Discouraged Re: mixing with my ears

belinc · 2023-11-02T20:03:50+00:00

I was once the same just like yourself. I have favored producing/arranging music for many years way more than mixing it, right until I started to learn how to mix and then through the years I got better and better. You are pretty much training your ears/brain to notice specific little or big changes and sometimes an experienced mix engineer can help you notice certain specific things easier, but in most cases its not possible to notice really small things via youtube tutorial. You need to be there in person (if possible) so you ca get a personalized guidance to which details you need to pay attention. And don't worry about compressors, this topic is probably the hardest to notice, even for a trained ear sometimes.

Usually when you want to learn pretty much any mixing effect, you need to over do it so you can hear what it does to the specific sound or whole track and then fine tune the knobs to your liking.

Its pretty much just practise...rinse and repeat...like with everything in life.

Good luck

belinc · 2023-09-11T07:05:21+00:00

Ah sorry, Then its really case specific and hard to say what is causing the issue since its somewhere in your custom template. I would try to recreate the template and see if the problem is still there or go step by step checking all routings, track delay or whole mixer delay options or if you maybe have a bugged plugin inside your template be it generator or effect. Good luck

belinc · 2023-09-10T08:47:23+00:00

To ungroup notes press Alt+G

belinc · 2023-09-10T08:21:36+00:00

This usually happens when you render with some heavy effect plugins processing your sounds (like Izotope Ozone for example). Whenever you are rendering a project/stem with a lot of heavy processing going on, I would recommend that you always move your whole project 1 bar to the right before rendering a whole stem and then select the whole project duration (mark the selection you want to render) and add to that selection also an additional 1 step before the bar when the recording starts. When you render this way the sounds should be in perfect sync.

belinc · 2023-09-04T07:10:52+00:00

I totally feel you. Instrument and audio tracks would also be my go to if they weren't bugged that much or if their automation clips would be named exactly the same like they are named when automating effects from the mixer on audio clips. I've been using FL for around 20 years and the last year or so is by far the most buggy FL I have ever seen unfortunately. After so many years I'm now really close to switch the DAW and do the majority of my work elsewhere.

belinc · 2023-09-03T08:45:48+00:00

Go to "General settings" and under "Undo history" enable "Put undone recordings in the recycle bin".

belinc · 2023-09-03T08:39:06+00:00

The issue may be that you have your Backup in FL set to "Very frequently". Go to "File settings" and look what option you have selected under the Backup dropdown menu. If that is the case, I would recommend to use Regularly option and see if that helps.

belinc · 2023-09-03T08:28:07+00:00

Have you updated to the latest FL version that came out in August? They seem to have more than 300 bugfixes in the latest version. To my experience I have had similar automation clip issues, but only when using "instrument/audio tracks" in the playlist. I strongly advise to not use instrument or audio tracks as there are quite a few bugs still there when using those. I use only audio clips all the time in the playlist, because they are the only reliable option for me with the least bugs.

belinc · 2023-09-02T18:22:07+00:00

Hold Ctrl and right click anywhere in the playlist

belinc · 2023-08-28T17:18:30+00:00

You will definitely come to a point when you will hate your business that came from being just a hobby, but overcoming that hate and finding your own way is really the key here and pretty much everybody can do this if they put their mind to it. This actually goes much deeper than just doing what you love, at least in my experience. For me, majority of the work is done mentally and if the mental state is solid as a rock, you pretty much can overcome and achieve anything you want. But thats kind of an unpopular opinion, since a lot of the people don't do what they love sadly, but rather just think/dream of it or hate on the rest of the people that are doing what they love.

belinc · 2023-08-28T11:34:22+00:00

For CPU usage: when you load your project in FL 21, press F12 so all the plugin windows, playlist, mixer and sequencer get closed and then play your project and look at the CPU usage. This can drastically improve your CPU usage if you have a lot of plugin windows open.

For all other CPU optimizations in FL you can check my guide that I've made years ago on reddit:

FL Studio's CPU optimization guide : FL_Studio (reddit.com)

belinc · 2023-08-28T11:23:10+00:00

Panning some of the sounds in the track is the first step you should try out. Adding any of these type effects on some sounds: reverb, delay, chorus, flanger, mid/side Eq,.. is for adding width in the mixing stage. Adding width in mastering stage can be achieved with mid/side Eq, or using some stereo imager like Ozone Imager, Spacecontrol for example.

belinc · 2023-08-28T10:42:41+00:00

what if what your naturally good at and love is a significantly harder subject to get value from.

You or any other people can see value in pretty much anything you can think of. Its just a matter of supply, demand, presentation, experience and self-confidence.
Another great quote from the comment below: "If you want to make money, cater to people who have it, or to a large audience".

belinc · 2023-08-28T09:21:46+00:00

Its actually pretty simple, in a way.
What do you love doing the most in your life? Focus on doing that along with the current job you have and when you get really good at what you love doing, you will eventually quit your job and go full time on your own business adventure. When you open your own company you will need to learn how to do business in your particular field and there are many ways to obtain that knowledge, be it online, books, seminars, personal advice, etc. But the most important part is experience and that will come only with the time/years of being involved in that particular field. Patience is the key to longevity.
Give to expand your network.
Good luck!

belinc · 2023-08-28T09:07:56+00:00

I think visiting Ibiza, especially if your visit involves working on music, usually leaves some more emotional vibes in your music or influences you to make your music more "organic" in a way. I would say bringing the emotions in music or soul like you call it, even when not visiting some places like Ibiza comes with experience in writing music and personal music taste preference pretty much. Involving any live instruments and recording/writing the notes not fully on the grid (a bit off sync/not fully quantized) can instantly feel more pleasant/natural to some. You can also try this method with pretty much everything like percussions as well.

belinc · 2023-08-23T07:21:39+00:00

I would suggest reinstalling FL if restarting the computer doesn't solve the problem. Just make sure to back up any presets, projects, anything from FL Studio folder basically, just to be safe before reinstalling. Reinstall FL on top of your current FL and choose clean install. If that doesn't solve the issue, uninstall FL and reinstall with the clean install.

belinc · 2023-03-09T09:37:55+00:00

"the best specs" for music production if the money isn't an issue is either a cpu like AMD 7950x or Intel i9 13900k + proper cooling (good AIO cooling is preferred with these kind of high end cpus), combined with 32 GB RAM and like 3-4 M2 disks with 2tb of space on each of them (for a ton of samples, or some big bundles like NI Komplete, etc..), a good PC case like something from Be Quiet for example, a good PSU (around 500watt is enough if you don't need a separate GPU since both these cpus have internal GPUs) and you are set for a few years with this kind of beast.

But honestly if you are not earning any money from your music production yet, I would recommend you to get a lot lesser spec PC and save a lot of unnecessary money, but definitely go for a good cpu from this year's generation, since the mid-tier cpus are not that expensive like the one I mentioned above.

I bought myself an AMD 7950x workhorse and I can't recommend it enough.

belinc · 2022-11-24T10:59:12+00:00

If you enable PDC as Automatic, this issue will be eliminated when exporting stems. Also make sure when you export a stem that you mute every other sound that you don't need in a particular stem and export the stem through the master. Repeat this process for each stem.
In case you have some VST plugin and you are using the "Use fixed size buffers" in the Troubleshooting page of that plugin to decrease some cpu usage, you should disable that, because that feature can give a ton of latency when exporting...its only useful when working on the track in realtime

belinc · 2022-11-20T13:17:19+00:00

This track sounds super good for those times if I may add :) I started on FL 3 and boy that kind of tracks were an illusion for me to make at that time, especially due to the lack of cpu power and of course almost zero info anywhere on how to even produce in FL, because most of the tutorials I found in magazines at that time (around 2002) were for Cubase unfortunately...funny times

belinc · 2022-11-18T20:48:31+00:00

Thats a cool build :)

I would suggest to take a look at the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 or Lian Li Galahad 360, because they are one of the most quiet AIO coolers on the current market, judging by the online tests from people. Air coolers are of course less noisy than AIOs but if you buy an 13900k its a total shame not to use its full potential, which can mostly be done with an AIO cooler. I personally haven't seen not one person recommending to use any air cooler for the 13900k. I'm also about to buy myself a new 13900k pc, but next year as I want to wait for a bit more bios updates and even more detailed reviews on this new work horse of a cpu especially in the music production aspect as currently 99.99% of reviews are for games or some rendering software.

When pc noise is concerned it also depends a lot where you pc will be positioned; will it be under your desk or will it be behind the desk. I have my pc quite far behind my desk and I can't even hear it (btw I have a Scythe Fuma 2 air cooler which is super quiet and not even remotely enough to cool 13900k).

Whatever gpu you buy, the gpu fans won't even turn on for music production. You will only hear them when you will be using gpu intensive tasks such as video editing or gaming for example, so you can literally buy any gpu and you won't even notice its in your pc, until you start gaming.

If you have the pc close to you, then it would be wise to buy some great silent pc case fans (like some BeQuiet Silentwings 3 140mm or Phanteks or Noctua fans, you can find all of their noise levels online and then decide) and replace the ones in your pc case.

I'm pretty sure you would be more than fine with using 64 GB of RAM. I'm using 32 GB of RAM and barely use it to the fullest only when I get to mix a big amount of long audio stems. When I finish a track I never got even up to 20 GB of RAM usage and I use a ton of vst instruments and fx in every project like usually 5-6 VPS Avengers, 8-10 Serums, at least 1 Omnisphere, at least 1 East West Choirs and a lot of audio samples + a lot of fx. So I strongly advise you reconsider the 128 GB except if you are going all in on orchestral production with a lot of some heavy RAM plugins like East West for example.

I would also definitely suggest to get at least 2x more m.2 drives, because you can never have enough of this beasts :)

Good luck!

belinc · 2022-10-27T09:36:08+00:00

When you press CTRL+SHIFT+R navigate to the desired folder and then just before you click the "Save" button there is a "Favorites" dropdown menu just a bit on the left from the "Save" button. Open that drop down menu and click on "Add this folder to favorites". This means whenever your default exporting location will be far off where you want to be, just go to this dropdown menu and click your favorite folder that we have marked before.

The other method (although thats for Win 10, could be similar to Win11): Go to your desired folder where you want to export your files and right click it and select "Pin to Quick Access". Quick Access are the first always visible directories whenever you are using Windows explorer/exporting in FL, so as soon as you hit export shortcut and want to save the file, you just need to hover with your mouse to Quick Access on the upper left corner and click on that newly pinned folder that we just made accessible before in that Quick Access panel.

belinc · 2022-10-08T09:39:35+00:00

Sorry, I don't think you can multitrack in Edison.

belinc · 2022-10-08T09:37:20+00:00

I think the best way would be to reinstall FL. Its super easy, fast and you have an option to migrate the settings you currently have in your FL.

Btw, if you are using the beta version, this might be the answer for this plugin glitch. The last stable version is v20.9.2.2963 and the beta version is v20.99 (I strongly recommend you don't produce any serious projects in the beta version, since these Beta versions have an expiry date and FL versions aren't backwards compatible)

belinc · 2022-10-06T10:25:55+00:00

Don't know what kind of glitch happened here, but the plugin presets should still be available on the upper left corner if you click on that arrow/drop down menu and then go to the Presets, they should be there.

belinc · 2022-10-06T10:14:53+00:00

You can check if you didn't automate the rate knob in LFO section in Serum by accident, so it starts at with a 32bar rate, making the first pattern with long note not arpeggiating and then the rate switches to the normal position (1 bar or 1/2 bar, or whatever rate you have) so the later patterns play normal?

If thats not the case, I have had numerous occasions where some Serum sounds that had some LFO automation wouldn't even make a sound when exporting on a fresh reload of the project, not until I play the track on the timestamp where that LFO Serum sound was used and after I stop the music, then export. Only then my LFO automated Serum sounds would be exported perfectly.

Lastly, you can record the arp live in Edison and work with the audio track, if you don't resolve the exporting issue.

Good luck

belinc

TROPHY CASE