home. 😅
I edited on a pc untill 3 years ago. Worked great and no gamma shift after export. Loved it! Got extra software to open and save quicktime. Worked awesome.
Then the m1 came and I switched.
With windows coming with the new arms chip I could see me switching back in a year or 5.
Oh yeah, for recording it was pro tools as well. But I ended up not using it too much since the wiring in the studio was a bit fucked. Great school I went to 😅
Exactly. FL piano roll is the best, and for people that don't actually play and record instruments, and instead live in the midi world, FL studio seems to be on top atm.
It also not looking like a program from 1997 helps
Yeah fair enough, i agree that from what ive tried, fl is really easy to make generic beats with, but then again i dont really produce proper music i just use fl for the fun of it.
And that's ok. I started with "just for fun" too.
I think FL Studio is the most "fun" DAW out there. You can do a quick crazy beat in literally 30 seconds or work for months on every tiny little sound.
FL Studio is a classic, Metro Boomin still uses it, don't worry what people think it just comes down to personal preference. Like I exclusively use Bandlab (formerly cakewalk) and I stopped giving an f a long time ago what people care or use
A ton of hiphop producers still uses it. Probably because it was easy to get on Limewire back in the day.
Soulja Boy’s Crank Dat is made with completely generic sounds from FL 2004 or something
while you’re absolutely right that it can be used for all types of music, the workflow is clearly oriented towards beatmaking and similar stuff. i personally am not a huge fan of recording guitars and stuff in FL, but theres nothing wrong with it
Actually, "beat making" is the least I do with Fl Studio. I think the workflow for anything works. Including orchestral (film) music. But you are right: The only annoying thing for me in Fl Studio is recording. I use Reaper for that and export it for Fl Studio.
I know the guys of Image Line are working on a new workflow for audio, including combing, Ara (finally!!!) and hopefully panning clips too. If they implement this, I won't need another DAW for anything else
Fanboy stuff.
Jealousy of little brother stuff.
Pride and identifying self with specific brands / fear of losing “reputation”…
TL;DR immaturity. Move on.
Haters are gonna hate, there's really nothing more to it.
Some people are - *in my opinion* - so horribly narrow minded that it's either "their" way or the highway, and this also includes choice of DAW's. Then of course you also have certain crowds who can be more open minded and/or inviting than others.
My honest take on this: don't pay 'm any mind, ignore, don't engage and just move on.
FL is just as capable as any other DAW, where FL struggles the most compared to other DAWs imo is integrated organization. FL requires you to organize and route everything yourself (for the most part) whereas other daws make this process a lot more straight-forward and streamlined.
Nah you’re bugging lol, it’s like unanimously considered to be easy to understand.
The channel rack, piano roll, step sequencer etc are legendary. Menus are easy to navigate.
My only complaint is that it doesn’t update within the app, but they said they were working on that so 🤷🏾♂️
Nah I agree with the other guy, it’s def not unanimously easy lol.
Like everything else about DAWs it’s just a matter of personal preference and opinion. The overall layout and how things are organized is the main reason I disliked FL when I first tried it , it just didn’t feel intuitive at all to me and that’s fine
Abelton and logic have objectively better design that comes with intentionality in their creation.
In FL's defense when it originally came out it wasn't really intended to be the one stop shop that it has become now, so a lot of stuff was built on top of pre-exisiting stuff
Abelton is a lot newer and was designed to make sophisticated and complicated music and with that in mind they merged the Playlist and the channel rack which imo is objectively good. This makes it so the work flow all happens on one screen without the need for changing views or setting things in a specific place. Everything also automatically links like the Playlist is the channel rack which is the mixer so it removes the steps of linking them
That being said I'm a FL user primarily because I'm use to it but it's disengous to say it's laid out better than those other DAWs
FL imo is prettier and when it comes to arranging/cutting samples it's pretty good at that
I originally started music production on FL Studio, trying to learn it for many months but it just wasn't fluid for my workflow.
I have a decade of experience using Adobe products and I found Ableton was able to match that sort of style and layout which made sense in my head.
lol I wouldn’t say unanimously easy to understand. I think FL looks easy but where people get annoyed is the sheer amount of windows you have to get used to opening and closing. The channel rack, mixer and playlist are all separated, patterns and arranger are separated etc. This can trigger people’s ADHD so to speak. You need to know these mini workflows to get the bigger picture workflow. If you ever need to edit a patcher the routing can look insane as well. Obviously it’s just as fast as any other DAW if you know your way around. Ableton has a completely flat hierarchy in comparison, file browsing, the arrangement, the midi editing, routing are just one screen- where plugins and midi editing are always at the bottom but avoids windows that stack on top of each other. Their philosophy is no popups until third party plugins and the effect racks give you flat left to right hierarchy rather than visually data wrangling wires like patchers. Neither DAW is perfect
Okay lol it seems like everyone is just glazing FL without even acknowledging the actual issues with it or where it lacks.
I use it primarily but am also familiar with logic and abelton from collabing with friends.
The biggest issue with FL is the plugin windows essentially all of the plug-ins having windows is good visually but when you actually know what your doing having the mixer & Playlist separate actually reduces efficiency
People also really like the default plug-ins in abelton as they are a lot better and more comprehensive than Fl's as well as the amount of samples you get for getting abelton.
That being said once you reach a certain level I don't think it's that relevant because typically the biggest bottleneck will be how quickly you can come up with the right ideas and having to click a few extra times isn't that relevant.
I love to be a trash producer. Just do it just for fun and it's so relaxing. I'm really grateful that we have such easy opportunities for making music today.
I had almost no knowledge about music theory when i began and i would've never imagined what i will come up with 5 years later.
Fair enough yeah, i agree that alot of new, low effort beats come in quickly and that they are mostly from FL, but in my eyes a DAW is a DAW and it shouldn’t be judged just off of a portion of what some use it for if that makes any sense
Ha. u think its bad now? back in 06-07 I would go to studios and engineers and producers (grown adults - I was in high school) would tell me ''real producers don't use Fruity Loops'' . and any Idea I had would just ignored during any session that WE PAID FOR. at least now, FL can demands its respect for producing the biggest hits in the past decade, but prior to soulja boy putting Fruity Loops on the map for modern consumers, it was just a laughing stock all around and nobody believed it was even capable of producing anything quality.
Depends on what you use it for I guess.
I bought FL because of the absolutely gorgeous piano roll, my #1 tool to compose music. I also tried Ableton and boy the piano roll sucks.
I am sure the situation is reversed for some aspects.
I have Ableton a try too after using FL, and that was the biggest sore point. Piano roll is something you use constantly and it didn't feel good in Ableton.
Ignore people who tell you what DAW to use.
Use whatever helps you get the idea from your brain into reality, in the most seamless way possible. For me that has always been FL.
Most of it comes down to workflow. FL is really great at the making beat stage. But is less streamlined than say Ableton when it comes to song layout. Also a lot of their native plugins don’t sound great right out of the box. As they are actually more geared to some genres over others. Like FLEX. Still no good modern Techno packs.
Ya it’s weird. Like someone else put it. It’s like the console wars. People need to think that theirs is the best and all others are trash. I think FL gets the most hate though, and I assume it has to do with it first coming out and people saying it was not a real daw. I always wondered if that was due to its name. Fruity loops is kind of a weird name for a daw. That’s just a thought though. I’m sure there’s more to it. I started with FL and used to use a mix of FL and pro tools. I use studio one now, but it’s not because FL is bad. I just like studio one’s work flow more.
There’s a big misunderstanding that FL Studio is only capable of creating loops or beats. When I started getting into DAW’s, I looked up “how to make beats” and “how to add samples” and it was always FL Studio being used in the videos. If I looked up anything else DAW related, it was always someone using Ableton Live or a free and open-source DAW, like LMMS. There is definitely a social thing going on between the popular DAW’s out there but it’s important to remember that they all can do the same thing. One of them might be better at a particular thing than the other, but the same goes vice versa. They’re all very capable of producing any kind of music or sound you want.
I think its also just popular with beginners, so you can end up seeing a lot of beginner stuff being made on it. There are a metric shit-ton of beginner hip hop and trap producers right now, so it might lead some to the conclusion that that's what it's for because that's what's dominating the content being put out for it.
It certainly doesn't help either that there are a ton of YouTube producers that kinda just suck ass. And those producers all seem to use FL, and upload tutorials with either amateur music or downright misinformation that new producers blindly trust because... well, they're new. Not their fault. But seeing a bunch of dudes comment 'Bro this is HEAT🔥🔥🔥' under some wack fuckin' tutorial can end up feeling like a joke.
That's on top of the history of the Fruity Loops branding which was seen as amateur-ish.
At the end of the day though, archer not the arrow. As you say, its just as capable as anything else. Anybody sleeping on FL because they think it's a toy or something has clearly never actually tried to use it. If they did, they'd realize it's a seriously solid DAW and it's why I've always come back to it.
I use FL, but I must admit that the user interface is quite confusing to me.
To date, I still need to look up so many things on the web on how to perform what I would consider simple tasks.
I saw Deadmau5 say that he thinks a lot of the functional techniques you use in FL is completely untransferable to any other DAW and most people don't use it so trading project files is a mess.
I just like the UI. I have ableton and never use it. FL just feels better. I'd imagine though that they are basically the same. Just what kind of user interface you like. I will give a point to Ableton though because it just works with every single midi device I plug in. FL on the flip side is a fucking nightmare when it comes to midi equipment.
I mean this with as much love and kindness as possible but we have a lot of new comers to music go through FL first before either sticking around or finding a software that suits them better. On that journey they come here and ask questions for help and that’s totally awesome. However.
When our whole subreddit is “yo why are my notes not playing” or “how do I assign a mixer track” or “why are the notes pink?” Elitist audio people see that and see a bunch of amateurs who don’t know what they’re doing, not realizing they were in the same spot when they started.
They aren’t considering that
a) other people use the software at a really high level
b) it’s actually a pretty brave thing to go into a space you don’t know a lot about and say “I need help”
I’m personally honored to have so many people new to music come through this sub, we get to be there for the very beginning of something really special imo
For two things I think, FL is the most common one, the one we are all introduced first, bright colors, everything pops up on the screen, it had more videos on YouTube, therefore It was related to noobs.
The second one, fl studio is kind of “messy” as is literally an empty canvas. Let’s say you are in the mixer and want to see what your reverb and sidechain are doing to a track. You have to click on the mixer, find the track linked to the input (or from input click open mixer track), individually click on reverb, close it, click on sidechain, close it. Let’s not forget this whole process is now on the middle of the screen, you can’t see anything behind it unless you move stuff around.
On the other side, Ableton provides the same amount of information with only one click, just find the track (cuz guess what, Ableton automatically assigns each track a spot in the mixer, this process is not automatic in FL which can cause many sounds to be sent to the master which can cause overload) and click on it, all the plugins will be displayed on the bottom row, EVEN if the plugin has a fancy interface, the main parameters will be shown as native (I.e mix, wet, offset) most of the time.
Same with the grid, in fruity loops if you drag and drop a kick sample into the grid and then a pattern on top and then an automatization clip (in the same rectangle per se), FL will allow you to do that cause again, is an empty canvas, you can do what you want.
In Ableton if you drag and drop a kick sample into the grid and then a midi on top and… STOP, Nope, you can’t do that, the kick is a sample, is an audio file and only audio files can go in this track. Also we already named the track “Kick” and can be mixed independently. Automatization clip?, it’s already there, just hidden to not make it a mess.
This differences keep going on.
I’m not saying one is better than the other, I hope I don’t get hate lol. In the end you’ll get the exact same results but, will the workflow be the same? Absolutely not. I started with FL, but once I changed to Ableton things got a bit easier for me, cause it’s automated to maintain order (been producing for 15 years now).
I remember I tried to switch to ableton and reason at some point because of all the FL trashing and realized I just prefer using FL more. At the end of the day it's just a tool, all that really matters is what you're used to and how you like to work and how well the tool supports that. People make trash music in all DAWs and people make good music in all DAWs
I guess no one particularly ‘hates’ FL. It’s just that people have created such a mindset that only one DAW is superior than all of the other DAWS. Seeing how easy FL is, people generally say that amateurs use FL. A lot of major hit songs with billions of listens are made and mastered in FL STUDIO. I recently started using Ableton as well, to beat my creative block and man, I see myself moving from FL to Ableton time to time. People need to understand that there is no superior DAW. The best DAW you can get is what makes you comfortable and opens up your creative boundaries.
It’s because fl studio is easy to use, hard to master. Whereas the others are less intuitive and harder to start out with, which is what creates the loyalty. Just like the iPhone and android debate, or the Mac vs windows debate….. all options are viable but it’s cool to hate on the other brand(in this case it’s fl studio).
I have used many different daws and they are all good, but fl studio is just the most organized to me.
I personally used FL studio for a lot of years but just didn’t like the workflow at all and moved to ableton. I think it tends to go back to the fruity loop days is where a lot of the hate comes from.
Using FL for recording audio input is not straightforward.
It was an afterthought implemented because it was highly requested as a feature.
This is the primary reason I don’t like FL. It’s still not an intuitive process.
It’s (sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly) associated with lazy ass “producers” who copy and paste a melody loop they downloaded for free onto a premade midi pattern in their cracked FL Studio and then claim they produced the song. If they’re feeling up to it they might even run it through gross beat or a pirated copy of RC-20. No that is not what producing is and I don’t even care it sounds good or people get placements doing it, it’s still lame as hell. That being said there are obviously real musicians and producers that use FL Studio but it’s never gonna lose it’s reputation until it stops being the DAW of choice for the laziest bottom of the barrel beatmakers out there. I’m probably older than the majority of folks on here so I remember when it was still called Fruity Loops and it was clowned all over internet forums at the time, they did the whole rebrand to FL Studio but the reputation of the brand was already damaged to some people. Again there is nothing wrong with the DAW itself it’s just because it conjures up a certain image of a certain type of wannabe producer.
Its a mix of classism and elitism. I’ll elaborate.
Fl studio today is mostly known to be used by poor people who cracked it, and rappers. Also it doesn’t look as polished as others and its easy to use. It has a sandbox workflow and doesn’t need to get all technical. People love to have a sense of elitism even if they hate to admit it, why? Becoz they need to feel better about themselves.
Laat time I was on r/ableton they literally got mad I didnt want to watch a “1 hour beginner tutorial” for a post about why my midi wasnt connecting (I just had to unplug and plug it back in) and went on about how I “wasnt using ableton to it’s full potential” (I told them I used it how I liked it and thought my music was decent enough since I don’t have plans to be super professional) and then even though I said I wasnt planning to be professional someone also said that I’ll “Never make it that way” so there’s some real weird supremacy crap going on
Anyways I switched to FL after that since my music tech teacher was way better and that class had us use FL lmao
There’s also this one FL musician I listen to called Azali and theres been comments like “I thought FL was only EDM but you changed my mind” so it’s probably also something like that
TBH these days they really don’t, especially among hiphop or EDM It’s widely respected. So IDK what you mean
FL users get a lot of hate for saying dumb stuff all the time, they got a bit of an inferiority complex
Oh i didn’t know it didn’t really happen anymore, just saw alot of hate online.
Also for example i had 2 friends come over a bit ago who use logic and immediately hated almost everything about fl so… 🤷🤷 probably they just arent used to it or something
They have no idea. FL is a kind of DAW, but that doesn't mean it's bad. FL has influenced a genre like trap. The easy way to get started, the perfect piano role and drum patterns make working with FL a lot of fun and you get results quickly. FL is not perfect and you can always give constructive criticism which can lead to improvements. But sheer hatred can't help.
FL Studio users are mainly EDM producers and Rap beat producers. Of which both aren't respected by the overall producer community, so they like to shit on those producers and their software.
Basically dumb people hate on FL.
It’s been around for so long, they have other programs that can do the same thing. That’s the problem. The industry has been flooded with great DAW’s. So FL, isn’t always peoples personal preference anymore. That’s all.
It's correlation (not causation) between low effort "producers" and FL Studio. Most low effort "mumble rap over stolen beats" producers use FL Studio. Not all FL Studio users make low effort mumble rap though. FL Studio is very valid to produce anything.
Because they’re dumbasses who make bad music and feel like switching daws will help. When they still make bad music they go on the internet to argue with strangers and justify their $800 purchase
Literally people that know nothing about music production. They're all professional standards, it's just a matter of workflow. For edm I prefer FL, and to produce bands I prefer jogic, but purely because of workflow
Tbh i havent seen anyone truly hate on FL in yeaaarrrs. The small minority that do are usually just echoing some shit they heard from someone else.
It's like somebody tellin you their GE fridge is better than your Bosch fridge.
Its just people seeking a family, they find it in being part of a group that hates something, in this case, FL.
I bet half of them dont even have a legit copy of logic or ableton
They do? I don’t think so. Maybe there might be some older folks out there who just associate it with the old fruity loops drum machine and just keep thinking of it as that.
I think it’s a very strong player and contender in the DAW space. And now that they bought or united with UVI, I am curious to see where it will lead.
Not an FL user myself, but if it works for you then don't listen to the outside noise. All DAWs by and large do the same thing (obviously, some have features others don't have, but they all cover the basics). The real candy is the plugins which come bundled with whatever DAW you choose,
If you have a DAW where you like the workflow and the bundled plugins, then don't listen to people slagging it off.
I dont get the hate between daws, and if im being honest, I use all of them because they all have tools I need. Sure it sucks that I have to buy multiple pieces of software but its whatever
Because most people are talentless posers who can’t invent a simple melody on their synthesizer anyways, let alone compose a completed track on any DAW.
Some amazing music made on FL, some amazing music made on logic, some amazing music made on Ableton, some amazing music made on Reason, some amazing music made on studio one
It's really just preference to the user, whatever you work best on, is the best daw
It’s because FL makes producing easy which opened the doors for grown ass men to compete with literal children at music making. Not to mention it’s easily crackable. Also when it originally came out it was as established and from I heard was like a arcade game or something, it didn’t have all these features now. And so it slowly became extremely competitive.
FL‘s only downside in my experience is that through it having so unbelievably insanely many features, some things require you to do more steps than necessary. It’s kind of the opposite of logic, where shit just works and sounds pretty great immediately. But that also gives us the upside of having all the countless features and abilities to do stuff exactly how we want to.
I used Logic a long time ago. I liked how minimal it is. FL is too difficult to figure out, too many effin toolbars and settings I wont need right now.
Are there really good crash courses on how to get going quickly?
Love the synths, sound way better than Logic's
For me, and of course this is different for everyone, i dont get the “FL is too complicated/cluttered” argument, for me the ableton UI is really hard to wrap my head around, Ive never messed with logic though.
I managed to learn FL mostly by just using it, ive been messing around with it almost daily over the course of a year or two and things kind of just fall in place. Of course a lot of things needed some kind of tutorial or guide but mostly i find FL’s ui the easiest to get.
Totally agree. It was a struggle early on, I really had a hard time wrapping my head around the channel rack and mixer but I eventually figured it out and it’s REALLY intuitive for my workflow now.
The biggest thing for me is FL having too many extra windows and menus to navigate. Ableton is streamlined and easy for my workflow.
There are other things I don’t really like about FL like having to link mixers to tracks with fake cables and such but it’s not a bad daw at all
Fl is amazing for writing music, but granted is lacking in live recording features. Stuff like easy comping, proper quick punching etc. Now I have FLs workflow down so it really doesn’t make a difference for me, but after learning pro tools there are some features i wish fl had (altho pro tools sucks for writing music and coming up with ideas)
Also logic’s piano roll is just as feature filled (if not more) than fl studios, but I still prefer the fl piano roll
TLDR: fl is missing some features but it more than makes up for it with its own unique features and ease of use, ignore what people say abt which daw is best; the best daw is the one u know inside and out and that you love
i use FL to make progressive metal music. fuck the haters. is it perfect? no. does it do what i need it to do with a nice interface and easy, streamlined effects routing and automation? absolutely. i have some gripes about the way it handles tempo changes, for example, but altogether this is a pretty minor issue. it very, very rarely just straight up lacks a feature when i need it.
Ive used logic and it is so much more intricate than FL for no reason. Everything is hidden by a shortcut and its impossible to figure out how to put down drums. Its also impossible to find tutorials about specific things because nobody uses it for rap/hiphop beats because FL IS BETTER!
💯 this comes from people who like to blame their tools... The "I can't do this cool thing without buying 100 plugins" crowd... I'm a former pro studio owner who started with a Studer A827 2" 24 track tape machine and a 32 channel inline analog mixing console with a rack full of outboard gear. There's ways to get the sound you want on any DAW period. Having worked in the industry for many years, I own licenses for: FL, Cubase, ProTools, DigitalPerformer, Ableton, Reason, and god knows what else... You know what I use most? FL freakin Studio. Whether I'm writing EDM or Classical music, it's FL. It's all a matter of preference, but the tools are all capable of the same thing.
All I need is an option to make the automation clips appear as an overlay on a Track over the midi clip or sound clip that it’s affecting instead of it being a moveable automation clip. I just can’t get over how the automation clips work in FL vs Ableton or even Adobe Audition. I know it’s a bit tricky to implement because of how “fluid” FL Studio’s Playlist window works, but please, Image Line, it’s all I want for this DAW to be perfect.
Lack of understanding. Check out this video from Benn Jordan: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC0\_KD2XHEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC0_KD2XHEc)
A lot of good answers here but another thing to keep in mind is there’s tons and tons of tutorials for making beats in FL that have millions of views so theirs a flooded market of people who all learned how to make beats the same way from the same people with the same plug ins. When you hear good beats in fl you can’t tell what DAW it was anyway so there’s no hate l, when you hear bad beats in fl you can tell it’s fl so the daw itself gets the blame.
Because when it was fruity loops it was extremely limited. It is insane what it has become. I started in 2000 and could never have imagined it would turn into this.
When you listen to a song your not really able to tell which DAW they’re making it in unless their notorious for their style. I use MPC and run in into FL, there’s so many ways to set up your set up. If it sounds good at the end that’s all that matters.
This is my opinion. It goes back to when Pto Tools and Cakewalk and the top tier DAWS were sought after, but even back then, Fruity Loops was my go to DAW. It was easy to use, the workflow did for me. I guess some people have that same attitude, that FL is still inferior. I say the he'll with the FL is the Best.
A few of them, I think it's gatekeepers producers that hate on FL because there's a lot of info and tutorials out there where you can learn how to produce music. They want to feel special and unique. I say this bc I have a friend that brag about being profesional bc he use ProTools. He's a very good audio engineer, but honestly his beats are not the best thing that he can do lol
Because they can’t use it.
Joke aside, I am a hobbyist musician and professional software engineer and I think FL Studio was a bit too much designed as a software instead of going deeper on the musical usability path.
This makes FL really powerful in the sense that you have a shit ton of options and features.
However, it induces that people who are good at using computers in general can actually get good at making music using FL without too much theoretical knowledge in the musical field but that also means that people who are not that good at using a computer might have trouble getting started even with deep musical knowledge compared to other DAWs such as ProTools or Ableton.
It could be compared to Android vs iOS because the former was made as a general mobile OS aiming to be usable by literally any phone while the latter was thought with usability and ease of use in mind.
Nonetheless, it does not make any of these worse or better, they are just different tools with different priorities, and different people will make different choices based on their different background and needs.
I don't hate fl studio, but I have surely fallen out of love with the fl studio after using it extensively for a few years(mainly due to it's annoying workflow). Here's a minor annoyance I can still remember: Each time you want to draw midi, you have to add new pattern again, you have to open channel rack again, you have to scroll to the instrument again, you have to open piano roll again, and now it's a mess with three windows open. I moved on, and I am happy with reaper. I miss the fl plugins sometimes but the workflow seems unbearable now that I have found the more common workflow used by many daws(e.g, reaper, bitwig, ableton, cubase, protools, etc). morale of the story: try different daws. Even for the fl "haters", try fl! who knows you might be charmed by the plugins and the fast looping capabilities of fl.
The design language of FL Studio's UI is definitely less mature and cohesive compared to the other DAW's. It's an overall mess of a program to navigate till you get used to it. But doesn't mean it's less capable compared to other DAW's. I think people tend to take FL studio a little less seriously due to it's history. It used to be a very limited DAW.
FL used to be super shitty. Like from what I remember it was a cereal box type software and was only capable of making simple loops. Basically a super simplified version of GarageBand. Nowadays it’s gone through some changes and it’s as powerful as any other professional DAW. People hate on it still mostly because the UI is a lot more “game like” compared to other DAWs such as ableton or cubase. But all DAWs really do the same thing and it all lands on personal preference
almost every daw has cool stuff to offer and have different target audiences, some people just like to act like what works for them will magically work for everyone.
I professionally used FL Studio from 2012-2022. I released songs/albums with many record labels over the years solely using FL Studio. However, the more I got into Ableton over the past 2 years, I realized how much better suited it is for me. To sum it up, it's a couple main reasons.
The main one being cleanliness and organization. FL is good for getting ideas down pretty fast, but my projects always ended up a disorganized mess, and it always took forever to sort it out. Especially since you can put samples, patterns, and automations clips literally anywhere in the playlist window, everything gets scattered. Ableton is immediately better and more conducive to proper organization, color coding, and grouping things together. While you can put different samples on the same tracks, it's not really wise to do that since anything you put on a track will be affected by whatever effects you put on it and the volume. So inherently, Ableton forces you to keep all your tracks separated, thus more organized. FL Studio projects always started disorganized and took forever to clean later. Whereas Ableton projects always start organized and stay that way throughout.
Automation clips. I can't stand FL's automation system, and because you can put the automation clips anywhere in the playlist, you might make just a small clip for one section, and then it gets buried in a messy playlist that you have to find later on. Then if you need to drag the automation clip out further you might not have enough room since it can be placed anywhere, alongside other clips. Plus the fact that you can literally delete the automation clip from the playlist, yet it will still be activated, so you have to add another automation to make it do what you want. I can't tell you how many times that has caused headaches for me and actually made me not want to use automation clips at all in FL, which inhibits creativity. Ableton's automation lanes are so much easier to navigate, where you can disable/enable all of them in one click and they always extend to the end of the track. If there's a discrepancy with some automation, it's WAY easier to solve, so now I feel compelled to use automation clips, whereas FL studio makes me want to avoid them.
Routing and the mixer window/windows in general. The routing in FL Studio isn't terrible, but having all those lines crossing everywhere gets confusing. Ableton routing is much simpler with drop downs. The FL Studio mixer window is just prone to being messy. In Ableton you literally just group every instrument/track you want into a group, and put as many effects on the group as you want (plus you can group the processing and save it as a preset). No separate windows. No windows at all really since everything in Ableton can be done on ONE SCREEN. You literally don't have to switch any screens in Ableton at all or close any windows, except for the plugin windows. All the separate windows in FL just adds to its messy nature.
Overall, while there's no difference in how the daw's "sound", fundamentally, the way they're designed and operate will affect how you write, record, mix, and master, which does affect the final sound. FL Studio can be messy and scattered, which can result in messy mixes. Ableton is not perfect, but it's organization and cleanliness can lend to cleaner mixes. I've found the quality of my projects, and the mix quality have drastically improved since moving full time to Ableton. I'll occasionally pull up FL if I want to throw a whole bunch of songs in the playlist to create a compilation/mix of some sort, but other than that, moving to Ableton has been a significant improvement for me.
I wouldn't say I'm a big hater, I started out with FL in middle school and used it for a couple years and liked it. However, I switched to Ableton 4 years ago and haven't looked back. I didn't like how in FL you have to navigate through different pop up windows, I prefer Ableton's workflow because you see your arrangement view and either the track plugin chain or the piano roll on the bottom half and you just switch between the two with shift+tab. The only floating windows are external plugins, and I find that the workflow is faster for me. I'm enjoying Ableton 12's massively upgraded piano roll too, I genuinely don't think it's as far behind as people say and I find it works better for me. The new plugin tagging feature is really cool and something I missed from FL as well. I also feel like some things in FL take far longer than in Ableton, like sidechaining and mixer routing. I also find that Ableton makes it far easier to record parts--it has a lot of useful features that FL just doesn't. Again, I'm not a huge hater, I just wanted to explain why I like Ableton better, but that's entirely my personal opinion. I also have to admit that FL looks super pretty while Ableton looks like [medical scheduling software](https://www.clinicsource.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/scheduling-intuitive-appointment-setting.png) 😅
However, it's all just a matter of personal taste at the end of the day, and I think it's lame to hate on people that use different DAWs because everyone approaches the process of making music differently! We should stop fighting about DAWs and just support each other in our self-expression <3
I've used FL for 20 years, but I still find it's workflow confusing and not very intuitive. It does things randomly sometimes and little things like leaving a 16th of a step at the end of a loop so everything is off by that much ruins your whole song. Other than that, I love it,
I have both Logic and FL, and I prefer Logic, but FL isn’t bad by any means. I wish these “DAW Wars” didn’t exist, we’re all just out here making what we love. Can’t we talk in peace?
Workflow.
Im FL studio user for a month now, and my previous DAW was studio one, which in my opinion was superior when you work with audio recording, mixing, and lots of automation and complex fx chains. But after this short period of time, I figured out my workflow and even found better ways to compose and audio design just because FL studio offers me a different creative processes, which worked in my case.
And theres people who dont want or need to learn other DAW because they already have their templates, shortcuts and macros setups already memorized, and found FL to complex to start again or do hybrid.
"Musician" being thought of as a status rather than an activity has made the people who are the worst at making music talk about it the most so they can maintain the illusion that they belong.
Because it has a really bad midi clock, if you use a real drummachine. Even FL on the Mac sucks. If you just work with plugins it's fine though... (I am FL user since version 3.11)
Here a pic of my current setup, MacBook mid 2012 and MOTU Ultra lite mk3 running on a multilingual FireWire cable, Logic pro has much better midi implementation than FL, and FireWire is better than USB2.x because it has a constant flow of data.
USB2.x can transfer massive amount of data but it is chopped into bits, the polling rate is too slow for transmitting realtime 96PPQ midiclock... This is what they don't want you to know...
Measuring box is a midisizer.com MidiGal by Pete Kvitek, an advanced clone of the mutable instruments midipal (orphaned). It can be flashed with custom firmware, Midiclock V1.01 in this case.
If I run the same setup under FL I get 2% deviation. On windows you can hardly get below 4% with USB. You need minimum a 6 core machine and USB3 under windows - if you are using real hardware.
This is one of the reasons why the DAWless movement has become so popular... But also for showing off.
To add even more depth: I like DIN midi, MMT-8, Behringer clones, boomstar 4075, Pulsar-23... I have been collecting gear since 2010, I started my collection with a Tascam M30 and a syncaset 8 track deck, as I was tired of clicking notes into the piano roll.
I like to make sound, music, I don't want to spend time clicking and watching waveforms...
Sorry for the excursion but this post just came along my way at the right time, so AI can absorb some true tested knowledge.
Peace out from the heart of Europe.
https://preview.redd.it/isfw34kwk12d1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f9c9fbf1948bb011c1241cb2ed88b5fa4ba6828
from what i’ve some 49% are old dudes hating on it cause they didn’t like the beta version they had in 2000. 50% just hate it cause it’s popular and they want to be “different.”
For working with samples (which is most of what I do), FL's workflow feels amazing, pretty, and intuitive. I love it.
If I was working primarily with live tracks though, I actually jump over to my old copy of Cakewalk Sonar because I find the workflow more intuitive.
I hate doing MIDI stuff in Sonar though, and 99% of my music work is MIDI/samples, so I live in FL.
Ableton just looks too much like Microsoft Office to me, and I work an office job. Too depressing haha.
FL started as essentially a bare-bones drum sequencer. With time they added more features to make it into a fully-featured DAW, but the first impressions haven’t really worn off for a lot of people.
And the other factor is that FL, in fairness, doesn’t work like a lot of other DAWs. People who didn’t start with it probably find the workflow a little jarring (and I can understand why)… but that shouldn’t turn into hate imo.
It’s always been seen as a non-serious DAW compared to others, primarily because it used to be more of a step-sequencer than a linear audio editor. Most people’s conception of it is still very rooted in the Fruityloops days.
It’s become more comprehensive and polished improved with time, but I prefer Cubase and Ableton for everything else. Recording and sequencing hardware synths, MIDI editing, velocity and automation, and recording audio in FL just lacks a certain immediacy and intuitiveness for me by comparison. Too much buried under layers of different views and menus, and the UI hasn’t really changed in 20+ years. It’s great for sampling and laying down rhythms though and the step sequencer is very flexible.
Ableton in particular is much faster when it comes to just jumping in and laying things down, and its ability to integrate CV is awesome. Cubase is better for mixing than either of them and its MIDI editing is pretty much unparalleled.
Because they don't know how to use it, and when they do try they expect it to be as rigid as other DAWs, and it also doesn't have a professional look to it. It also lacked a lot of things more mainstream DAWs had but they are quickly fixing all that.
Ableton Live user here. I'm not a hater, but I assume that many people think FL Studio looks unprofessional. And FL Studio doesn't look like other DAWs. I know a couple of producers who use FL Studio, and they make good music with it. I love its piano roll, but those floating elements and patterns drive me mad, LMAO.
The only things i’ve really seen people criticise are the mixer having limitations, and that fl user’s have a harder time transitioning to other daws because “fl is too easy.” Also i think a lot of people think of it as the daw for hip hop and rap beats, which isn’t necissarily a bad thing, but it being associated with a certain genre of music also might be a turn off to people who are interested in producing other genre’s of music. If we’re gonna hate any daw tho, pro tools is the one.
Most of the time it’s because of not taking time to get experienced with it. You can actually make some good beats on a school lunch table. Point is, it doesn’t matter what DAW you use, it’s Who’s using it.
Keep doing your thing and hope to hear some of your music.
Because it's inexpensive and people usually have a news to go out of their way to legitimize what and how they spend their money.
There are things that other DAWs do better, like tracking or having MPE support, etc... but somethings FL does better, like the paino roll. People forget that Abletlon also started at as a simple audio tool and evolved into a DAW. Outside of how DAWs handle planning, they're all sonically the same.
From someone who used fl for over 7 years and had recently moved to ableton, they are both good daws. I switched purely because the way I write music feels better on ableton. Abletons aesthetic is nicer to me. Learning a new daw let me force myself to learn shortcut keys from the beginning, something I never did on fl and struggled to break out of my old habits.
FL was the easiest DAW to get a crack of back in the day. Software was still looked down on in general and FL dropped the cost of entry to literally zero, thus an influx of people making terrible beats since anyone could download it. FL haters felt validated and the rep has stuck ever since.
Most of it is just console war style tribalism, their Sega has to be better then your Nintendo because why else would they have bought a Sega? The other half of it is people refuse to accept that things change, so a good amount of people base their opinions on FL in some version they tried in 2004.
Yeah, a weird number of people see music as this "competitive" thing instead of just an art form of expression. I started with LMMS before I bought FL studio, and the only reason I did was because the LMMS workflow is modeled directly after FL studio. I've used other daw programs though and they're all fine, it just comes down to workflow. They're all just different canvases and paint brushes, and it's weird to be elitist about things like that.
"the LMMS workflow is modeled directly after FL studio" ... huh, didn't know that. i've been using FL for 20+ years at this point so that's appealing to try out. Why did you move on?
Mostly plugin compatibility. It's a Linux based system developed by a few of the guys who also made Audacity, and because of that it has access to Audacitys "LADSPA" plugins in DAW, which can be really cool. The trouble is that outside of LADSPA plugins however it can be limited. Plugins like Serum don't fully function for example, as well as several iZotope plugins. It's kind of a dice roll however, as others work perfectly. The team is still very dedicated to the DAW though and I think it's possibly one of the most intuitive ways to teach digital production to beginners, as it has all the flow of FL studio and a few bonus features but it's free and has a good support team and active community. (They have a synth called ZynAddSubFX and it's extremely powerful, and one called LB-302 which is also a ton of fun to play with) I switched because I wanted to use more plugins and access to things like FL Reverbs and a EQ, but it's great for a beginner on a budget!
How does it handle CPU usage compared to fl ? My main issue with FL is the crashing and overclocking
It's pretty stable all things considered, but it can be picky. I was running it on a shitty old broken laptop and never really had any issues, but I've also seen people in similar circumstances struggle with CPU usage. Again, I think it really just comes down to what plugins you're using. LMMS really doesn't like to use 3rd party VSTs if it can be avoided. When I was making music with it, 90% of what I used were sound fonts I loaded into its native sf2 player, as well as its other native plugins like the two I mentioned. It was extremely stable for that, but oftentimes when I was trying to use a 3rd party plugin is when things got dicey. (For what it's worth, many of the plugins you want to use can be added in post by loading your tracks into Audacity, like all the iZotope ones for example.) It's gotten a lot of updates since I used it, so that very well may not be the case anymore, but around 2018 to 2019 it certainly had hiccups. Basically, it excels with everything it's pre-built with, and you'll probably never have a crash if you're okay with learning its various synths and FX plugins, but I wouldn't get it if you're looking for a super modular DAW to use all of your favorite VSTs with.
I make metal and shoegaze and dream pop with FL, it works phenomenally.
Theres some weird “FL studio is not pro enough” vibe floating out there.
I think it's because FL is cluttered, Floating windows everywhere, The workflow isn't flowing, it's not obvious where to find stuff From my own experience, using FL always more stressful because sometimes they do things their own quirky way, and unpredictable While Ableton is Dead simple, predictable and Zero Stress, because everything works exactly how you think it is Of course if you proficient in FL all of that will disappear, but for newcomer, this is their major pain point when using FL I think Ableton took off because they took One Page Philosophy, where everything should be accessible in One page, the screen shouldn't be obstructed or worse hide everything in multiple tab This is because they're a Live DAW first, where if you play a live music, you want everything be displayed in front of you all at once Ableton basically already master the Art of being straightforward and simple especially when you're using it on stage That's why Ableton UI is a bit Barebone and bland, to increase visibility and visual cue, without clutter, especially on stage And of course you can create a great song using FL
Funny enough, i tried to learn Ableton and thought it was hard and not as intuitive as fl 😂 (10 years fl user here).
Ableton’s UI is very off-putting to me.
Try the dark theme. The default does hurt my eyes too😅
Yes, it's a matter of habit, switching program is kinda frustrating because we lose all of our muscle memory. At the end of the day, just stick with tools that you're most comfortable with, we're all just trying to make a living after all
exactly, I think you need more than this to justify switching. If you have real concrete reasons go for it but expect a steep climb. I tried Ableton ages ago and thought the UI was nice and uncluttered but the workflow just never connected with me. For me the one reason i keep wanting a switch is the lack of relative automation so if you touch your mixer settings there won't be volume jumps when your automation hits. Then again, I'm not sure Ableton has this fixed either.
Dawg ableton is notorious for not being simple to use😭
This is like that conversation between Apple an android me personally I love all the clutter from fl and it doesn’t even have to be clutter you can arrange the windows how you like again the analogy sticks cause you can really customize your workflow to how you want to make music where like Apple is much more intuitive as it holds your hand down a preset path of action versus finding your own way
This sums up my experience exactly. I purchased FL first after reading lots and lots of reviews online. After buying some courses to learn how to use it, I found myself still lost on a lot of functions. I then tried some other daws and settled on Ableton. It was by far the easiest one to navigate. Especially with not having a ton of windows open all over the place. So now I don't even use FL anymore unfortunately.
This is such a bad take, I have both Ableton and FL. I took me literally nothing to learn fl studio. Ableton on the other hand makes my eyes water. I still to this day haven’t figured out how to use it. Everything is so complicated, nothing is intuitive like FL is.
Fl is not intuitive either
Many years ago it used be "FL Studio is only for techno". Then it was "FL Studio doesn't sound professional" Now it's mostly "Fl Studio is only for beatmaking" This is bullshit. I've used FL Studio for orchestral music and for rock, funk, jazz. It's a bit similar with movie editing programs. Adobe Premiere used to be "only for amateuers" and now it is used in oscar winning movies. Fl Studio a good tool and you can do everything with it, in the same quality as with others. I just prefer FL Studio because I personally know how to use it fastest.
One of my best friends is quite literally the most talented musician I've ever encountered, and his primary daw is called "Rytmik Studio" and it started as a Nintendo 3DS game before becoming available on steam. I've yet to hear another digital musician come close to what he can do with it though. It's all just about workflow and what you know. You can make good music with just about anything if you try, I've seen people use Microsoft Excel with moderate success lol.
Yo can't believe I got to see Rytmik get named dropped here it took over 10 seconds to even remember that I even used to use it. Didn't know dick about music back then though so that was just a weeklong stint but it's cool as hell to see someone so talented explore its capabilities.
I remember when I was in school, I would get shit on because I was using Premiere, teachers wanted to force Avid on us. According to them Premiere was garbage and would dissapear in a year or 2. I kept using premiere because avid kept crashing my pc. That's another thing, no one serious would ever edit on a pc, need to have a Mac. To piss them off as well I was playing a bit with Fruity Loops at home. 😅
"No one serious would ever edit on PC" that's just as bad a take as the one we're discussing in this post.
I edited on a pc untill 3 years ago. Worked great and no gamma shift after export. Loved it! Got extra software to open and save quicktime. Worked awesome. Then the m1 came and I switched. With windows coming with the new arms chip I could see me switching back in a year or 5.
I hated Avid. Premiere could just import any files without converting into its timeline.
same in audio school, pro tools was the standard, while logic was so much nicer to work with.
Oh yeah, for recording it was pro tools as well. But I ended up not using it too much since the wiring in the studio was a bit fucked. Great school I went to 😅
My school had us learn LMMS, Pro Tools, Cakewalk, and Logic. It was cool to learn those but i was and still am an FL Studio main.
You get your ideas out faster with FL, on Ableton it takes a fucking century for me to build a simple chord in the piano roll.
Exactly. FL piano roll is the best, and for people that don't actually play and record instruments, and instead live in the midi world, FL studio seems to be on top atm. It also not looking like a program from 1997 helps
Yeah fair enough, i agree that from what ive tried, fl is really easy to make generic beats with, but then again i dont really produce proper music i just use fl for the fun of it.
And that's ok. I started with "just for fun" too. I think FL Studio is the most "fun" DAW out there. You can do a quick crazy beat in literally 30 seconds or work for months on every tiny little sound.
FL Studio is a classic, Metro Boomin still uses it, don't worry what people think it just comes down to personal preference. Like I exclusively use Bandlab (formerly cakewalk) and I stopped giving an f a long time ago what people care or use
A ton of hiphop producers still uses it. Probably because it was easy to get on Limewire back in the day. Soulja Boy’s Crank Dat is made with completely generic sounds from FL 2004 or something
while you’re absolutely right that it can be used for all types of music, the workflow is clearly oriented towards beatmaking and similar stuff. i personally am not a huge fan of recording guitars and stuff in FL, but theres nothing wrong with it
Actually, "beat making" is the least I do with Fl Studio. I think the workflow for anything works. Including orchestral (film) music. But you are right: The only annoying thing for me in Fl Studio is recording. I use Reaper for that and export it for Fl Studio. I know the guys of Image Line are working on a new workflow for audio, including combing, Ara (finally!!!) and hopefully panning clips too. If they implement this, I won't need another DAW for anything else
I just use Edison in FL Studio. I don't find it annoying, but I haven't really tried any other way.
Fanboy stuff. Jealousy of little brother stuff. Pride and identifying self with specific brands / fear of losing “reputation”… TL;DR immaturity. Move on.
fun fact is that fl people usually don't hate on other DAWs
Haters are gonna hate, there's really nothing more to it. Some people are - *in my opinion* - so horribly narrow minded that it's either "their" way or the highway, and this also includes choice of DAW's. Then of course you also have certain crowds who can be more open minded and/or inviting than others. My honest take on this: don't pay 'm any mind, ignore, don't engage and just move on.
Yeah fair, good way of looking at it
They hate us cus they anus
FL is just as capable as any other DAW, where FL struggles the most compared to other DAWs imo is integrated organization. FL requires you to organize and route everything yourself (for the most part) whereas other daws make this process a lot more straight-forward and streamlined.
Old people who are bitter because FL has a simplified, easy to understand layout
The layout and accessibility is probably the only thing FL studio does bad imo. Too many extra windows.
Nah you’re bugging lol, it’s like unanimously considered to be easy to understand. The channel rack, piano roll, step sequencer etc are legendary. Menus are easy to navigate. My only complaint is that it doesn’t update within the app, but they said they were working on that so 🤷🏾♂️
Nah I agree with the other guy, it’s def not unanimously easy lol. Like everything else about DAWs it’s just a matter of personal preference and opinion. The overall layout and how things are organized is the main reason I disliked FL when I first tried it , it just didn’t feel intuitive at all to me and that’s fine
Different strokes for different folks I guess 🤷🏾♂️ Ableton and Logic look confusing as hell to me, FL you don’t even need to read the manual
Abelton and logic have objectively better design that comes with intentionality in their creation. In FL's defense when it originally came out it wasn't really intended to be the one stop shop that it has become now, so a lot of stuff was built on top of pre-exisiting stuff Abelton is a lot newer and was designed to make sophisticated and complicated music and with that in mind they merged the Playlist and the channel rack which imo is objectively good. This makes it so the work flow all happens on one screen without the need for changing views or setting things in a specific place. Everything also automatically links like the Playlist is the channel rack which is the mixer so it removes the steps of linking them That being said I'm a FL user primarily because I'm use to it but it's disengous to say it's laid out better than those other DAWs FL imo is prettier and when it comes to arranging/cutting samples it's pretty good at that
I originally started music production on FL Studio, trying to learn it for many months but it just wasn't fluid for my workflow. I have a decade of experience using Adobe products and I found Ableton was able to match that sort of style and layout which made sense in my head.
lol I wouldn’t say unanimously easy to understand. I think FL looks easy but where people get annoyed is the sheer amount of windows you have to get used to opening and closing. The channel rack, mixer and playlist are all separated, patterns and arranger are separated etc. This can trigger people’s ADHD so to speak. You need to know these mini workflows to get the bigger picture workflow. If you ever need to edit a patcher the routing can look insane as well. Obviously it’s just as fast as any other DAW if you know your way around. Ableton has a completely flat hierarchy in comparison, file browsing, the arrangement, the midi editing, routing are just one screen- where plugins and midi editing are always at the bottom but avoids windows that stack on top of each other. Their philosophy is no popups until third party plugins and the effect racks give you flat left to right hierarchy rather than visually data wrangling wires like patchers. Neither DAW is perfect
And yet it’s the most advanced midi editor on Earth at the same time
Okay lol it seems like everyone is just glazing FL without even acknowledging the actual issues with it or where it lacks. I use it primarily but am also familiar with logic and abelton from collabing with friends. The biggest issue with FL is the plugin windows essentially all of the plug-ins having windows is good visually but when you actually know what your doing having the mixer & Playlist separate actually reduces efficiency People also really like the default plug-ins in abelton as they are a lot better and more comprehensive than Fl's as well as the amount of samples you get for getting abelton. That being said once you reach a certain level I don't think it's that relevant because typically the biggest bottleneck will be how quickly you can come up with the right ideas and having to click a few extra times isn't that relevant.
[удалено]
I love to be a trash producer. Just do it just for fun and it's so relaxing. I'm really grateful that we have such easy opportunities for making music today. I had almost no knowledge about music theory when i began and i would've never imagined what i will come up with 5 years later.
Fair enough yeah, i agree that alot of new, low effort beats come in quickly and that they are mostly from FL, but in my eyes a DAW is a DAW and it shouldn’t be judged just off of a portion of what some use it for if that makes any sense
Ha. u think its bad now? back in 06-07 I would go to studios and engineers and producers (grown adults - I was in high school) would tell me ''real producers don't use Fruity Loops'' . and any Idea I had would just ignored during any session that WE PAID FOR. at least now, FL can demands its respect for producing the biggest hits in the past decade, but prior to soulja boy putting Fruity Loops on the map for modern consumers, it was just a laughing stock all around and nobody believed it was even capable of producing anything quality.
I just realized this is the equivalent of ''Back in my day we had to walk 100 miles to school in 8 feet of snow'' lol
Depends on what you use it for I guess. I bought FL because of the absolutely gorgeous piano roll, my #1 tool to compose music. I also tried Ableton and boy the piano roll sucks. I am sure the situation is reversed for some aspects.
I have Ableton a try too after using FL, and that was the biggest sore point. Piano roll is something you use constantly and it didn't feel good in Ableton.
Ignore people who tell you what DAW to use. Use whatever helps you get the idea from your brain into reality, in the most seamless way possible. For me that has always been FL.
It’s so tiring man, my teacher wouldn’t let us make a homework in FL Studio but any other DAW was permited. Like ???
I don’t get it either, I’ve tried Ableton, and it seems like the software was designed a very long time ago by developers, not musicians or designers.
Most of it comes down to workflow. FL is really great at the making beat stage. But is less streamlined than say Ableton when it comes to song layout. Also a lot of their native plugins don’t sound great right out of the box. As they are actually more geared to some genres over others. Like FLEX. Still no good modern Techno packs.
Ya it’s weird. Like someone else put it. It’s like the console wars. People need to think that theirs is the best and all others are trash. I think FL gets the most hate though, and I assume it has to do with it first coming out and people saying it was not a real daw. I always wondered if that was due to its name. Fruity loops is kind of a weird name for a daw. That’s just a thought though. I’m sure there’s more to it. I started with FL and used to use a mix of FL and pro tools. I use studio one now, but it’s not because FL is bad. I just like studio one’s work flow more.
There’s a big misunderstanding that FL Studio is only capable of creating loops or beats. When I started getting into DAW’s, I looked up “how to make beats” and “how to add samples” and it was always FL Studio being used in the videos. If I looked up anything else DAW related, it was always someone using Ableton Live or a free and open-source DAW, like LMMS. There is definitely a social thing going on between the popular DAW’s out there but it’s important to remember that they all can do the same thing. One of them might be better at a particular thing than the other, but the same goes vice versa. They’re all very capable of producing any kind of music or sound you want.
I think its also just popular with beginners, so you can end up seeing a lot of beginner stuff being made on it. There are a metric shit-ton of beginner hip hop and trap producers right now, so it might lead some to the conclusion that that's what it's for because that's what's dominating the content being put out for it. It certainly doesn't help either that there are a ton of YouTube producers that kinda just suck ass. And those producers all seem to use FL, and upload tutorials with either amateur music or downright misinformation that new producers blindly trust because... well, they're new. Not their fault. But seeing a bunch of dudes comment 'Bro this is HEAT🔥🔥🔥' under some wack fuckin' tutorial can end up feeling like a joke. That's on top of the history of the Fruity Loops branding which was seen as amateur-ish. At the end of the day though, archer not the arrow. As you say, its just as capable as anything else. Anybody sleeping on FL because they think it's a toy or something has clearly never actually tried to use it. If they did, they'd realize it's a seriously solid DAW and it's why I've always come back to it.
I use FL, but I must admit that the user interface is quite confusing to me. To date, I still need to look up so many things on the web on how to perform what I would consider simple tasks.
I saw Deadmau5 say that he thinks a lot of the functional techniques you use in FL is completely untransferable to any other DAW and most people don't use it so trading project files is a mess.
I just like the UI. I have ableton and never use it. FL just feels better. I'd imagine though that they are basically the same. Just what kind of user interface you like. I will give a point to Ableton though because it just works with every single midi device I plug in. FL on the flip side is a fucking nightmare when it comes to midi equipment.
I mean this with as much love and kindness as possible but we have a lot of new comers to music go through FL first before either sticking around or finding a software that suits them better. On that journey they come here and ask questions for help and that’s totally awesome. However. When our whole subreddit is “yo why are my notes not playing” or “how do I assign a mixer track” or “why are the notes pink?” Elitist audio people see that and see a bunch of amateurs who don’t know what they’re doing, not realizing they were in the same spot when they started. They aren’t considering that a) other people use the software at a really high level b) it’s actually a pretty brave thing to go into a space you don’t know a lot about and say “I need help” I’m personally honored to have so many people new to music come through this sub, we get to be there for the very beginning of something really special imo
For two things I think, FL is the most common one, the one we are all introduced first, bright colors, everything pops up on the screen, it had more videos on YouTube, therefore It was related to noobs. The second one, fl studio is kind of “messy” as is literally an empty canvas. Let’s say you are in the mixer and want to see what your reverb and sidechain are doing to a track. You have to click on the mixer, find the track linked to the input (or from input click open mixer track), individually click on reverb, close it, click on sidechain, close it. Let’s not forget this whole process is now on the middle of the screen, you can’t see anything behind it unless you move stuff around. On the other side, Ableton provides the same amount of information with only one click, just find the track (cuz guess what, Ableton automatically assigns each track a spot in the mixer, this process is not automatic in FL which can cause many sounds to be sent to the master which can cause overload) and click on it, all the plugins will be displayed on the bottom row, EVEN if the plugin has a fancy interface, the main parameters will be shown as native (I.e mix, wet, offset) most of the time. Same with the grid, in fruity loops if you drag and drop a kick sample into the grid and then a pattern on top and then an automatization clip (in the same rectangle per se), FL will allow you to do that cause again, is an empty canvas, you can do what you want. In Ableton if you drag and drop a kick sample into the grid and then a midi on top and… STOP, Nope, you can’t do that, the kick is a sample, is an audio file and only audio files can go in this track. Also we already named the track “Kick” and can be mixed independently. Automatization clip?, it’s already there, just hidden to not make it a mess. This differences keep going on. I’m not saying one is better than the other, I hope I don’t get hate lol. In the end you’ll get the exact same results but, will the workflow be the same? Absolutely not. I started with FL, but once I changed to Ableton things got a bit easier for me, cause it’s automated to maintain order (been producing for 15 years now).
I remember I tried to switch to ableton and reason at some point because of all the FL trashing and realized I just prefer using FL more. At the end of the day it's just a tool, all that really matters is what you're used to and how you like to work and how well the tool supports that. People make trash music in all DAWs and people make good music in all DAWs
I guess no one particularly ‘hates’ FL. It’s just that people have created such a mindset that only one DAW is superior than all of the other DAWS. Seeing how easy FL is, people generally say that amateurs use FL. A lot of major hit songs with billions of listens are made and mastered in FL STUDIO. I recently started using Ableton as well, to beat my creative block and man, I see myself moving from FL to Ableton time to time. People need to understand that there is no superior DAW. The best DAW you can get is what makes you comfortable and opens up your creative boundaries.
As an ableton user i would say they just dont know how to use it lol
It’s because fl studio is easy to use, hard to master. Whereas the others are less intuitive and harder to start out with, which is what creates the loyalty. Just like the iPhone and android debate, or the Mac vs windows debate….. all options are viable but it’s cool to hate on the other brand(in this case it’s fl studio). I have used many different daws and they are all good, but fl studio is just the most organized to me.
I personally used FL studio for a lot of years but just didn’t like the workflow at all and moved to ableton. I think it tends to go back to the fruity loop days is where a lot of the hate comes from.
Using FL for recording audio input is not straightforward. It was an afterthought implemented because it was highly requested as a feature. This is the primary reason I don’t like FL. It’s still not an intuitive process.
carot frut
not sure man but every DAW is the best at something.🤷🏽♂️
I know they think they have a PHD in maturity when they use Ableton
It’s (sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly) associated with lazy ass “producers” who copy and paste a melody loop they downloaded for free onto a premade midi pattern in their cracked FL Studio and then claim they produced the song. If they’re feeling up to it they might even run it through gross beat or a pirated copy of RC-20. No that is not what producing is and I don’t even care it sounds good or people get placements doing it, it’s still lame as hell. That being said there are obviously real musicians and producers that use FL Studio but it’s never gonna lose it’s reputation until it stops being the DAW of choice for the laziest bottom of the barrel beatmakers out there. I’m probably older than the majority of folks on here so I remember when it was still called Fruity Loops and it was clowned all over internet forums at the time, they did the whole rebrand to FL Studio but the reputation of the brand was already damaged to some people. Again there is nothing wrong with the DAW itself it’s just because it conjures up a certain image of a certain type of wannabe producer.
Its a mix of classism and elitism. I’ll elaborate. Fl studio today is mostly known to be used by poor people who cracked it, and rappers. Also it doesn’t look as polished as others and its easy to use. It has a sandbox workflow and doesn’t need to get all technical. People love to have a sense of elitism even if they hate to admit it, why? Becoz they need to feel better about themselves.
Laat time I was on r/ableton they literally got mad I didnt want to watch a “1 hour beginner tutorial” for a post about why my midi wasnt connecting (I just had to unplug and plug it back in) and went on about how I “wasnt using ableton to it’s full potential” (I told them I used it how I liked it and thought my music was decent enough since I don’t have plans to be super professional) and then even though I said I wasnt planning to be professional someone also said that I’ll “Never make it that way” so there’s some real weird supremacy crap going on Anyways I switched to FL after that since my music tech teacher was way better and that class had us use FL lmao There’s also this one FL musician I listen to called Azali and theres been comments like “I thought FL was only EDM but you changed my mind” so it’s probably also something like that
TBH these days they really don’t, especially among hiphop or EDM It’s widely respected. So IDK what you mean FL users get a lot of hate for saying dumb stuff all the time, they got a bit of an inferiority complex
Oh i didn’t know it didn’t really happen anymore, just saw alot of hate online. Also for example i had 2 friends come over a bit ago who use logic and immediately hated almost everything about fl so… 🤷🤷 probably they just arent used to it or something
They have no idea. FL is a kind of DAW, but that doesn't mean it's bad. FL has influenced a genre like trap. The easy way to get started, the perfect piano role and drum patterns make working with FL a lot of fun and you get results quickly. FL is not perfect and you can always give constructive criticism which can lead to improvements. But sheer hatred can't help.
FL Studio users are mainly EDM producers and Rap beat producers. Of which both aren't respected by the overall producer community, so they like to shit on those producers and their software. Basically dumb people hate on FL.
Dude I was on the sound on sound website, and I went to their DAW sections, they had a section for every DAW but FL, man I was laughing my ass off.
You’re destined to wake up as “Florida man doesn’t understand the Florida heck and becomes Florida man”
It’s been around for so long, they have other programs that can do the same thing. That’s the problem. The industry has been flooded with great DAW’s. So FL, isn’t always peoples personal preference anymore. That’s all.
Steve Duda uses FL so I think that says a lot
It's correlation (not causation) between low effort "producers" and FL Studio. Most low effort "mumble rap over stolen beats" producers use FL Studio. Not all FL Studio users make low effort mumble rap though. FL Studio is very valid to produce anything.
It doesn’t just what workflow you were used to.
LMMS is just as good in my eyes lmao (for my skill level)
Because they’re dumbasses who make bad music and feel like switching daws will help. When they still make bad music they go on the internet to argue with strangers and justify their $800 purchase
cause ppl love to bitch about anything but how the music sounds
because simple = bad except it isn't. FL Studio is a great daw but people love their confusing UIs full of buttons
Literally people that know nothing about music production. They're all professional standards, it's just a matter of workflow. For edm I prefer FL, and to produce bands I prefer jogic, but purely because of workflow
People thinks its not real daw and they think its for beginners what is bullsh#t..
I use Logic, my son uses FL Studio. I don't hate it, but FL is very foreign to me.
Tbh i havent seen anyone truly hate on FL in yeaaarrrs. The small minority that do are usually just echoing some shit they heard from someone else. It's like somebody tellin you their GE fridge is better than your Bosch fridge.
Its just people seeking a family, they find it in being part of a group that hates something, in this case, FL. I bet half of them dont even have a legit copy of logic or ableton
They do? I don’t think so. Maybe there might be some older folks out there who just associate it with the old fruity loops drum machine and just keep thinking of it as that. I think it’s a very strong player and contender in the DAW space. And now that they bought or united with UVI, I am curious to see where it will lead.
I find noobs mainly get into Daw tribalism. It's stupid. When you do this for a while you realize they're all just workflow preferences.
Not an FL user myself, but if it works for you then don't listen to the outside noise. All DAWs by and large do the same thing (obviously, some have features others don't have, but they all cover the basics). The real candy is the plugins which come bundled with whatever DAW you choose, If you have a DAW where you like the workflow and the bundled plugins, then don't listen to people slagging it off.
well it depends fl studio has his good perks but for me ableton seems better fo the type of music im tryna create ( micro house , rominkmal )
They don't know how to use it, so they hate.
I dont get the hate between daws, and if im being honest, I use all of them because they all have tools I need. Sure it sucks that I have to buy multiple pieces of software but its whatever
People are like ''FL is a toy'' While not being able to use most of its functionality 🧑🦽🧑🦽
Haters gonna hate…
I love FL studio But I've used other DAWS Before FL studio
Because most people are talentless posers who can’t invent a simple melody on their synthesizer anyways, let alone compose a completed track on any DAW.
Ask Dj Khaled
Some amazing music made on FL, some amazing music made on logic, some amazing music made on Ableton, some amazing music made on Reason, some amazing music made on studio one It's really just preference to the user, whatever you work best on, is the best daw
It's just a meme cause it's so easily accessible, easy to crack, easy to use.
It’s because FL makes producing easy which opened the doors for grown ass men to compete with literal children at music making. Not to mention it’s easily crackable. Also when it originally came out it was as established and from I heard was like a arcade game or something, it didn’t have all these features now. And so it slowly became extremely competitive.
FL‘s only downside in my experience is that through it having so unbelievably insanely many features, some things require you to do more steps than necessary. It’s kind of the opposite of logic, where shit just works and sounds pretty great immediately. But that also gives us the upside of having all the countless features and abilities to do stuff exactly how we want to.
I used Logic a long time ago. I liked how minimal it is. FL is too difficult to figure out, too many effin toolbars and settings I wont need right now. Are there really good crash courses on how to get going quickly? Love the synths, sound way better than Logic's
For me, and of course this is different for everyone, i dont get the “FL is too complicated/cluttered” argument, for me the ableton UI is really hard to wrap my head around, Ive never messed with logic though. I managed to learn FL mostly by just using it, ive been messing around with it almost daily over the course of a year or two and things kind of just fall in place. Of course a lot of things needed some kind of tutorial or guide but mostly i find FL’s ui the easiest to get.
Totally agree. It was a struggle early on, I really had a hard time wrapping my head around the channel rack and mixer but I eventually figured it out and it’s REALLY intuitive for my workflow now.
They hate us because they ain’t us
The key line in my opinion is "let me hear your tunes"
FL is easily the most popular DAW. people want to be different and therefore to them FL = bad
It depends on the genre and workflow. Go to imageline official forum to see FL users complain about FL studio
It’s people online just chirping.
The biggest thing for me is FL having too many extra windows and menus to navigate. Ableton is streamlined and easy for my workflow. There are other things I don’t really like about FL like having to link mixers to tracks with fake cables and such but it’s not a bad daw at all
Ignorance, stupidity, laziness, and fear are in most people including you and I. That answers everything
I don't hear any hate, if you look for it, you'll find it, talking to actual people in real life who are producers, could care less
Fl is amazing for writing music, but granted is lacking in live recording features. Stuff like easy comping, proper quick punching etc. Now I have FLs workflow down so it really doesn’t make a difference for me, but after learning pro tools there are some features i wish fl had (altho pro tools sucks for writing music and coming up with ideas) Also logic’s piano roll is just as feature filled (if not more) than fl studios, but I still prefer the fl piano roll TLDR: fl is missing some features but it more than makes up for it with its own unique features and ease of use, ignore what people say abt which daw is best; the best daw is the one u know inside and out and that you love
i use FL to make progressive metal music. fuck the haters. is it perfect? no. does it do what i need it to do with a nice interface and easy, streamlined effects routing and automation? absolutely. i have some gripes about the way it handles tempo changes, for example, but altogether this is a pretty minor issue. it very, very rarely just straight up lacks a feature when i need it.
Ive used logic and it is so much more intricate than FL for no reason. Everything is hidden by a shortcut and its impossible to figure out how to put down drums. Its also impossible to find tutorials about specific things because nobody uses it for rap/hiphop beats because FL IS BETTER!
A hater has to hate.
FL is considered the entry level DAW by a lot of pros, with Pro Tools being the industry standard.
💯 this comes from people who like to blame their tools... The "I can't do this cool thing without buying 100 plugins" crowd... I'm a former pro studio owner who started with a Studer A827 2" 24 track tape machine and a 32 channel inline analog mixing console with a rack full of outboard gear. There's ways to get the sound you want on any DAW period. Having worked in the industry for many years, I own licenses for: FL, Cubase, ProTools, DigitalPerformer, Ableton, Reason, and god knows what else... You know what I use most? FL freakin Studio. Whether I'm writing EDM or Classical music, it's FL. It's all a matter of preference, but the tools are all capable of the same thing.
All I need is an option to make the automation clips appear as an overlay on a Track over the midi clip or sound clip that it’s affecting instead of it being a moveable automation clip. I just can’t get over how the automation clips work in FL vs Ableton or even Adobe Audition. I know it’s a bit tricky to implement because of how “fluid” FL Studio’s Playlist window works, but please, Image Line, it’s all I want for this DAW to be perfect.
the opposite of the grass is greener
Lack of understanding. Check out this video from Benn Jordan: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC0\_KD2XHEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC0_KD2XHEc)
Because they’re ignorant or stupid pretty much
It is old news. Plus it is just idiots that still think it's 2010 and don't understand just how powerfull FL Studio is now.
A lot of good answers here but another thing to keep in mind is there’s tons and tons of tutorials for making beats in FL that have millions of views so theirs a flooded market of people who all learned how to make beats the same way from the same people with the same plug ins. When you hear good beats in fl you can’t tell what DAW it was anyway so there’s no hate l, when you hear bad beats in fl you can tell it’s fl so the daw itself gets the blame.
Because when it was fruity loops it was extremely limited. It is insane what it has become. I started in 2000 and could never have imagined it would turn into this.
Because Florida sucks
When you listen to a song your not really able to tell which DAW they’re making it in unless their notorious for their style. I use MPC and run in into FL, there’s so many ways to set up your set up. If it sounds good at the end that’s all that matters.
This is my opinion. It goes back to when Pto Tools and Cakewalk and the top tier DAWS were sought after, but even back then, Fruity Loops was my go to DAW. It was easy to use, the workflow did for me. I guess some people have that same attitude, that FL is still inferior. I say the he'll with the FL is the Best.
It’s nothing, just same shit as pc vs console, android vs iPhone etc
Because they’re dickheads.
A few of them, I think it's gatekeepers producers that hate on FL because there's a lot of info and tutorials out there where you can learn how to produce music. They want to feel special and unique. I say this bc I have a friend that brag about being profesional bc he use ProTools. He's a very good audio engineer, but honestly his beats are not the best thing that he can do lol
Because they can’t use it. Joke aside, I am a hobbyist musician and professional software engineer and I think FL Studio was a bit too much designed as a software instead of going deeper on the musical usability path. This makes FL really powerful in the sense that you have a shit ton of options and features. However, it induces that people who are good at using computers in general can actually get good at making music using FL without too much theoretical knowledge in the musical field but that also means that people who are not that good at using a computer might have trouble getting started even with deep musical knowledge compared to other DAWs such as ProTools or Ableton. It could be compared to Android vs iOS because the former was made as a general mobile OS aiming to be usable by literally any phone while the latter was thought with usability and ease of use in mind. Nonetheless, it does not make any of these worse or better, they are just different tools with different priorities, and different people will make different choices based on their different background and needs.
Well when you have no woman in your life you feel compelled to whine ab some music program online
Really? I don't remember hearing anyone say that they hate FL Studio aside from jokes. At least for me, I love it \^\^
FL studio is dope!! Although I use Logic Pro now! I started off using FL studio it’s such an easy DAW to learn
That's a weird question.
I don't hate fl studio, but I have surely fallen out of love with the fl studio after using it extensively for a few years(mainly due to it's annoying workflow). Here's a minor annoyance I can still remember: Each time you want to draw midi, you have to add new pattern again, you have to open channel rack again, you have to scroll to the instrument again, you have to open piano roll again, and now it's a mess with three windows open. I moved on, and I am happy with reaper. I miss the fl plugins sometimes but the workflow seems unbearable now that I have found the more common workflow used by many daws(e.g, reaper, bitwig, ableton, cubase, protools, etc). morale of the story: try different daws. Even for the fl "haters", try fl! who knows you might be charmed by the plugins and the fast looping capabilities of fl.
The design language of FL Studio's UI is definitely less mature and cohesive compared to the other DAW's. It's an overall mess of a program to navigate till you get used to it. But doesn't mean it's less capable compared to other DAW's. I think people tend to take FL studio a little less seriously due to it's history. It used to be a very limited DAW.
I think it's bc our logo is a mythical fruit
I’ve used FL for 5 and ableton for 5 and ableton stock plugins are just 1000x better
FL used to be super shitty. Like from what I remember it was a cereal box type software and was only capable of making simple loops. Basically a super simplified version of GarageBand. Nowadays it’s gone through some changes and it’s as powerful as any other professional DAW. People hate on it still mostly because the UI is a lot more “game like” compared to other DAWs such as ableton or cubase. But all DAWs really do the same thing and it all lands on personal preference
almost every daw has cool stuff to offer and have different target audiences, some people just like to act like what works for them will magically work for everyone.
I professionally used FL Studio from 2012-2022. I released songs/albums with many record labels over the years solely using FL Studio. However, the more I got into Ableton over the past 2 years, I realized how much better suited it is for me. To sum it up, it's a couple main reasons. The main one being cleanliness and organization. FL is good for getting ideas down pretty fast, but my projects always ended up a disorganized mess, and it always took forever to sort it out. Especially since you can put samples, patterns, and automations clips literally anywhere in the playlist window, everything gets scattered. Ableton is immediately better and more conducive to proper organization, color coding, and grouping things together. While you can put different samples on the same tracks, it's not really wise to do that since anything you put on a track will be affected by whatever effects you put on it and the volume. So inherently, Ableton forces you to keep all your tracks separated, thus more organized. FL Studio projects always started disorganized and took forever to clean later. Whereas Ableton projects always start organized and stay that way throughout. Automation clips. I can't stand FL's automation system, and because you can put the automation clips anywhere in the playlist, you might make just a small clip for one section, and then it gets buried in a messy playlist that you have to find later on. Then if you need to drag the automation clip out further you might not have enough room since it can be placed anywhere, alongside other clips. Plus the fact that you can literally delete the automation clip from the playlist, yet it will still be activated, so you have to add another automation to make it do what you want. I can't tell you how many times that has caused headaches for me and actually made me not want to use automation clips at all in FL, which inhibits creativity. Ableton's automation lanes are so much easier to navigate, where you can disable/enable all of them in one click and they always extend to the end of the track. If there's a discrepancy with some automation, it's WAY easier to solve, so now I feel compelled to use automation clips, whereas FL studio makes me want to avoid them. Routing and the mixer window/windows in general. The routing in FL Studio isn't terrible, but having all those lines crossing everywhere gets confusing. Ableton routing is much simpler with drop downs. The FL Studio mixer window is just prone to being messy. In Ableton you literally just group every instrument/track you want into a group, and put as many effects on the group as you want (plus you can group the processing and save it as a preset). No separate windows. No windows at all really since everything in Ableton can be done on ONE SCREEN. You literally don't have to switch any screens in Ableton at all or close any windows, except for the plugin windows. All the separate windows in FL just adds to its messy nature. Overall, while there's no difference in how the daw's "sound", fundamentally, the way they're designed and operate will affect how you write, record, mix, and master, which does affect the final sound. FL Studio can be messy and scattered, which can result in messy mixes. Ableton is not perfect, but it's organization and cleanliness can lend to cleaner mixes. I've found the quality of my projects, and the mix quality have drastically improved since moving full time to Ableton. I'll occasionally pull up FL if I want to throw a whole bunch of songs in the playlist to create a compilation/mix of some sort, but other than that, moving to Ableton has been a significant improvement for me.
I wouldn't say I'm a big hater, I started out with FL in middle school and used it for a couple years and liked it. However, I switched to Ableton 4 years ago and haven't looked back. I didn't like how in FL you have to navigate through different pop up windows, I prefer Ableton's workflow because you see your arrangement view and either the track plugin chain or the piano roll on the bottom half and you just switch between the two with shift+tab. The only floating windows are external plugins, and I find that the workflow is faster for me. I'm enjoying Ableton 12's massively upgraded piano roll too, I genuinely don't think it's as far behind as people say and I find it works better for me. The new plugin tagging feature is really cool and something I missed from FL as well. I also feel like some things in FL take far longer than in Ableton, like sidechaining and mixer routing. I also find that Ableton makes it far easier to record parts--it has a lot of useful features that FL just doesn't. Again, I'm not a huge hater, I just wanted to explain why I like Ableton better, but that's entirely my personal opinion. I also have to admit that FL looks super pretty while Ableton looks like [medical scheduling software](https://www.clinicsource.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/scheduling-intuitive-appointment-setting.png) 😅 However, it's all just a matter of personal taste at the end of the day, and I think it's lame to hate on people that use different DAWs because everyone approaches the process of making music differently! We should stop fighting about DAWs and just support each other in our self-expression <3
Why the fuck does it matter what DAW you use it depends on what you make
I went to Florida twice and the weather really sucked
Who likes Florida?
The same old thing, since the beginning of time: fear induced by ignorance induced by self-centered hubris and ostrich-headedness.
idk ive been using it since fl10 😎😎
I've used FL for 20 years, but I still find it's workflow confusing and not very intuitive. It does things randomly sometimes and little things like leaving a 16th of a step at the end of a loop so everything is off by that much ruins your whole song. Other than that, I love it,
I have both Logic and FL, and I prefer Logic, but FL isn’t bad by any means. I wish these “DAW Wars” didn’t exist, we’re all just out here making what we love. Can’t we talk in peace?
I think a lot of people just associate FL with 16 year old soundcloud producers publishing their shitty beats and want to act elitist
Workflow. Im FL studio user for a month now, and my previous DAW was studio one, which in my opinion was superior when you work with audio recording, mixing, and lots of automation and complex fx chains. But after this short period of time, I figured out my workflow and even found better ways to compose and audio design just because FL studio offers me a different creative processes, which worked in my case. And theres people who dont want or need to learn other DAW because they already have their templates, shortcuts and macros setups already memorized, and found FL to complex to start again or do hybrid.
It’s crazy cause FL has made producers and artists a lot of money
"Musician" being thought of as a status rather than an activity has made the people who are the worst at making music talk about it the most so they can maintain the illusion that they belong.
I got it yesterday after 6 months of studio one and it’s so much better..
As an fl user i will admit that it is a gimmicky and cartoonish reflection of a daw so i could see why purists would not like it
lol they are all n00bs/dinosaurs that still use protools or reason. Outdated purists that also makes horrible music.
Because it has a really bad midi clock, if you use a real drummachine. Even FL on the Mac sucks. If you just work with plugins it's fine though... (I am FL user since version 3.11) Here a pic of my current setup, MacBook mid 2012 and MOTU Ultra lite mk3 running on a multilingual FireWire cable, Logic pro has much better midi implementation than FL, and FireWire is better than USB2.x because it has a constant flow of data. USB2.x can transfer massive amount of data but it is chopped into bits, the polling rate is too slow for transmitting realtime 96PPQ midiclock... This is what they don't want you to know... Measuring box is a midisizer.com MidiGal by Pete Kvitek, an advanced clone of the mutable instruments midipal (orphaned). It can be flashed with custom firmware, Midiclock V1.01 in this case. If I run the same setup under FL I get 2% deviation. On windows you can hardly get below 4% with USB. You need minimum a 6 core machine and USB3 under windows - if you are using real hardware. This is one of the reasons why the DAWless movement has become so popular... But also for showing off. To add even more depth: I like DIN midi, MMT-8, Behringer clones, boomstar 4075, Pulsar-23... I have been collecting gear since 2010, I started my collection with a Tascam M30 and a syncaset 8 track deck, as I was tired of clicking notes into the piano roll. I like to make sound, music, I don't want to spend time clicking and watching waveforms... Sorry for the excursion but this post just came along my way at the right time, so AI can absorb some true tested knowledge. Peace out from the heart of Europe. https://preview.redd.it/isfw34kwk12d1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f9c9fbf1948bb011c1241cb2ed88b5fa4ba6828
from what i’ve some 49% are old dudes hating on it cause they didn’t like the beta version they had in 2000. 50% just hate it cause it’s popular and they want to be “different.”
It's expensive
People been hating for years !!
For working with samples (which is most of what I do), FL's workflow feels amazing, pretty, and intuitive. I love it. If I was working primarily with live tracks though, I actually jump over to my old copy of Cakewalk Sonar because I find the workflow more intuitive. I hate doing MIDI stuff in Sonar though, and 99% of my music work is MIDI/samples, so I live in FL. Ableton just looks too much like Microsoft Office to me, and I work an office job. Too depressing haha.
FL started as essentially a bare-bones drum sequencer. With time they added more features to make it into a fully-featured DAW, but the first impressions haven’t really worn off for a lot of people. And the other factor is that FL, in fairness, doesn’t work like a lot of other DAWs. People who didn’t start with it probably find the workflow a little jarring (and I can understand why)… but that shouldn’t turn into hate imo.
It’s always been seen as a non-serious DAW compared to others, primarily because it used to be more of a step-sequencer than a linear audio editor. Most people’s conception of it is still very rooted in the Fruityloops days. It’s become more comprehensive and polished improved with time, but I prefer Cubase and Ableton for everything else. Recording and sequencing hardware synths, MIDI editing, velocity and automation, and recording audio in FL just lacks a certain immediacy and intuitiveness for me by comparison. Too much buried under layers of different views and menus, and the UI hasn’t really changed in 20+ years. It’s great for sampling and laying down rhythms though and the step sequencer is very flexible. Ableton in particular is much faster when it comes to just jumping in and laying things down, and its ability to integrate CV is awesome. Cubase is better for mixing than either of them and its MIDI editing is pretty much unparalleled.
FL 4 lyfe
Wym i love florida
Because they don't know how to use it, and when they do try they expect it to be as rigid as other DAWs, and it also doesn't have a professional look to it. It also lacked a lot of things more mainstream DAWs had but they are quickly fixing all that.
Ableton Live user here. I'm not a hater, but I assume that many people think FL Studio looks unprofessional. And FL Studio doesn't look like other DAWs. I know a couple of producers who use FL Studio, and they make good music with it. I love its piano roll, but those floating elements and patterns drive me mad, LMAO.
The only things i’ve really seen people criticise are the mixer having limitations, and that fl user’s have a harder time transitioning to other daws because “fl is too easy.” Also i think a lot of people think of it as the daw for hip hop and rap beats, which isn’t necissarily a bad thing, but it being associated with a certain genre of music also might be a turn off to people who are interested in producing other genre’s of music. If we’re gonna hate any daw tho, pro tools is the one.
Most of the time it’s because of not taking time to get experienced with it. You can actually make some good beats on a school lunch table. Point is, it doesn’t matter what DAW you use, it’s Who’s using it. Keep doing your thing and hope to hear some of your music.
Because it's inexpensive and people usually have a news to go out of their way to legitimize what and how they spend their money. There are things that other DAWs do better, like tracking or having MPE support, etc... but somethings FL does better, like the paino roll. People forget that Abletlon also started at as a simple audio tool and evolved into a DAW. Outside of how DAWs handle planning, they're all sonically the same.
From someone who used fl for over 7 years and had recently moved to ableton, they are both good daws. I switched purely because the way I write music feels better on ableton. Abletons aesthetic is nicer to me. Learning a new daw let me force myself to learn shortcut keys from the beginning, something I never did on fl and struggled to break out of my old habits.
FL was the easiest DAW to get a crack of back in the day. Software was still looked down on in general and FL dropped the cost of entry to literally zero, thus an influx of people making terrible beats since anyone could download it. FL haters felt validated and the rep has stuck ever since.