producing noob here, whats your opinion of Fruity Loops?

so I've been messing around with Renoise for a while with considerable frustration.... it's fun but.... I don't think I'm a tracker

yet Fruity Loops I've always liked for years, I love the slicer, the pads, the synths (some old skool sounding shit in there), etc... its straight up simple, and I am a simple man!

I just want to start making deep ambient jungle grooves and it seems like a great program to start. I don't have $$$ for hardware or monitors, etc... I just want something good and easy to get ideas out and have fun.

Is it worth droppin 100 to $150 on? am I gonna want to upgrade later on once I learn all the science, techniques, etc?

Is Cubase or Reason better? Are they worth the $$$?

peace

[Macc]

I'd say it's worth that, yeah. I've not used it in about 10 years (jesus!), but I know people who swear by it. It's a fun program to learn to make music with, as well as being very capable in the right hands.

as much as people knock it because it was a bit of a toy to start with, they actually added loads of features to it so that now it can actually do more than cubase or reason in some ways, so don't be put off by that

if you like it i'd go with it

[denaris]

Really good package now and a great package to learn the art on. Personally I'd have stuck with Renoise if I started making music on it, then I come from making music on the Amiga and trackers so it would be like a home from home.

Gone are the days of the horrible step sequencer in Fruity I think which can only be a good thing.

fl studio is good

dissident uses it, i think.

and most of the psy trance producers in finland

I've been getting into Fruityloops 2 & 3 recently - they are probably the best thing for quick idea generation. I've always taken my ideas out of it and into my normal setup though so I don't know how good the sound quality is - i've heard it's supposed to be pretty bad though.

Fruity's is great, though its exporting options are pretty shit ( only 32bit float )

^^^aint that better than 24 bit??? why are you complaining?

[Macc]

I don't want this thread to go off topic, so I'll answer that ^ . Then we can get back to Fruity Loops and discuss bit depth elsewhere.

aint that better than 24 bit?

- Put simply, 32 bit floating point is 24 bit resolution with 8 bits for information above 0dB. 32 bit has over 1000dB headroom or something stupid (I forget cos I never go over 0 anyway).

- mixing down to 32 bit FP is fine and dandy until you try to play it out of a DA convertor. To my knowledge no convertors handle 32 FP, all convertors are 24-bit resolution. So if you use the 8 bits above 0dB it will all get 'chopped off' when you actually try to play it back anyway, ie clip

- in short, 32-bit FP is very useful in the box, within Cubase and so on. You can drive a channel right into the red and it won't clip, BUT as soon as your signal hits the 'bit bottleneck' of your DA convertor - ie the master out, the extra info is lost and you'll get clipping. So in cubase etc, red light on a channel = no big deal, red light on the master = big deal.

- mixing down to 32 bit FP from Fruity Loops means keeping it under zero anyway, cos when you go down to 24/16 bit (say, 16 bit for CD) the info over 0dB > clipping. So really it's just a waste of hard disk space in the overriding majority of cases.

Is Cubase or Reason better? Are they worth the $$$?

I like Reason. A bit of a steep learning curve if you have no hardware experience, and with flexibility comes complication to some degree. If you want to record in live audio you will need to use Reason 'rewired' to a sequencer such as Cubase anyway, so largley depends on your needs.
I use Wavelab for my audio recording and editing needs and together with Reason I'm happy. Thinking of upgrading to 4 soon

you guys rule. thanks :8

Cool, sounds like a nice place to start.

yeah sound quality was my biggest concern!

Next concern would be basslines....

but I'm sure theres at least a few good free vsts out there yeah?

I don't want this thread to go off topic, so I'll answer that ^ . Then we can get back to Fruity Loops and discuss bit depth elsewhere.

aint that better than 24 bit?

- Put simply, 32 bit floating point is 24 bit resolution with 8 bits for information above 0dB. 32 bit has over 1000dB headroom or something stupid (I forget cos I never go over 0 anyway).

- mixing down to 32 bit FP is fine and dandy until you try to play it out of a DA convertor. To my knowledge no convertors handle 32 FP, all convertors are 24-bit resolution. So if you use the 8 bits above 0dB it will all get 'chopped off' when you actually try to play it back anyway, ie clip

- in short, 32-bit FP is very useful in the box, within Cubase and so on. You can drive a channel right into the red and it won't clip, BUT as soon as your signal hits the 'bit bottleneck' of your DA convertor - ie the master out, the extra info is lost and you'll get clipping. So in cubase etc, red light on a channel = no big deal, red light on the master = big deal.

- mixing down to 32 bit FP from Fruity Loops means keeping it under zero anyway, cos when you go down to 24/16 bit (say, 16 bit for CD) the info over 0dB > clipping. So really it's just a waste of hard disk space in the overriding majority of cases.

fantastic info!

Say I wanted to send you a track for mastering mixed in FL, would it be harmfull/destructive to the audio to convert it to 24bit in soundforge, adobe .etc. before sending it your way? ( after turning down the master so it aint clipping ) or would it be better off leaving that bizness to you?

[Macc]

You could send the 32-bit file - just makes for longer DL/UL times.

Still best to avoid going over 0dB at your output though - it's just good engineering practice.

As an aside I can't believe you can only export @ 32bitFP/44.1kHz Are you 100% sure? I believe you, I just don't believe it

yep...it is ridiculous..

Only 16 bit and 32BFP for WAV with fruity's.

I have no idea why image-line arent rectifying this dilemma!

[Macc]

if you have a dither plug then dither it and bounce to 16 bit

cheers! thankfully at least there's a dither option when exporting.

thanks kind sir

also here you go macc

http://www.flstudio.com/help/html/fforma...midmp3.htm

[Macc]

Jeebus, that's ridiculous

So yeah, you have two options then - if you are doing everything in Fruity Loops (FYNALUBERMAXIMYZAH PLUGGINN etc), then export to 16 bit via dither.

If you're sending it for proper mastering then export without the BAREPHATLIMITTAHH at 32 bit

lol at BAREPHATLIMITAHH

[Macc]

I don't

what exactly is it...

[Macc]

waves l1/l2/l3 etc - any limiter that people use to smash their tunes to pieces with to make them loud, without considering the damage they are doing.

with care it's no problem. i love limiting as much as the next man... it's all about how you do it

precisely.

i'm a more dynamics-over-ears bleeding fellow myself

thanks for that info macc. but i'm still not sure what you mean by 1000db headroom and about going over 0db? i thought 0db was the loudest and beyond that things clip. dont you mean it has 1000db BELOW 0db (-1000db for eg.)?

As an aside I can't believe you can only export @ 32bitFP/44.1kHz Are you 100% sure? I believe you, I just don't believe it

no. it goes up to 96k.

[Macc]

thanks for that info macc. but i'm still not sure what you mean by 1000db headroom and about going over 0db? i thought 0db was the loudest and beyond that things clip. dont you mean it has 1000db BELOW 0db (-1000db for eg.)?

No, I don't. My post explains it all perfectly well if you read it again

32 bit is 32 bit resolution. 24 bit is 24 bitresolution. 32 bit floating point is 24 bit resolution with 8 bits for information above, yes ABOVE, 0dB.

This is why you can turn your master fader down loads, WANG up the channels and plugins so they are all right up into the red, and you won't hear clipping. This is because Cubase works internally at 32 bit FP. However, if you then turn up the master fader until it clips, you WILL hear clipping. This is because your DA convertor (effectively located at the output of your master fader) is 24 bit, and cannot handle information above 0dB.

BTW the noise floor for 16-bit is -96dB, 24 bit (and indeed 32 bit FP) has the noise floor at -144dB. If you think humans can hear down to -1000dB then you're sorely mistaken Respectfully I suggest that if you're interested, you do some reading on digital audio resolution. Wikipedia is a decent place to start.

no. it goes up to 96k.

Oh right, thanks

fruity is great.. i've been using it for a long time, and sound quality has never been an issue here.. if anything, i've been able to do things with samples without hearing artifacts, that i could not do with any other program.