Nabeel Ansari

Mario Galaxy 1&2 are some of the best Mario soundtracks of all time. :/ In any case, there are WIP's on the Kickstarter page, and Grant + Dave Wise are the composers, so no one can do the "original vibe" better than them.

whazzat who me > _ > < _ < Naw, I wasn't claiming those were the only good ones. I just simply will never explicitly recommend Hollywood to someone (because if I don't think it's a good piece of software, I shouldn't have to xP) Hollywood gets amazing mileage out of people who are willing to put up with it, and also people who are already used to multi-patch workflow. I was simply gauging that the OP wasn't used to that kind of workflow, since none of his current libraries function that way. So I figured recommending it would be counter productive for him.

Because Kickstarter WIP's are anything to go on

Answer 1: Post some examples of music you've made with your current string samples. Evaluation can help people tell you if your problems are easily solvable by clever programming or if the samples are the problem themselves. Answer 2: Good samples will get you there faster than wasting time on awful ones. Action Strings is mediocre; it's just a bunch of pre-made "action" phrases. Repeated staccato rhythms and the like. Session Strings Pro is a super dry sound, and the recordings aren't great; I don't even think it has legato scripting. It's kind of love or hate; Session Strings gives you the "pop" string sound really easy but you can't really do actually intimate string stuff with it. It's good in band ensembles, but it absolutely does not function as a string orchestra; it's too thin. Kontakt Strings are... pretty mediocre as well. They sound thin, and don't offer much dynamic or variation. You can drop them as chordal backgrounds, that's about it. What kind of string writing do you want to do? That can better help answer the question as to what string library would be better for you. This is a running list of the pretty good string libraries around right now: -Spitfire Sable -Spitfire Mural -Audiobro LA Scoring Strings -Berlin Strings -CineSamples CineStrings CORE -Various Libraries from Vienna Symphonic -Cinematic Strings 2 (this is what I have, and it's wonderful)

Wouldn't be surprised if gol plans to fix nothing, because usually (read: always) he thinks he's right.

Oh, the woes of a proprietary DAW automation system. gol is as stubborn as ever these days, with completely redoing the VST import system and somehow making it worse at the same time; it's kind of funny if you think about it. You spend all these dev time and resources on something so good as making a lackluster part of your software new and contemporary... then you do that. I'd hesitate to believe (because of gol's attitude) that FL will ever provide the MIDI automation transparency (no native mod wheel support? wtf?) that other DAW's have. Since having used Kontakt in Studio One a fair amount these days, I've realized that FL is just very, very poorly designed in terms of handling mult-channel samplers and such. The Layer tool presets make it better, where you only have to do all that stuff in the OP once, zip it into a Layer channel, then save that Layer channel preset. Loading the preset will instantiate a new Kontakt, the 16 MIDI-Outs, and all the routing stuff is preserved, so it's slightly better than loading a project template, because you can just drag it into a pre-existing project when you need it. You can even do it again if you want 16 more, but since the port number is also the same, you have to go in and change all the port numbers of the second instance. Contrast this entire process, including the stuff in the OP, to Studio One, where setting up Kontakt in an empty project corresponds to hitting "Add New Track(s)", typing "16" in the amount, setting the plugin to "Kontakt" in the dropdown menu, and hitting "ascending" next to the input assignment. Hit "OK". Bam. 16 MIDI tracks sending into Kontakt. Go to the wrapper for Kontakt, and click all the checkboxes for the outputs. Bam. 16 mixer tracks for Kontakt. Wanna use mod wheel? It's already there. Want to control mod wheel on the entire string section? Highlight all the string MIDI tracks. Move mod wheel. Black magic.

Composition is half the battle, after all; utilizing proper voicing techniques can go very far in helping you balance instruments without even touching a fader.

I know this is a necro response, but no; the pitch wheel in FL Studio plugins/wrappers is indeed the proper MIDI data for pitch modulation. Pitch is not a CC, it is simply its own thing in the MIDI standard.

Did you install the VST in the installer settings? If you didn't install the VST along with the standalone in the update installer, then your Kontakt.dll in your VST folder is still the old Kontakt 5.0.1 program. Re-run the installer, and make sure "VST" is checked when you are given options. You may have to completely uninstall Kontakt and reinstall it again, since the installer may flag your Kontakt as "already the latest version" and just immediately terminate.

Yeah, I've been recommending people to stick with 11 unless there's something they want from 12 like the new mixer. The new FL got a lot of new things right but messed up a lot of the old stuff. What VST's are you using that aren't working?

Different strokes for different folks, but honestly, I would've loved to use the Hollywood Orchestra if it had good master patches. I'm all about software responsiveness instead of I/O systems, and VSL gets that really well. It also would have made my subscription even more worth it. It's also not a huge development sink to do some better scripting unless it's the case where PLAY is so bad that they can't even do good master patch behavior without redesigning it. Makes you wonder how far EastWest's instruments would be if they stuck with Kontakt's platform from the beginning. But that's not really important anymore; they're not gonna budge off of PLAY (but they seemed to have eased up on the iLok bullshit with the cloud). I can at least appreciate how good libraries like Silk and Gypsy are, even if Hollywood is kinda eh.

I'm more at a loss as to why this suddenly turned personal, but all right. In any event, this is the FL Studio 12 thread, so a discussion like the future direction that FL Studio or Image-Line is going in is completely on-topic, so I see no compulsion to end the conversation. I am not trying to "win" anything, and that's very immature of you to make something about "winning" and "losing". Conversations aren't competitions, they're simply discourse.

I find it more rewarding to provide information than to sit back and be a forum commentator, but anyways, zircon didn't say anything I didn't, just that the flaws were enough for him to jump ship for now. Not really, no. And you say "without good reason", I think there is plenty good reason to stop supporting a legacy workflow that is underdeveloped in comparison to the new one with about five and a half years of advanced warning. Any and all arguments for said workflow are simply nostalgic or because users refuse to budge. Which would be a worthy consideration... if it was any significant portion of users, but it's insignificant, so it is not. Developers don't have to waste resources and planning to concede to an inconvenient userbase opinion if the opinion is held by "less than 5%". A vast majority of people moved off of pattern blocks. That is a vast majority of people saying "we prefer the new thing", which gives incentive for IL to continue developing the new thing. Cut to five and a half years later, it's too late to turn the clock on removing pattern blocks. Whether pattern blocks are *actually* inferior is irrelevant. Of course, that was a figure *you* gave us, so if it was found out that the percentage was higher, then what I'm saying applies less. Additionally, if they *do* support the legacy downloads, everything I am saying still holds as business logic; IL in particular are simply being extremely generous. Your understanding of software development is sketchy to me. Making a mac port has nothing to do with conceding to userbase, it's about tapping into an untouched part of the market. Any DAW developer would be stupid to not consider Macs, which is the predominant music production platform in the industry (both in industry academics and in actual studios). And like... no duh, 0% of the userbase is the new market if your product is currently incompatible with that market's computers, yeah? But like, pattern block users isn't a market. It literally isn't, because all the people who used pattern blocks bought FL Studio at one point (allowing them to never have to buy it again) or pirated it (pirate users are not really a market since they're likely to continue pirating). That's why retaining blocks or supporting legacy software is an argument of conceding to your userbase, not tapping into a new market. In other words, I'm saying your Mac port example is irrelevant. As for why they shouldn't concede to the userbase, see my explanation two paragraphs ago. As for FL updates too often: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often

Playlist, 'Animals As Leaders "The Joy of Motion"': https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH22-xSMERQpG4M9HshhXUJ9OKMNlwU8T This is very good. Imagine the harmonic tendencies of jazz fusion with the instrumentation and aggresiveness of metal, with the complex rhythmic behavior shared by each.

Update! I've been using these libraries for a little while now. Hollywood Strings: Decent sound, patch format is horrendous. There are many specialty articulation patches (many) which is wonderful, but the master patches (which I opt for in libraries) are terrible. The keyswitches will change articulations, but don't have independent behavior like legato selection and CC response. Basically, the keyswitch patches have gimped functionality, and if you want it to feel better, you have to use the multi-patch workflow. I don't care for said workflow, so I will sadly not be downloading the rest of Hollywood Orchestra (especially because I already have much more functional Kontakt orchestral libraries, even if the features are not as expansive). I even find the old EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold more intuitively usable than Hollywood. C+ recommendation on sound alone. Quantum Leap Silk: Beautiful. Love every bit of it. Has some great plucks, winds, and bows. The articulation switching is nice and convenient, and the legato scripting is pretty great. They took many instruments from Ra and added legato, which is great too. I can see myself using Silk a lot in the future. A+ recommendation. Quantum Leap Ra: Ra would be just every bit as perfect as Silk (with a different range of instrumentation) if it had legato scripting in its winds. That Shakuhachi has a nice timbre, but it just can not connect notes (though, it is great for "accents" if you're just doing a couple shaku notes for flair). Still, the lack of legato scripting is outweighed by the fact that all the percussion and plucked instruments are really solid, with lots of articulations. B+ recommendation. Quantum Leap Solo Violin: This is a mixed bag, kind of like Hollywood Orchestra. If you like multi-patch workflow, it's great. If not, skip it. However, I do find the legato mod switch patch to be very useful; it'll switch legato types using mod as a selector. This is great for keyboarding nice violin parts, but it only has legato, and the rest of the articulations like sforzando will not be offered in the same place. Basically, the great sound and few useful patches make up for its lack of good keyswitching. B recommendation. Quantum Leap Gypsy: Amazing. Guitars have a nice timbre, though I can't shake the feeling there's some slight portamento in there. The accordions are well-sampled, and the violin is amazing, I'd say much better as an all-in-one instrument than the Solo Violin. It has glissandi, fast legato, bow change, etc. but with the addition of all the other necessary articulations such as pizzicato, staccato, sforzando, etc. The sound is not as "concert hall solo violin", but to me it's more useful, and more evenly humanizable as a result. A+ recommendation. Quantum Leap Symphonic Choirs: This is actually a lot better than I expected it to be. Different ensemble types like adults and boys choirs, different syllables, all keyswitchable, really great sounding dynamic crossfade on the mod wheel. It's really easy to get nice choir backdrops for chorale or just block harmony. There's no legato, but it doesn't really matter. I find sample choir legato to be too exaggerated in most cases. As long as the notes bleed a little, it sounds great. A recommendation. Next on the list is to try Stormdrum 2 PRO, Voices of Passion, and Stormdrum 3!

I find my desire to create loud music is often hindered by the fact that I don't set up the proper mixing habits to do it correctly

I use this song when I teach people how secondary dominants (such as the one at :52) work. It's the only example I can point to where people are like "oh yeah. I hear what you mean"; it doesn't work when I use any Common Practice music. xP "It's in a major key, but they're temporarily setting up a dominant-tonic relationship on the relative minor tonic chord!"

As someone who struggles with awful mixing, I'd be very tempted to just blame it on my system (AKG k240 + Bose PC Speakers) to make it seem like it's not my fault. However, there are issues I can address regardless of my system by having references. I can distinctly hear the difference between my stuff and better stuff, I just don't put in the time and sweat into hashing out how to do it (usually because I'm mixing on a deadline and don't have time). I don't gain stage effectively, and I overcompensate in EQ (literally all the time, my EQ curves are always between +/- 6-12 dB cuts and boosts). For instance, as a YEAH HEAVY POUNDING fan, it's very tempting to jack the shit out of the 100-200 Hz range, and I often do, unnecessarily. Or I won't mix hot enough, and my frequency graph just looks like a downward curve. I got better about managing sub (usually cutting it out since my system can't actually tell me what's there, so better safe than sorry). If I had to point to a singular reason why my mixing sucks, it's because I don't listen to my own mixes. That's the truth; when I make something, it's usually in a ridiculously small timespan. I just make it, send it to zircon or someone to get feedback, then it's done. I'm much better with doing this in an orchestral setting than in metal or electronic. Even so, the problem is that when you start out, your ears are still in "omg this is so cool" mode when you make stuff, and you block out the mixing flaws because your ears instead perceive what you want it to sound like. You are *actually* not hearing it the way it physically comes out of your speakers, it's not that you're crazy. Perception is a deep, unintuitive science. The way to fix this is to sit on your mix for at least 4-7 days without hearing it at all. When you come back to it and listen to it again, the self-love perception with fade off, and you'll hear the mix again for what it actually is. Then you can address its flaws. Keep doing this as time goes on, and then as you become more experienced, you start to just be able to properly mix from the get go, without the sitting period. And yeah, getting a better system will help properly mixing from the get go as well. I'm going to buy actual monitors starting in June. That'll be fun!

That brings to mind a video I saw a while back, where a guy played a commercially produced song (I forget if it was hiphop or rap or something) on his computer and it sounded fine, but the engineer didn't check for phasing issues, and when he played the same song on his iPhone speaker, the vocal 100% cancelled out and was just an instrumental.

You can't say "a company should do X" and then regress the conversation back to being about the artists only. Company decision making isn't driven entirely by artists and customers (see long list of user-suggested FL Changes that have been ignored, also, see their move off of the pattern block system in the first place, which no one asked for). It's made by developers and businessmen. However friendly or relatable they may be, you shouldn't pretend they have the same goals as you, or that they worship user needs. So no, customer is not king. Your burden lies in convincing the company Image-Line why they should devote web resources to setting up an official legacy support for FL 11 outside of just supporting the existing regcodes. I'll give you a hint, "because 5% of the userbase doesn't like to learn new things" doesn't really cut it. Get it over 40%-ish, maybe it'll start being more viable.

This basically amounted to "I like pattern blocks because I'm used to them", which is exactly what I said. And in case you haven't noticed, people already pirate any and all versions of FL Studio. They're not losing money by having people not upgrade, since upgrades are free. Business decisions are fueled by financial considerations. Are we gonna waste bandwidth to let people download legitimate copies of our old software just because they don't take the effort to adapt, even though we'd make no more money by keeping that part of the userbase? You should try running that kind of conversation in a board meeting and see how it goes. This is not really a consideration, though. I'm also used to it, that doesn't mean it isn't objectively bad design, it just means you're willing to deal with it, and possibly not even notice it. Unless you provide an argument as to why they should *not* implement it, I don't even understand why we're disagreeing.

dat foreplay

Go back and read what I was saying.

Yeah, but if FL just implemented copy and paste for automation data like other DAW's, it would fall in with my "copy paste" suggestion. Instead, automation in FL has to be literally the clunkiest system you could possibly design. It's stuck in the pattern, and you can never transfer it anywhere (you have to clone the pattern and zero all the other shit out). This might be fine for electro stuff, but it's awful in orchestral. We have clips, but you can't copy and paste the data in those either; they're self contained entities. If you have a whole lane of data but have 3 repeated sections in it... guess what, you're drawing those all manually. (Or making a clip for it, then cutting out parts of the lane for it... but you don't design software around user workarounds. That's bad UX).

Agreed. You like them because they're familiar and you're already used to them, while the drawbacks of the new system are exaggerated for you because you're not used to it yet. Any "couple clicks" will seem like the end of the world until it becomes normal for you. I mean, there are people who use the Pro Tools piano roll, yeah? Or in FL's case, you realize that those couple clicks offer way more functionality than pattern blocks ever did (that's why they switched). Pattern blocks are really inflexible and slowdown workflow. You can cut clips, resize them, make unique, but still organize according to your own track tastes. Pattern blocks are static size, they split into new patterns when you cut them (that's actually *really* annoying, if I want to use the last bar of a drumloop, don't split my 4 bar drum loop into a 3 and 1), you can't see what's in them on the arrangement timeline, and you're at the mercy of the pattern number tracks instead of organizing it yourself according to instrument tracks or whatever (DIY organization is the staple philosophy of FL Studio). I actually would like them to discard the pattern system entirely, or at least make it optional; Studio One 2 and a couple other DAW's offer ghost notes for the entire project (rather than FL, which does it in patterns only), and you can freely enable and disable certain instruments in the checklist. This allows you to edit basically all your tracks in just one piano roll (just like multiple channels in FL patterns), but when you come out to the arrangement timeline, everything is properly split up into its own track (instead of one congealed blob of MIDI data). This means you can see how the parts interact in the piano roll, while still seeing the overarching make-up and progress of the track. I do like Make Unique, and use it often, but honestly, it's not necessary. If you want to repeat something, just copy and paste it. If you want to repeat something with a variation, just copy and paste it, then edit it (no need to make unique). Sure, ctrl+c and ctrl+v is technically more strokes than painting several instances of the pattern by holding down the paint tool, but the functionality and ease of use elsewhere is much greater and outweighs it. If you want this one thing (like a 4 bar drumloop) to be the same everywhere and to change everywhere when you edit it in just one of its instances, there are ways to do that in programming as well. Studio One has something similar. In other words, we can retain the advantages of the pattern system (easy repetition, editing multiple channels together) while getting rid of it (and thus eliminating the dumb "blocky" arrangement habits it pushes you into).