On the subject of default FL Studio VST's

[Legion]

Newbie question time! So, I've only been teaching myself how to use FL Studio for a short time. And I've been wondering: I see some of you guys have about 20 million VST's, but for people who use FL Studio, how far can you go with the included ones? What, exactly, is the incentive to pick up the more expensive VST's and VSTi's such as Native Instrument's products? I understand there's a general leap in quality (especially with synths), but I'm not exactly sure how.

[Freewave]

Well the in-house vsts's often just don't sound quite as nice or are over-used (or need effects and tweaking to get better results) and many vst synths will sound naturally superior. Most are not that complex to use and more importantly there are places to not pay for this software making the point moot. Again better software is your friend so taking advantage of that will get you better results.

[soup2504]

3xosc is amazing. That's about all I can tell you for the defualts. Of course, EQ 2 and other stuff are good for mastering, but I'm assuming you want synths.

And I think this one is cheap, but I haven't checked in a while, Sylenth1 is a good synth if you can't get massive.

[the4thImpulse]

3xosc is amazing. That's about all I can tell you for the defualts. Of course, EQ 2 and other stuff are good for mastering, but I'm assuming you want synths.

And I think this one is cheap, but I haven't checked in a while, Sylenth1 is a good synth if you can't get massive.

Quite true about 3xOsc, since I moved to ableton I miss that plugin the most. It can be all you need for a mojity of tracks and sounds, just use some free 3rd party software to make it sound unique.

This thread has lots of links to great free software and sounds, check it out!

[Versilaryan]

FL Studio's got a good number of pretty awesome plugins. Fruity Limiter's compressor is great for mastering, and the Soundgoodizer is just fun to stick on tracks to see how it sounds. Parametric EQ 2 is pretty good, too, thought I don't like its spectral analyzer at all.

In the way of synths, it's a good idea to get a good variety. All the free ones I'd recommend are in the thread 4thImpulse linked to. And a lot of the not-so-free ones, too.

[TheSunAndTheRainfall]

Well, sometimes it's just nice to have lots of sounds and ways to make sounds. Some synths are a bit limited, so you may feel boxed at times, and that's why it's a good idea to have many VSTs. Still, FL Studio does have some very good plugins. Along with those already mentioned, if you pirated your copy, you may have access to Sawer, Sakura and Harmless, all of which are very cool synths, but kinda limited. As far as effects go, Gross Beat is pretty awesome, Newtone is great, especially if you don't have Melodyne or can't be assed to get it, and Hardcore is pretty decent.

[senntenial]

All I can really say is that 3xosc is the boss of everything. For most of my songs, I don't use any native generators, but I do know some good freeware. It's the best you can do for free unless you get it magically.
Lesse. I'm far to lazy to actually pull up the webpages, so lets just scroll through my installed vsts.

Abakos is cool for vintage, off sounding stuff
dblue Glitch is an awesome glitch program for the mixer, though it eats lots of memory
Everything DSK! http://www.dskmusic.com/ They take up quite a bit of memory too, but you can get some neat sounds with them. I especially like DSK Overture for orchestral stuff.
Kontakt Player is free, and NI, so it must be good. It has a couple high quality samples that I'm sure you can find useful.
p8 is a good vst for making trace leads and supersaws
prodigious synth is good at making unique basses, but it eats a ton of memory too.
SFZ is a soundfont player available from Roland. Note that to use it properly in more than one instance in FLS, you will have to disable multithreading.
Stringsynth is good for tranc-y pads.
Zebralette is a very good VST for being freeware. You can get some really unique sounds out of it.
Oh, Almost forgot trancedrive is one of my favourite vsts, as the name suggests it's great for trance. Has built in effects too, like gates, delays, reverbs, blah blah.

Whatever you do in FLS, don't use wasp. For the love of mankind.

Gotta tell you though, once I got the Massive demo but still I was pretty blown away at the quality. It just... sounds good without the annoying finesse it takes to make freeware sound as good. Might be worth the investment to get some NI stuff.

[Sgt-Whip (DJQ)]

Some of the in-house VSTs for FL are quite good, and some of them just won't cut it for you personally. Of course, with proper time and effort, you can get a single VSTi to make a lot of different sounds. Plugins like 3xOSC and Fruity Granulizer are good at that (You can make both a really intense sub bass and that high pitch sound in Party Rock Anthem with 3x alone. Pretty awesome).

However, there are strict limits on the features and initial sounds used by certain plugins. Something like FL Keys (for example) is only really good at replicating piano sounds. Something like Massive, on the other hand, is way on the other side of potential. It gets its name because it literally is MASSIVE. There are just layers upon layers of operation within it. Built in effects, built in sequencing, and more than I can recount at 1:24 in the morning.

It all comes down to what you want. If you like simulated guitars, you'll probably like Slayer, or if you like pads, then you'll probably like Sytrus. (I'm not saying you would, I'm just trying to give examples).

Personally, I think sytrus is a whiney little thing. It has enormous potential with all those presets to build off of, but sometimes I find that sounds you can produce with Sytrus will get funked up once exported into a file. I've found that recording into edison and exporting back into the project will defeat this problem, but its still frustrating as all get out.

[Legion]

Thanks for the responses, guys. I actually brought this up because of how many sounds I could get out of 3xosc (and I had no idea what half the buttons do). So, looks like checking out Massive is my top priority now, I'll definitely check out all the other software brought up.

God, the production rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper and deeper. o_o

[Versilaryan]

SFZ is a soundfont player available from Roland. Note that to use it properly in more than one instance in FLS, you will have to disable multithreading.

Please, for the love of Celestia, don't disable multithreading. It's not worth it. I'll spare you the details -- multithreading will make FL a lot faster.

Instead, use this version of SFZ. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50896209/SFZ.zip It took me a bit of digging to find it, but it lets you load more than one instance without yelling at you.

EDIT: Oh, somehow, this thread didn't get posted. Have fun! http://mylittleremix.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=490

[soup2504]

Whatever you do in FLS, don't use wasp. For the love of mankind.

I 50% agree with this. Wasp isn't amazing, but it is able to make SOME interesting things (Good chicago house bass, effective rising build up)

Only use wasp if what you're doing really calls for it, other than that, leave it alone.

[Trixie]

I'm going to go ahead and say Massive is AMAZING.

A
MA
ZING.

But uh, as for built in FL Stuff... I like 3xOsc, a lot of the effect ones, and toxic biohazard is kinda nice.

[GhostXb]

My favorite FL plugins are Morphine, and Toxic Biohazard. Morphine has some nice clean sounding syths, and Toxic has some edgey sounds, they fit in a lot of my mixes well. Sytrus is nice too.

I'm actually surprised to hear so much 3xosc love, perhaps it's something I have been neglecting, and I've been using FL for six years!

I'm thinking of picking up Komplete 8 next month, it's definitely something I've been wanting for a long time.

Here's a bundle of free stuff from Native Instruments. It's actually pretty good considering it's free.

http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/ ... 8-players/

Here's a song I made with sounds included in this package (except for the buzz and voices, the buzz is 3xosc, ironic that I bring that up considering my above comment XD)

http://soundcloud.com/ghostxb/descend-to-alpha-range

IMO, the drum kits in the Kontakt 5 player alone blow FPC out of the water! Of course, as far as drum sounds go, you should keep it diverse, it's easy to fall in to the trap of using the same drums samples over and over. I know I have

[DJSheogowrath]

My favorite FL plugins are Morphine, and Toxic Biohazard. Morphine has some nice clean sounding syths, and Toxic has some edgey sounds, they fit in a lot of my mixes well.

Haven't really used Morphine.
But Toxic Biohazard is pretty good if you make glitch hop. Just layer a saw on a sine, and mess with the sound, you can get some good stuff out of it.

[SoaringFlight]

God, the production rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper and deeper. o_o

Welcome to music.

[senntenial]

SFZ is a soundfont player available from Roland. Note that to use it properly in more than one instance in FLS, you will have to disable multithreading.

Please, for the love of Celestia, don't disable multithreading. It's not worth it. I'll spare you the details -- multithreading will make FL a lot faster.

Instead, use this version of SFZ. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50896209/SFZ.zip It took me a bit of digging to find it, but it lets you load more than one instance without yelling at you.

EDIT: Oh, somehow, this thread didn't get posted. Have fun! viewtopic.php?f=13&t=490

Oh, yeah! I forgot about that one. My computer actually doesn't show significant difference when I use SFZ's because I only use SFZ's, but if you use other synths it will show. Also, the unfixed one can cause glitches in rendering which SUCKS.
Thanks for the catch, Versilaryan.