hahaha yes indeed.
Most of my work life has been in market research. So imagine what I think about this dumbass argument he makes. I’ve come across variations of that line soooo many times (“I asked my friend group made of 3 people and nobody does this or that, so I can conclude that this is valid for the entire population on the planet!”) that I usually only virtually facepalm and move on these days.
To be fair, it was their phrasing that was the problem. I think it’s legit that 1) MPE devices probably don’t have a level of public adoption that makes it a burning priority so 2) the implementation effort doesn’t pay dividends to the broader user base, 3) those man-hours are currently pointed at things identified by I-L through rigorous testing and feedback as being beneficial to a large number of users and 4) it’s on their roadmap behind more pressing matters. If they’d said that, I bet everyone would have gone “well that sucks, but okay” and moved on because it’s a good argument. Instead they just said some dumb shit and people rightfully piled on.
But I think there’s also such a thing of being ahead of the curve, saying “our program can handle your new shiny toy!”, or at this point just keeping feature parity with other DAWs.
Fucking Cakewalk has MPE support. Cakewalk. Come on, Image-Line…
I’m definitely just one of the clowns myself, but I think the main difference is that I love FL Studio and can’t wait to boot it up as often as I can. My list of things I love about it is probably 10x larger than the things that get in the way, but the severe underdevelopment of a lot of features turns into a massive bottleneck for the simpler tasks. It’s like the MIDI 2 thing, but on steroids. Once you hit “Oh yeah, it doesn’t work that way but they’re trying to fix it” enough times it’s hard to treat it like a professional tool, even though, yes, plenty of people have done great things with it, and the recent developments have been absolutely amazing.
I know people who use Audacity as a DAW, too. Whatever works for someone can’t be bad, and these are all very capable tools, but my half-shitposts are really just about my need for things to work correctly across the board. It doesn’t really mean anything aside from “Goddammit, I can’t pump Redux into Voltage in patcher because FX instances can’t carry MIDI!”. It’s many layers of horseshit and ridiculousness, so I didn’t mean it quite like that. But once you start hitting them, they’re everywhere, and the internal handling of some things is a little bizarre. To their credit, they’ve recently started adding new switches to gain ‘normal’ functionality (like turning MIDI channels into their color types), so they’re moving in the right direction.
VFX Script has been a huge game changer, too, allowing for a lot of manual configuration of MIDI and control signals, which solves a shitload of problems instantly. If they keep going in that direction and even make a DSP version, holy fuck. It’s going to be good.
I’m also still planning on upgrading to the all-plugins edition, too. I feel like FL has kind of given my creative process a new life for being as crazy as it is. I genuinely can’t wait to see what else they add. Now, Renoise? That’s not a DAW 
This seems pretty common in a lot of DAWs, to their credit. I bet they’ll change their mind as it gains more steam across the board. Hell, we got the granulizer in Patcher finally, so dreams really do come true sometimes.
Also, we could probably jerry-rig an MPE solution. But that’s another thread 
For sure. This really solidified the other half of my “it’s all about workflow” screed that I was thinking but not typing. Software friction is a thing, especially in a creative process. If you constantly run up against things not being easy or intuitive it doesn’t mean there aren’t solutions or workarounds, but if they’re cumbersome or don’t stick in your head and you have to fight to get things done the way that makes sense to you, it’s frustrating.
I can stunt on FL all day for weird design choices, but the truth is I just don’t get the workflow. It doesn’t work for me. Every time I try it use it it devolves into “why do I have all these fucking windows open to do the thing?” situation, and it’s because it was obviously designed for someone who’s not me. I’m ‘using it wrong’ by doing the obvious thing in my head. There’s too much friction to fight through, not because FL can’t do what I want, but because my brain doesn’t line up with the design and workflow of the program. That’s as much a knock against me as it is I-L.
But at the end of the day, the last thing you want is have the creative process interrupted with software friction. I’m 100% sure there are people that feel the exact same way about Live (and any other DAW), which is why I try not to evangelize Live too much because I think people need to try out different software and find what works for them.
I love Renoise as a tool, but yeah. I know there has to be people out there using it as their DAW, but I’ve never met them (and not sure I want to! lol).
No you’re not - it’s blatantly evident to all of us here, chief 
… and here is a prime example. I’m sure (serious) market research would quickly highlight that a huge number, probably the majority of FLS users, has no idea what VFX script is. Usually, users’ concerns are more like: “err… I put those samples in the Playlist and it sounds like shit, does anybody know why?” 
hahaha well, clearly. I tried to use that thing and it just hurt my head. It was a quick, “well, I guess I won’t be using that” for me.
Oh, yeah I’m aware of all of that - but just being able to drag and drop onto tracks (also actually SEEING what’s on the track already etc. Makes it so much easier for me.
Yeah, I have a few distortion chains saved from about a year ago; Ableton and FL basically have the same features, in that respect.
A LOT of the artists I really enjoy use FL Studio… EQUAL2, Eliminate, and Dr. Donk are just a few (I know… Radical names, man.)
My fault, in retrospect, but I hate the Image-Line forums because I can’t access them with no FL Studio account. I think that’s really dumb.
I actually saw something about being able to route MPE in FL Studio… I think. If I remember where I’ll post it, but no promises
Mario Paint DAW looks more intuitive than Renoise 
UH OH SHOTS FIRED PEW PEW PEW
for the record, I’ve always consider FLS a real DAW (why I put all that shit in quotes). This is a verrrry old flamewar dating back to… sheeit… when they all came to be? on IDMfv1.0 there was so much butthurt over this. I used Reason originally… I get it. “PSSSH YOU HAVE TO SEE YOUR CABLE RACK? FUCKIN NOOB”
it’s still a thing. I still dunno if I even know what I’m doing anymore.
Why is FL Studio shit on still? hmmm…
My guesses:
Honestly fuck all that shit. Windows Audio Recorder or Apple Voice Memo are DAWs. Kinda like dildos, anything is a DAW if you’re brave enough.
and fuck ProTools! yeah I said it. schmindustry schmtandard 
BUTT, (‿ˠ‿) THAT SAID:
if you wanna get a “real” job at a pro studio you should take half a day to use PT. or just RTFM. I still fuck that and buy Logic Pro instead. if you’re a Mac user.
ProTools in 2025:
I mean, it’s cool, one can also use Windows 98. It’s the industry standard 
Image-Line is a Belgian company. Belgians are known to have a whack (in a good way) sense of humor. “Fruity” used to mean “crazy” or “eccentric” before it mostly became derogative for “flamboyant gay” or something. I’m guessing they had Froot Loops cereal and found that it would be a fun wordplay.
Fun fact for you: “Gross Beat” is a wordplay on “grosse bite”, which means “big dick” in French. Again, they must have found that hilarious that everybody was going to say how much they loved their big dick. I can’t fault them here, I still chuckle on this one.
Pro Tools is the Stockholm syndrome of audio software. “We use it because other people use it because that’s what we always used so you should use it.”
From the standpoint of a recording studio, anything that isn’t Pro Tools is “not professional”. But since we’re talking about home/amateur/solo producers here, I don’t think PT even gets a seat at the table. 100% wrong tool for the job.
I actually am certified ProTools in audio engineering (not a huge deal, everyone stop clapping) – I also am good friends with the 1 person who wrote the entire user manual for ProTools once Avid bought it – and I can tell you with 100% certainty that the above statement is correct.
It’s just a clunky, shitty program too. no engineer or musician I know uses it, or if they do use it it’s because they have to and they don’t like it. Logic Pro is better in every way. Apple basically drowned PT.
Anyone out there use ProTools and like it? Tell us why.
Well they’re a lot more intuitive than FL Studio, (who the fuck decided to make CTRL+B duplicate?!)
Either way, It think a lot of it is down to personal preference in a lot of areas.
Day 4#mSus2 - Stem separation
So Ableton got an update recently, and now (like FL had for… A long time ) users can separate stems from songs using everybody’s favourite murderous little algorithm, amongst other “AI powered features.”
I actually totally dig the concept of stem separation (and also can’t use it 
), and I don’t think it crosses the line of cheating and getting something to make your music for you, so the fact that my two favourite DAWs have it is very cool. From what I’ve seen, though, Ableton does it a lot better.
Of course, one problem with stem separation is how ineffective it tends to be, but Ableton’s splitter seems to work pretty good, even with EDM songs and more complex bass music tracks. Another thing is the speed of Ableton’s operation - it’s significantly faster than FL Studio, for some reason.
Interestingly though, all of these stem splitting operations are always performed in the CPU, which doesn’t make sense when so many of the newer apple silicon based computers have a dedicated NPU that would make the process a lot faster, but whatever - minor nitpick.
To be honest, I can think of SO many features that could be added to stem splitters to make them better. How about recognition of song structure? And user input would be nice… But I digress.
Ableton stem splitter. Very cool. 
If this is one of those seven-seas / demo issues, I’m pretty sure they all just use Spleeter which is free
Oh, you just need to download Python and start rigging. These libraries are like Legos and there’s one for almost anything you could dream of!
Add Audacity CLI macros (I’m pretty sure you can still do that) and then you’ve also got access to Niquist scripts and all sorts of batch craziness. You’re giving me bad ideas already
I think a lot of people stumble here due to the fact that everything is actually very simple. MIDI on, MIDI off; loop on, loop off; FX on, FX off; note on, note off.
Even though you can absolutely make full tracks with Renoise (I was actually going to be one of the demo artists on an upcoming release, but couldn’t get my data down to < 5 MB which was a ridiculous constraint, imo), thinking about it as a trigger-happy multi-sampler with some great onboard FX, 2 flavors of scripting and MIDI I/O really makes more sense than calling it a proper DAW. Semi-related, it’s kind of like calling Bespoke a DAW, where it meets the bare-minimum requirements and only nerds even use it in the first place. The same can be said about Renoise
I’m wondering if that’s a nod to the demoscene that popularized trackers in the 80s and 90s (which is a fascinatingly nerdy rabbit hole to go down if you’re not familiar). I can’t think of another good reason to restrict it to something so small in this day and age other than weirdo bragging rights.
