when this new version released, we were excited. we reinstalled windows, grabbed the finest torrent we could find, then started blasting.
i only have one question after this: Image-Line, who are you trying to appeal to?
- you don't need an AI assistant (Gopher) and i'm making it into a sacre. there's a reason why manuals exist, and this only makes me unlearn behaviours.
- stop shoving FL Cloud in my face.
- everything is more slower and unstable compared to 2024.
- stop changing behaviours that don't need to be changed if it isn't absolutely broken or a complete pithea to use.
- per-clip audio editing is cool, but declicking doesn't work.
- and everything takes more effort now because my computer's getting killed.
this program is actively fighting us with every action we do, and i don't know if i'm just going insane or if its actually trying to kill us. either way we're downgrading.
speakers never learn
zawinski's law states that "every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can". the replacement part is not really relevant here, as FL Studio is the only DAW that i can actually use without pulling my hair out or relearning how to walk currently, but it is relevant.
it has a full video player, it can view HTML documents via Edge WebView2 and whatever equivalent is on MacOS—some UI elements are just that, it has 3 versions of a notebook plugin with one being a web browser (just go use a text editor), and also they're attempting to do Splice but worse. plus there's automatic mastering—which most-of-not-all-the-time makes your music sound bad if you don't want it to fit into a specific genre/sound (reminds me of Dolby and SoundCloud). you should go learn how to mix and master instead of wasting your time.
small fries: i swear on lucifer that these developers, lest even the executives running the show, just sort-of think about the people who actually regularly use these programs—the power users—and mostly let their mind and focus dwell on the new license-holders who are just getting into this program. presets, (sample) loops, a prompted LLM, "project jumpstarters"... which most people won't care about because they already decided to pay for fucking Omnisphere and Splice, and are avid OTT abusers.
my enemy is also my friend
i prefer how Ableton Live does most of these and how it props them up to be—just supplements, not be-all-end-all necessities that you should kill for to use. not presented en masse, just There.
Image-Line immediately tells you their sale price on their index.html, tiktoks related to their benevolently divine program are prominently displayed, and https://www.image-line.com/reportpiracy/ exists (which i haven't seen from any other company who offers a paid DAW thus far). do you think i respect you?
if i had a binary choice between FL Studio 2025 and Ableton Live, i would chose the latter, because using the former is genuine suicide for me due to SEE PREVIOUS and because we don't own a high-end computer (i3 CPUs are bitches). i'm not trying to hide my disdain for this, we're done here. all roads lead back to monolake.
- epsilon a.k.a. big avali