INTERFACE
1- Possibly my number one request would be having the macros available as toolbar buttons that the user can add to the toolbar themselves. I use some macros multiple times in a session and conversely, I virtually never click some of the existing toolbar buttons.
2- Project General Settings>Set Project Directory - It would be great to have a 'favorites' type file save dialogue here.
3- An addition to the 'auto switch display filter' function. I only discovered this option embarrassingly recently and it solved the problem I'd been having for years. What I had thought of as a way to manage the display filtering was that a small lock icon could be added next to the channel display filter dropdown. A keyboard shortcut for this function would also be useful.
4- When swapping patterns in the piano roll from A to B back to A, the notes that were selected in A are unselected when switching back to it. It would be awesome if selections were retained per piano roll sheet.
5- The ability to save full Riff Machine presets would be great for when you stumble on something interesting but not suitable for the current project. Please consider adding more presets/scores to riff machine too. I tried making my own (based on the pre-existing examples and I am partially musically literate) and most of them are awful!
6- It would be useful to be able to save/store presets in the Channel Rack>Advanced Fill and in Grossbeat's Create Sequence tool. If not a fully-fledged save function then perhaps a bank of preset storage dot type things?
PLAYLIST
7- It can be difficult to figure out what an automation clip belongs to under some circumstances. It would therefore be useful if double-clicking automation clips on the playlist selected the relevant mixer track & or synth on the channel rack where possible. This already happens when double-clicking an audio clip for example.
8- It would be handy when switching between playlist arrangements if the zooms and views could be locked to be the same. Possibly using the same lock icon as suggested for the channel rack display filter.
9- Rendered audio often ends up on collapsed Playlist tracks and is a bit hard to see or move without un-collapsing the tracks. My request is that rendered audio only be placed on un-collapsed and/or full-sized playlist tracks. Could rendered audio be 'guided' to a playlist track by selecting/arming it somehow?
10- It would be useful to have the ability to move time markers in the playlist if all audio and automation clips in that region are selected and being moved. And also to be able to lock or tie time markers together across all arrangements.
11- Using Ctrl + B to duplicate (this also applies to the Piano Roll). Can we please have an option to duplicate notes or clips to the start of the next bar? The example below uses the Piano Roll.
12- When making stems from a track the Playlist>Consolidate options are a Godsend. It would also be useful to be able to consolidate the children of grouped tracks. In the example below the ‘DRUMS” track has been consolidated using this imaginary option.
WRAPPER
13- Detached windows regularly go missing behind the (also detached) playlist on my second monitor. Could we possibly have a button on the Wrapper toolbar for detaching and a lock for pinning it to stay on top?
14- Automatable start and end points for samples. Having this ability both in the wrapper and in the Granulizer would expand the sonic possibilities of sample manipulation greatly. Transwave style synthesis from samples is one possibility that comes to mind.
15- I would like to have the ability to add swing to layers. Arpeggiation too. I would imagine that this would
simply set the values for the children and that they could still be changed independently afterwards.
16- This would technically be borrowing heavily from Bitwig however I have been impressed with the way plugin parameters can be accessed from a dropdown in the top bar of its wrapper and it would be epic if FL Studio could do that too.
17- I feel like this is a big ask but the squeaky wheel gets the grease right? I know that everyone sets their workspace up differently, so maybe it’s just me. But I do wonder if my use case is similar to a lot of other people’s use cases? Could new, empty, default, *everything* (Wrappers especially but also plugins) open docked to the top right-hand side of the main screen?
BROWSER
18- I’m getting old, we all are. Eyes aren’t what they used to be. Pastel colours were once great. They still are. But something I would like is the ability to set colours for the custom and search path folders (or even all menu items?) so that it is easier to spot items at a glance when navigating in the browser.
19- When a parameter is linked to a controller via 'browse parameters' it doesn't stay at 'browse parameters', therefore I am requesting some option of switching the default behaviour of the browser returning to its prior state. When linking several parameters it is a bit time consuming to have to repeatedly browse to the parameters. Maybe a lock as per previous suggestions?
CONTROLLERS
20- Being able to use the two outputs of Grossbeat as internal controllers would be amazing. Pretty please with sugar on top?
21- Sometimes it would be nice to be able to rotate various graphs/automation/Grossbeat/envelopes etc left/right like notes on the channel rack.
22- More presets for Grossbeat are always welcome. A solid collection of stutter/repeat type of ones would please the Trap crowd and no doubt many others.
23- More LFO shapes in peak controller. We are ready for it. Also more LFO shapes everywhere that mini LFO shape icons are found but particularly in the peak controller which I'm presuming is still the most common method of making an LFO in FL Studio. Having a pop-up Bezier or graph editor, true random (chaos?) and random sine waves would get my vote.
I got thinking about that one because random isn’t really random is it? It makes randomizing two different things at the same time rather tricky!
24- When (my) projects get really complex and there are a lot of similarly named controllers it can be hard to locate what is attached to where. Could we possibly have a tooltip with the full parameter name when hovering over the internal controller dropdown (maybe also in title and hint panel)?
MIXER
25- Could a ‘remember this choice next time’ button be added to the ‘reset mixer channels’ dialog box?
26- When mixer channels are reset to default they remain unrouted if they weren’t routed. Could they be made to be routed to the main track again?
27- Dragging and dropping effects in "blocks" from one mixer channel to another mixer (ctrl+ drag or alt+ drag?) would
be a time saver.
28- *this could be more of a bug report* Mixer track selection runaway issue. This has happened on multiple versions of FL on multiple OS'S using different mice on different reasonably well-specced machines over time. When dragging to change the mixer channel with a mouse in the wrapper it sometimes seems to get a mind of its own and usually ends up far above the intended channel. I do not know if this is just me or a bug or even how to explain it better.
MACROS
29- I have already suggested it, but I’ll ask again, please can we have the macros as buttons?
Extra macro suggestions:
• Find and reset unused mixer tracks to default
• Find and delete unused/empty pattern clips
• Reset unrouted mixer tracks
PIE IN THE SKY REQUESTS
30- DIY macros & toolbar buttons e.g. custom buttons the user can attach mixer states, templates and patcher setups etc to.
31- Granulizer. In addition to the addition of a sample endpoint knob, I would love to see Granulizer grow into something bigger and more exotic. Think Clouds/Beads in the Eurorack space. Grain pitch control, echo and multiband grains would take Granulizer to another level.
32- A huge presets update. I don't mean the general FL generator plugins so much as all the small envelopes, graphs, scores types of presets. It could be a great update in its own right. FL Studio - Presets update 2022
33- SupaTrigga is a free retriggering and glitch VST effect plugin. It barely works for unknown reasons however when it does it is amazing. I am not sure why, but it loads with an FL Studio style interface and all of the knobs can be right-clicked and linked to controllers like native plugins. I would love to have something similar, that works, that allows precise retriggering (or perhaps even SuperTrigga itself) incorporated into Fl Studio. It would again please the Hip-Hop and Trap (and Glitch, Bass, Dnb, Dub, Psytrance, Wobblehop, Experimental etc.) crowds. I know that Grossbeat can technically do this but I’m imagining something more lightweight that allows the quick addition of retriggering/repeat/stutter/glitch effects.
Anyhow, hope you found something useful in there, love your work gang! <3
Link to Word document: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-x5LTrMlVapxNZ3_6CWcJqiOzskBfW8J/view?usp=sharing