Switching from Fl studio to Ableton - Is it Good Idea?

Switching from Fl studio to Ableton - Is it Good Idea?

I know it's been asked a million times, but I haven't found any answers relating exactly to my problems, so I feel I have to make a post about it as I've been dwelling on this for so long now.




I've been producing mainly in FL studio and know it very well.
The reason I'm considering switching to Ableton is as follows:

I find Fl studio to be excellent when working on smaller to medium projects. Laying down an idea is incredibly fast!

Fl studio: working with large projects

However, when working with large projects the speed comes to a halt. I find that it becomes very problematic to keep it organized in Fl studio when the project reaches a certain size.
It almost feels like the daw is fighting against me. Despite my best attempts to keep it organized by painstakingly grouping, naming and colouring everything it still just looks like a blur eventually.
When you have 100+ tracks and automation everywhere it's impossible to see the track structure.
To make it worse, there's no folder track option in Fl so I can't hide away stuff in folders like in most other daws. It's all there at the same time, so naturally, it get's worse the larger the project becomes, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Fl studio: Use Friendly 

here's my main problems when working with large projects in FL Studio:

- No thanks, to move groups of tracks (containing clips and automation) into folders and subfolders within the arrange window.

- Automation cannot be hidden, and everyone take up an entire track so all automation for everything is showing all the time, making it hard to ascertain the track structure, unless I place clips on top of every other, something that causes problems on its own.

- Constantly having to rename and color clips, channel rack and mixer items whenever you replace a synth or whatever. Ther'es no link between them that automate this, so you'll find yourself having 3 different names for an equivalent thing, one within the mixer, one within the channel rack and one within the playlist (arrange view). While in other daws this is often usually all done automatically to stay it organized. If you modify the name within the mixer it changes within the track also . In Fl you've got to try to to this manually.

- Only global swing. I can apply swing using templates within the piano roll, but no swing pr. track, so swing amount for any given track cannot be automated.

- only 104 mixer tracks available

- Annoying having to enter the VST wrapper for each single synth to manually activate "allow threaded processing" as it's off by Default albeit "generator multithreading" is on in global options. If i do not FL will just use one among my 6 cpu cores, causing overloads.

So there you have it. As you can see, my main problems are basically due to the lack of ways to organize in Fl Studio. There is a "group with above" function in the playlist, but it can't compare to folder tracks in other daws.

I've recently also been using Fl studio one 3 and find that quite good. The organization there is so much better than Fl. I have no problems keeping large projects organized in there.

However, I primarily make loop based music so I find it easier to work with clips. Fl studio is faster for my kind of production, also I like the flexibility of the Fl studio piano roll, with it's ability to edit paning etc directly in the piano roll. I produce much faster in FL studio overall.

I've been eyeballig Ableton for some time now. It seems it's the closest thing to FL studio with regard to workflow and clips. It seems like my problems with regard to organization won't be such a problem in there?

I'd like to hear from people who have used FL studio and then moved to Ableton. Or if there's anyone who moved from Ableton to FL studio I'd really like to hear from you as well and why you switched, and how that's working out for you.

FL Studio Has anyone else had these problems with regard to the organization in FL?

Switching daws is a huge thing. It takes allot of time and it will set me back to start. So I would appreciate some advice.

I'm very happy with FL studio overall I work fast in it and I know it very well. It has some great tools. I love the piano roll, and the new mixer is great. The ability to route anything to anything is great. I like many of the built in plugins (slicex, grossbeat etc) and the overall feel of the DAW.

Again, my only problem with it is that I find it almost impossible to manage large projects in it due to the workflow combined with no good option to combat the mess generated along the way by that workflow. No drag and dropping of tracks into folders is one of the main problems.

Normally I wouldn't even consider a switch, but it doesn't look like Fl studio will improve with regard to organization any time soon. Studio one 3 is great, but it seems more aimed towards linear workflow, so I think Ableton is my best bet due to how it handles clips?


Sorry for the long post. Any advice here would be much appreciated! :)