So, Fl9 is out, full of new bells and whistles, a prettier interface etc etc. Very exciting.
But there is something that puzzles me.
Why is it that Image line can make such a great, innovative daw, full of tools that you just can't find anywhere else, and with a gui that puts most sequencers 4 times the price to shame, but can't make it stable.
I have had a long term love affair with fruity, having purchased it around version 3 (or maybe 4. Had a cracked early version which a friend gave me and decided I wanted the real thing). It was and still is the most creative tool for creating beats, working with midi and mashng audio. I use it as a drum machine, audio editor, loop generator etc etc.
But I don't use it as my main sequencer.
Why not? Because it's massively cpu intensive and it just crashes all the time. I can afford to spend short bursts, messing with samples or building a loop, knowing that if it just does that 'fruity freeze', not too much time has been wasted. But I can't commit to it for anything more than that, and sometimes I abandon it altogether for weeks at a time, only to be tempted back by its toybox treats.
I don't think I'm alone in this, and I don't believe the fault is my computer (I can run reaper/Traktion/NI standalones for hours on end with no freezing/crashing behaviour). As an example, I am, as of the now, sitting here, listening to a loop I just built using 3 samplers and an instance of FPC, all fruity, all internal. I just loaded and instance of grossbeat to process the sampler tracks and BAM. Sound is still going, but my project is locked up and my Daw can only be brought round by administering a swift but deadly blow to fruity with a kung fu CTRL-ALT-DEL.
All of this leads me to wonder, as I gaze at the slick new interface with its animated drag and drop and transparent file-loading bars, why do our friends at image line seem to think that what the FL user base mainly want with each version upgrade is a slicker UI?
Frankly, FL6 was slick enough for me. Imagine if the time that has gone into rebuilding the UI had gone into product stability? Or resource management (check out reaper for an example of this. I can run about 10 times as much stuff on my cpu with reaper as I can with fruity). Is everyone else on this forum running an I7 with a terrabyte of Ram? When did cpu resources cease to be an issue for computer musicians? Did I miss a meeting?
All of this sounds like a rant, and I guess it is, but it isn't meant to be ungrateful or anything. I suppose it is more of a frustrated, last ditch letter to the program I love. I don't wanna leave you, fruity, but you make it hard to stay. You lure me back with your flashy charms, but as soon as the chips are down and I actually have work to do and deadlines to meet, you drive me crazy with your unpredictable behaviour, and I run into the arms of Reaper or Traktion looking for solace and a solid, reliable workflow.
So there is my question, folks. Am I alone in feeling this way? Is it unreasonable to expect efficency and stability before gizmos (albeit beautiful gizmos)? I await your thoughts. In the meantime, I'm firing up reaper to finish this project.
Visual flair or stability in Fl9
Return to “FL Studio Users Forum (Looptalk)”
Forum rules
Please read them here.
Please read them here.
[You can only see part of this thread as you are not logged in to the forums]
-
reflex
- Site Admin
- Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:53 pm
Re: Visual flair or stability in Fl9
manhippo wrote:... with its animated drag and d...