FL Studio Review

With the producer or signature bundle, updates are free forever.

No complex activation shenanigans. No dongle and such.

All the stock plugins look really nice and really show users what is being done, it's a great way to learn mixing theory for a beginner. This approach makes FL Studio easy to learn compared to other DAWs.

You have basic and advanced plugins right out the box.

The FL Studio DAW utilizes drag and drop, and can generally be learned quickly without any prior knowledge. There are also a lot of resources to help begginers and experienced users learn.

Accepts VST/VSTi (v2,v3) Wav, Aiff, Rex, Acid, Apple Loop, Ogg, Mp3 as well as almost every video format including Mov and Mp4.

Piano roll is a FL Studio's instrument step sequencer. It is considered to be among the most intuitive and flexible tools for quickly creating patterns and manipulating all aspects of each note. A single left click inserts a note, while a right click deletes it. It's possible to mute notes, splice them, stretch them, add shuffle, etc quickly.
The Piano Roll caters for those new to Music Theory as well, containing an array of chords from which to choose, be it a Major, Minor, Minor 5th, Minor 9th, what have you.

Some DAWs are good for live shows, some DAWs are good for production, but the FL Studio DAW has carved its niche in the studio recording arena.

When Image Line releases an update, it's safe to assume that there are major improvements in there.

FL Studio has a very unique sampler which allows all kinds of sounds to be experimented with, be it a siren, a water drop, or more commonly, the infamous "Progressive House" Kick. The Sampler also allows the user to retune a sample to any key he/she desires.

With tools in the piano roll like the "Riff Machine", and the "Randomize" tool, you can literally let the computer automate the production if you want. In addition to plugins like "Gross Beat", Slicex, DirectWave, the ideas can be limitless.

The Playlist mode comes with various tools for cutting out sections of a sample, midi arrangement, or otherwise. One can also clone, mute, solo out, and stretch a sample by any degree, although the sample's key will change.

The workflow for creating beats in FL Studio is among the fastest which make mixing and mastering a breeze inserting plug-ins and routing on the mixer.

Because most DAWs don't scale well yet.

Just as the internal engine bit depth, there's no loss in quality.

The interface adapts to the screen size it's used on.

Patcher is similar to Max for Live in Ableton and The Grid in Bitwig and allows you to build your own complex generator and effect chains.

No other DAW has that.

So you can use it inside another DAW. There's no other DAW capable of doing that.

Compared to other DAWs, FL's UI moves at full monitor refresh rates while others are somehow laggy.

Supports resampling (non stretch) which is something some DAWs don't support.

You can open several video players.

Buy once, and you're allowed to use it on every computer you own.

You don't need to install/configure a third party bridge.

Forget copy protection USB-dongles and phone-home activation. Just import a reg key file and your license is activated.

Edison is a great way to record and edit samples, sound effects and is a very easy way to create sample packs and sound libraries.

You can make your own scratches with the "Fruity Scratcher" or "Wave traveller".

Its linking engine and controller plugins are very flexible and useful all across the software. For mixing and also for performance mode.

Version 12 of FL Studio includes a new Generic ASIO driver that's capable of achieving same low latency performance as the native Windows version. Instructions on how to set up the DAW to run on Linux via Wine can be found here.

Live can, but working with more LPs is a pain.

E.g. GrossBeat, Newtime (tuning), Patcher (own complex generators and effect chains), Maximus, Soundgoodizer...

E.g. Harmor, Flex, Sakura, Sawer, Sytrus, Poizone...

Great software for creating rhythms.