Hi, I'm new here. I have a question to people who have been using FL Studio for a while and who know the different versions. I'd like to take a look at this software and to try to make some music with it. Should I go with version 12.x or 20.x? I ask this because I've read a few comments around various sites saying that version 20 is very unstable, has a lot of bugs, and puts a high strain on the CPU due to new copy protections. On the other hand, version 12 had a lot of bugs as well.

I also ask because a lot of tutorials out there were made for version 12, and perhaps it might be hard for a complete beginner to follow them if buttons and menus have changed and so on? If I should stick with version 12, which exact revision should I stick with. Because I also read that a few specific revisions were more stable, while other (later!) ones were buggier.

 

complete rubbish, its stable and i never had it crash, as for cpu its light as hell, dont know where you read this bullshit from, just my opinion.

 

im still on fl 11 , and i dont have problems with it, it depends how powerful the music is , not the daw .

 

Ableton Live 10.0.3 would be the best version

 

You should start with MS Paint...

 

@waverider

Welcome to audiosex
As a long time user of fl studio i would say you will get the most benefit
from using the latest version flstudio 20.0.5.681. but this could be updated again before i wright this lol
The copy protection has been changed back at the moment ,but it is unclear what impact this had on cpu
and the bugs are getting sorted best they can, they just need to call any updates beta or RC versions and test them for
at least 3 mts before calling them final release and updating it again 3 times in the same week.

All do most tutorials you will find are for older versions of fl
they are still useful because not much has changed over the years, its more like stuff had been added on
so anything users have learned in previous versions can be used again in any updated versions.
There are still quit a few good fl 20 tutorials going around made by users on youtube
that should cover eveything you need to get ya started.

 

Last edited: Oct 8, 2018

Thanks momo for jumping in

 

There's a website where they give relationship advice about sisters. That's where I read about it.

Well, that would have been my next question, because I am trying to decide whether I should go with Ableton instead. I don't know which software to use in the first place. It's hard to make this decision without knowing anything about it. But I'll most likely make another thread about that (or search for it first).

Thank you for this response, it's what I was looking for. The CPU strain that I read about turned me off and almost made me abandon FL Studio altogether. But then I read that they decided to remove that kind of protection in their latest update, resulting in a vastly improved CPU strain, so now I'm considering it again. And thanks for the info regarding the tutorials. I think I would most likely learn better using video tutorials, and it would not be nice if everything looks differently and if I'd have to search through dozens of menus before finding what the teacher is talking about.

 

Choosing the right daw can take alot of time and can be good fun ,
After Fl Studio, Studio One would be next on the list then live or reaper,
studio one ,reaper ,cubase, cakewalk bandlab is better suited
if you are a musician recording and using audio i beleave or have read on AS
and look much the same in how they are laid out.

Fl studio is getting better at audio stuff but at the moment using plugins and midi is its strong point.
At the end of the day you can achieve the same results in mosts daws
you just have to learn how to use them,so the best of luck

 

Haha, I started with Fruity Loops 3 back in the days and stayed a long time with FL Studio 8.0.2, which was the most stable I've ever had. Since IL changed so much from 11 to 12 and continued that new way until the latest release, I just would take the most recent one to start.
In v20 they also brought back some good features (partly in a new way) from before v12.x so v20 it the best FL for now.

But to get the basics of FL fast, I would recommend v8 or v11 with the little registry tweak to enable the legacy pattern blocks
(which made FL famous in the past).

 

Thank you, that is good to know. I am not only concerned with choosing the right DAW, but also with the long game of it. I would want to avoid choosing a DAW which is cancelled at some point in the future. What happened with Sonar for example. That it got saved and relaunched, it could also have ended not so well, and it could have been dead by now. I've used Reaper a bit and love it - the thing is, there aren't many tutorial series for it. Most tutorials out there - I mean tutorial series that you purchase, not videos by YouTubers - are made for FL Studio, Live, Logic and so on. I mean things like "How to make EDM/ in the style of this musician". But for Reaper, there's no such thing, only general introduction tutorials.

There's a few DAWs that I am interested in for a variety of reasons. Reaper obviously, because I want to financially support them, because I love their approach and philosophy. No DRM bull*#$}. Reaper is also interesting because it has a Linux build. Bitwig is also interesting for exactly that reason, but it looks like a pretty small and unpopular DAW and I am afraid that I put time into it and it'd get cancelled.

Basically, I'd love to stick with Reaper because I was told it could do (almost) anything that the big players can do. But I am just a fan of video tutorials and would love to work through them, and all of that stuff is for the big players. On the other hand, I am really curious about FL Studio and the other softwares. Must be great to work in an environment which is designed so that everything comes together in a complete package.

You mention Studio One. Is it popular and solid enough to warrant the prediction it'll still be around in a few years?

Thanks.

 

I am 95% sure. It seems to be quite popular (but a bit of a cpu hog).

I try to migrate to Reaper myself but Ableton is just so easy to use...
And there's definitely no shortage of Reaper videos. Check these for a start: https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php

edit: supporting Reaper shouldn't be important - the dev is at least 70 million dollars heavy (programmed and sold Winamp)...

 

Yeah, imageline confirmed on their forum that this was a complete load of bollocks! I can't find the thread immediately - 'mr wonderful' or someone. Anyhow, if someone buys FL 20 they can rollback to 12, 11, 10 etc. plenty of choices.

 

The 1st one: FRUITY LOOPS (December 18, 1997)

 

You can get the old style pattern blocks by simply resizing the clip size. I don't know why you would miss them, though. It's much more convenient if you can see the midi contents of a pattern.

 

Thank you, I missed your post because you typed it at the same time as I typed my other response. I am very concernd about stability, and I have heard that FL Studio and Ableton both tend to crash pretty often. This is gonna be hard to get used to. I wouldn't mind using an older version, I'm just concerned that the video series will be hard to apply to those old versions. Or perhaps I just need to install it and try it out, finally.

I have seen those video lists, but they are only introductory to the program as a whole, or individual YouTube clips. What I'm talking about is those long tutorial series, for example, to show how to make an EDM track. Nothing like that for Reaper as far as I can see. And I didn't know the dev was the creator of Winamp! How cool is that. That's probably the reason why he can afford to do the DRM-less license policy. I guess I still want to support them for that very reason, because I despise DRM with a passion.

Good to know. IL are also fairly attractive with their "pay once, get updates for free forever" policy. I just don't like how they try to ramp up their copy protection all the time. I am sure that users said that the CPU usage comes from the copy protection. Don't know what to think about this, because I can't judge. But it's nice that the latest version has improved this.

 

Regarding the version choice, I'd go for the latest one. FL has become more stable since v20 especially when comparing to the later versions of FL12. At the same time it would make sense to look at an earlier version of FL once, like @r4e already said - to check out the basics - that could give you some insight into FL history which can be helpful to understand its workflow better.

Still, if you work with earlier versions you'll have to make some sacrifices related to function scope (self-evident) and especially some of FLs latest functions are quite useful and also improved its stability. Concerning audio recording for example, that was improved a lot lately (there was not even realtime waveform dispayed during recording) etc...

But..with IL's current update strategy, always having the latest FL is rather time consuming for users and that time could be better used in making music.

So what I do before updating my FL, I watch IL's YouTube infos on the update and may skip one, particularly if I don't see anything useful to me and am happy with my current FL.

 

i got back into FL on version 10 but i would advise 11 and above because there are a lot of changes ( mostly for the better: ). The step sequencer was deprecated though and came back in newest verision owing to overwhelming demand... it also has a lot of help on youtube and the manual is excellent to.

 

Fl 20 for sure. Started with 9 and I love how far it's come.

 

Just get Reaper... If you want to learn how to make EDM from tutorials, nothing is stopping you to translate the genre tutorials that FL or Live has to Reaper as long as you know how DAWs and plugins function. I suggest getting NI Komplete Select along with it, then upgrading later to Komplete (and Komplete Ultimate). It's the cheapest option for so much sample content, synths, fx etc, if you want to go legit.
(Watching music theory and mixing will probably do more for you in the long term than watching how someone makes a copy of X/Y/Z dj track.)
FL is also great, because of their free upgrade policy and Harmor, and Sytrus by IL are great synths, if you have them.
Ableton I don't recommend. Maybe in the future it will become great program with the included Max4live package, but now... there are better options for less money, imo.