This section contains answers to common questions and problems
that may occur while working in FL Studio. Please, read this
carefully before posting about problems in the tech-support message
board!
The first things you will have to set up are the MIDI output
driver (if you plan to use MIDI) or the DirectSound driver (you
probably want to import your own drum samples). If you don't set
any of them you won't get any output!
| Problem
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Solution
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The
program reports about missing DirectX, then halts.
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YOU
NEED DIRECTX 8 OR LATER TO BE INSTALLED ON YOUR SYSTEM. The latest
DirectX (currently 9) is available at the Microsoft web site. You
can find a link to it at www.flstudio.com. You may also find the DirectX
installer on CD's that go with many popular magazines. Also please
read below about Windows NT!
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No
audio output.
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If you don't get any sound
be sure you've selected at least a DirectSound driver (see Audio settings) or a MIDI driver (see
MIDI settings). Be sure the
DirectSound driver has been initialized & working. If you don't
get any MIDI sound from the playing loop you probably forgot to
enable the 'Enable MIDI' menu option (see Options menu).
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The
sound is 'choppy' and strange (blips & glitches).
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Be sure you've got the
latest DirectX drivers & not emulated DirectSound drivers. You
may try to put the mixing buffer length (see Audio settings) to the max. Note that
you may also try to reduce it to minimize the latency. Today's
soundcards can handle from 100ms down to 5ms latency. You may also
have glitches problems if the playing loop eats too much CPU or
when opening or closing other windows. Windows 9x is more or less
animated, & some of those animations are very bad for the
timing in audio applications. To fix that problem, go to the
display settings (in Windows 98), select the "Effects" tab &
uncheck the "Animate windows, menus and lists" box. There are other
ways to optimize Windows 9x for audio applications, you can learn
more about this on the Internet. Once again be sure you've got the
proper DirectSound drivers accelerated for your soundcard. Also be
sure no other CPU consuming or special application is running at
the same time.
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| I
upgraded and the automation doesn't
work properly anymore.
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Probably you are coming from FruityLoops 2, where
the automation is written in one single global track.
Events in FL Studio
are pattern based now. This means there is no more one global
automation track - events are saved locally to each pattern (the
selected pattern is the pattern where automation goes during
recording). The old FruityLoops 2.x projects are imported by
creating one additional pattern called "Main Automation" which
replaces the global events tracks.
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A
TS404 pattern doesn't play in
song mode, but plays in pattern mode.
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The TS404 is a monophonic
synthesizer. That means it can not generate more than one tone at a
moment. That is why when you trigger several patterns that contain
TS404 notes and/or property changes (cutoff and pitch in the
Graph Editor) only the
topmost pattern is played and the rest are ignored.
Sometimes, you might skip
to clear some patterns from TS404 data and they can mute another
TS404 sequence placed below in the Playlist. To make sure that the patterns you
trigger together with your TS404 sequence do not contain any data
for the same TS404, switch to each pattern you want to clear,
select the corresponding TS404 channel and press Ctrl+X (or select
Cut from the Edit menu). That way all
notes and properties in the Step
Sequencer are set to default and the pattern is considered free
of TS404 sequence data.
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The
chords menu doesn't pop up in the Randomizer.
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This might be caused
because of using custom font sizes and/or windows scheme. To cure
the problem, try to switch back Windows to "small fonts" and use
Windows Standard scheme (go to Control Panel > Display >
Appearance).
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FL
Studio reports HHCTRL.OCX is missing, then halts.
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This problem may occur in
computers with older Windows installed (first releases of Windows
95). To cure the problem, install a newer version of Internet
Explorer, which includes the necessary files. Note that if you
really don't have that file installed, you shouldn't be able to
open this help file as well...
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FL
Studio crashes when trying to open the Piano Roll window.
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Some people reported such
crashes on systems with ATI Xpert video cards. Download and install
the latest drivers available for your video card to fix the
problem.
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FL
Studio' interface looks strange, the colors are distorted.
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You're probably running
Windows in 256 colors (palletized) or less. Please switch to 16Bit
(high color) or 24/32Bit (true color) display modes. Everything
under Windows is ugly in palletized display. Luckily today's
computers (even laptops) can easily handle true color modes. For
the best quality & smoothness in FL Studio we suggest you
switch your display to 24Bit mode. Now your graphic board might not
support 24Bit display. In this case switch to 32Bit mode. By the
way, remember that FL Studio 1.x & 2.x skins are NOT compatible
so don't use any of them.
You should also know that
almost every early graphic driver has minor bugs. If you notice
things not drawn properly, it might be your graphic driver (which
should be updated).
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Any of
the *.WAV files fail to load, but all the *.SS2 presets load
fine.
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For some reason, some
people have all their Windows sound ACM codecs disabled. FL Studio
needs them in order to translate compressed *.WAV files to PCM.
Under Windows, follow Start > Settings > Control Panel >
Multimedia > Devices tab > Audio Compression Codecs. For each
of the listed codecs, click Properties, then check "Use this audio
codec" (if it's disabled).
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FL
Studio used to work fine, but now it keeps crashing at
startup.
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If
it doesn't work anymore, but has worked once then you may try to do
a config 'reset'. To do this, launch the Reset settings shortcut
(Start Menu > Programs > FL Studio 3> Advanced > Reset
Settings) & let it delete the needed registry keys.
Note: if you're
running under WinNT, the shortcut switch might not work correctly,
you might have to use regedit.exe. Take care not to delete any
other registry entry! You can still use the Microsoft System
Information tool to backup your registry if you're not sure
(Important: don't use regedit.exe if you
are not familiar with registry, since this may damage your
Windows!).
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FL
Studio crashes at startup.
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Some
people have reported a crash when Windows is in 16Bit display.
There's no reason for FL Studio not to work fine in 16Bit display
but anyway you can try to switch to 24Bit (True Color) & see if
it corrects your problem. Also according to the same people a
problem may occur because of network cards. Again there's no reason
for not to work when a network card is installed...
We've also been reported
that old display drivers for the Diamond Viper v330 were causing a
crash while FL Studio is running. Updating those drivers should fix
that.
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DirectX
plugins disappeared from the plugin list.
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Uninstall DirectX and then
reinstall it again (DirectX can not be directly uninstalled. You
should use third party tools, such as DirectX Buster - http://amplifon-audio.com).
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The
loop points in the sample view can't be added or moved.
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Loop points can't be set
inside FL Studio. They are part of the sample itself, and they can
be set using external wave editor. Also, when you play looped wave
sample in FL Studio and you hear pops and clicks, this means that
the loop points of the sample are not well chosen. Well chosen loop
points match end offsets (amplitudes) of the sample points and also
match end slopes of the waveform as much as possible. Also, if the
sample volume varies over time, you should set loop points so that
level is equal or close to equal in the start and end loop points.
Also, unless you're making a sample to be used as an oscillator
shape, you should avoid creating short loops (less than ~50ms),
because they may sound pitch shifted, thus not matching the pitch
of the rest of the sample.
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The
sound becomes strange when you move windows or sliders.
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This happens with some
graphic boards (for example older versions of Matrox Mystique)
which lock the bus when they shouldn't. Be sure you've got the
latest drivers for your graphic card, it may correct the
problem.
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Can FL
Studio have several instances running at the same time?
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Yes, just make sure not to
pass any command line parameter. If you specify a loop file by the
command line, the same instance will load it (for convenience). If
you don't, then another instance will be opened.
Please note that Windows 9x graphics resources are very limited
(due to compatibility problems), so opening several (4 or over)
instances of FL Studio (which is graphically intensive) could crash
your whole system!
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You
need more information about the LAME MP3 encoder used in FL Studio
to export MP3 files.
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You can find more info
& the standalone version of LAME at www.sulaco.org/mp3.
LAME is distributed under the GNU General Public License (see
Texts\LGPL.txt for details). LAME was written by Mike Cheng &
Mark Taylor. The DLL used in was written by Albert Faber, based on
the original BladeEnc DLL interface written by Tord Jansson.
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The
loop sample always overlaps when it's retriggered. You want it to
cut itself.
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Just push the 'cut itself'
button in the channel settings menu.
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Some
plugins suddenly start eating extremely much CPU power, while they
performed good in a while.
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Sometimes happens that a
plugin starts eating a huge amount of CPU when not fed for a while.
It looks strange but it's not. Floating points are stored as a base
& exponent. It works well, except for very small numbers (those
are called tiny numbers, or denormalized numbers). Those tiny
numbers are stored differently, & the math coprocessor actually
eats much more CPU in that 'denormalization' process (that can also
trigger an exception on demand).
There are workarounds, but
they can only apply in the DSP functions themselves. FL Studio
can't do much about it, it's up to the plugin (& most of the
ones that come with FL Studio do it) to check if the values are
very close to zero & snap them to zero instead.
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Your
song uses too much processing power and you can't play it in
real-time without underruns even with maximum audio buffer.
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Use the tips in the
Optimizing CPU and Memory Usage
page.
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How to
sync FL Studio to a MIDI sequencer.
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As with any other
music app running under Windows, you need a virtual MIDI cable to
achieve sync with FL Studio. FL Studio can act as a MASTER CLOCK.
Just set your sequencer (or any other app) to be the slave & be
sure it uses the correct virtual MIDI device.
WARNING:
Don't use Hubi's LoopBack device as the virtual MIDI cable. For
some unknown (to us) reason it can loose clock messages so the sync
will be really bad when you start moving windows (probably a 32bit
threading problem)... Instead, use MIDI Yoke which seems very
stable & does its job pretty well. You can download & get
information about MIDI Yoke at: channel1.com/users/jamieo/html/midiyoke.html.
You can find a more detailed explanation in the online manuals
available at our web site.
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Is FL
Studio working under Windows 2000?
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Yes,
normally.
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FL
Studio working under Windows NT4?
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Not officially.
This is because there's no official DirectX5 for Windows NT4.
However, you can download an unofficial patch for DirectX5 under
WinNT at Erik Unger's DirectX page (from JEDI-Project).
You could also do a search on the net for the NT4DX5.ZIP file. FL
Studio is said to work okay under Windows NT using this unofficial
DirectX5 version. Now you won't find accelerated drivers for this
DirectX so you will have to deal with a bigger mixing buffer
(meaning slower response).
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