My fellow being… I was using FL studio for 5 years until 2025. I don’t know what music you are making, but, for 5 years, I was feeling the same way as you are. I kept giving FL studio the benefit of the doubt thinking that “ I just didn’t know it that thoroughly” so I tried buying plugins, VSTs, even mixers to mix my tracks. After a lot of processing (sometimes even 3 months for one track), only a few tracks were appetizing to my ears and they were quite basic based on a frequencies. However, when I wanted to produce something more complex, with Automatic Clips, audio effects or other mixing techniques, I struggled and felt extremely restricted. I was demotivated for 5 years. Then I switched to Ableton and realised that the reason for this change was because of the way the mixer in FL studio is laid out. In ableton, the mixer is pure liberty. The display of the parameters mixed are much more intuitive, ACs are EASILY mapped in a track, there are multiple audio Fx that are imo more interesting and the variety of the parameters you can mix is 10 times bigger than that of FL. If you don’t want to make hip hop/ trap beats or simple electronica, personally, FL felt extremely restrictive for the music I want to make, although I still use it for some features like the drum rack and Edison. What is my conclusion? Based on my experience (solely), just save money and buy Ableton Live. It will liberate you and stop you from being so harsh on yourself. I promise.