I know you're busy programming new features FL Studio, but I humbly ask you take a look to hardware integration with dashboards when you find the time or just one feature each version, bit to bit. As far as I know FL Studio is the only host with those dashboards, and I think they should work as the most of people expect (like Virus TI series without audio).
I consider these feature request are important because most of professional users (people that earn money with music) use hardware gear. In the past FL Studio developers made Fruity Video plugin for them. I think you could do the same with hardware gear.
Any hardware gear could work with FL Studio with total integration if:
1. The latency could be automatically compensated. This shouldn't be a problem, since other (cheaper) hosts can do it.
2. Using a SM Dashboard (for CCs) and a MIDI Out channel (for notes) is pretty redundant. SM Dashboard should be enough for send CCs and notes.
3. FL Studio doesn't record any midi message that wasn't previously linked to any virtual knob. This means that if you record any hardware knob movement (MIDI format, not as audio) you'll hear the sound tweak while recording but you will be unable to reproduce it after recording.
4. SM Dashboard and Dashboard are unable to read hardware knob settings. This means that if you tweak any parameter in your hardware the dashboard won't reflect the changes.
5. SM Dashboard is unable to write CCs once it has been initialized. This means that you can save your project with your dashboards settings, tweak (or change the patch) your hardware synth, reopen the project and the hardware synth won't revert back to dashboard settings and patch. ie: You program a piano like sound in your dashboard, then you close the project and program a pad sound in the hardware synth. When you open again the project with piano sound it won't be transmited: you will play a pad sound.
6. Related to 5. We haven't enough sysex support, so we cannot save the settings and patches within the flp.
7. Dashboard writes, however, any CC that has been tweaked each time you replay the project (and as i stated on 4. it's unable to read the new CCs). This means if you tweak any knob on Dashboard and then change the patch, the new patch will sound with the old knob position once the project will stop (undesired 'hybrid' sounds). The only solution for this is delete the Dashboard and open another new one.
At the moment I must advice to everyone new with hardware that they should use it exclusively with MIDI Out channels and program and save the patches exclusively in the hardware synth. Please, do useful the dashboards, take advantage of them.
That's all, thanks for read
