Mastering is the final step in music production. It’s the process of improving the sound quality and perceived volume of your song (if possible and/or needed) with the aid of such tools as an equalizer, compressor, limiter, stereo enhancer, etc.
It’s also preparing a song for the proper medium (i.e. “mastered for iTunes”). After mastering, your song should be ready to go public.
What Mastering Isn’t
Keep in mind that mastering goes hand-in-hand with mixing. The truth is, if your song is not mixed properly, amateur level mastering isn’t going to do you any favors – in fact, it’ll probably make it worse.
Mastering isn’t a way to fix major mixing issues and also it isn’t “magic” that will turn an unbalanced mix into a polished, commercial song. You need to achieve the “commercialism” as much as possible during the mixing stage.
So, before you consider experimenting with mastering, it’s essential to learn how to mix first. Your song needs to sound balanced and as good as possible before moving into to the mastering stage. So if all that sounds a little too familiar, I recommend checking out some of my guidelines for mixing electronic music. And even though I’m do not consider myself to be a professional, they might help you.
Do I need to Hire a Mastering Engineer?
A lot of producers and professionals say that mastering should be left to the professionals. They say that you shouldn’t master your songs by yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I wouldn’t disagree because mastering engineers have the skills, professional equipment, proper listening environment, and trained ears on top of years of experience. So they pretty much know what can be done (or shouldn’t be done) to enhance the quality of your mix.
But, we’re also living in the new age of modern music production where artists and producers are choosing to do a lot more on their own – this includes the mastering phase. There are many reasons to want to take on the mastering yourself including (but not limited to): limited budget, referencing your tracks at a “mastering level”, making music for fun (not profit) and don’t need to hire anyone, and the list goes on.
Whatever your reason, I think it’s good to learn the basics and get your head around what mastering can do for your tracks. My general rule of thumb is when I’m producing a track for fun or experimentation, I handle the mastering duties. Once I feel like I have something ready for release, I’ll bring a mastering engineer on board.
But let me also preface by saying that I’m NOT a professional – I’m just a hobbyist so what I’m writing here may NOT be the best practice. If you are serious about mastering your song, I STRONGLY advise you to contact a professional mastering engineer. And for some excellent advice on mastering, check out this article by Ian Shepherd or this guide on mastering beats from Modern Samples).
So with that out of the way let’s move on!
A Bit of Info on Mastering Tools
There is a broad range of VST plugins that can be used for mastering: brick wall limiters, single band compressors, multi-band compressors, equalizers, stereo enhancers, etc. And there’s even a bunch of presets to get you started.
I have to say though, that while presets can be a great starting point, there isn’t an FX chain or “preset” that’s going to work for every mix. There is no shortcut to mastering.
Each mix is different, which is why the mastering tools need to be picked and tweaked according to each unique situation. Everything depends on the audio material you have and what you want to achieve with the mastering. Sometimes, you may only need to add a limiter to get the job done, whereas other times you may need 4-5 different plugins. The thing is, you just need to learn to use your ears and pick your tools based on that.
So with that in mind, I’m going to show the method and the tools that I used to master the song in this tutorial. The plugins and the settings were tweaked and tailored specifically to the example song so that this configuration won’t work exactly for your mixes.
The idea is to take the general knowledge that I am presenting and apply it to your mixes in a way that’s unique to your sound or your particular project.
I’ve also included the FL Studio Mixer State file at the end of this tutorial for you to download into your sessions and experiment with if you choose to do that.
But I should also emphasize that this is NOT a definitive guide to mastering as there is a lot more to the process than just throwing a bunch of plugins at your mix.
Okay, let’s begin!
Preparing The Song For Mastering And Getting Down To Business
There are actually two ways to master your songs in FL Studio (or any DAW for that matter).
I personally like to keep mixing and mastering as separate processes, so I’m going to use method 2 for this tutorial.
STEP 1 – Export your mix to WAV.
Before you export your mix to WAV (aka do the mixdown), you need to make sure that it isn’t clipping. One way to do that is to drop the master volume level to around -6.0 dB or lower. This is to leave some headroom (“air”) between the highest peaks and the 0dB level, thus avoiding the appearance of clipping (read more about this in my mixing guidelines article).
However, if you’re exporting your WAV to 32 bit floating point format, you don’t need to worry much about the clipping But even so, it’s still a good mixing practice to avoid clipping by using the level faders.
However, if you’re exporting your WAV to 32-bit floating point, you don’t need to worry much about the clipping(check out mixing tip on using 32 bit floating point format). But even so, it’s still a good mixing practice to avoid clipping by using the level faders.
Also, make sure you don’t have any compressor or limiter on the master fader when you export the track.
Use the highest possible quality for rendering. Here are the settings I’m usually using:
STEP 2 – Create a new empty FL Studio project, and open your exported mix in Edison.
Cut the unnecessary silence at the end or beginning of the song (if any). Check the pic below:
STEP 3 – Create a very short fade out at the end of the song (if needed).
This is to avoid the song being abruptly cut. In some cases, there might be a tail of reverb or delay still playing after the actual song has ended. Check below:
**SIDE NOTE** The following step you should take with caution!!!
STEP 4 – Peak normalize the WAV file
Peak normalizing increases the amplitude of the waveform so that the loudest peak is at its maximum possible level (near 0dB). This increases the track volume without clipping.
Other producers say that you should NOT normalize your WAV at this point. However, I’ve been doing it regardless. I like the signal to be “hot” before feeding it to plugins that affect the dynamics of the audio. I may be doing it wrong, but so far I haven’t had any issues with this step.
But then again, what do I know? I’m just a hobbyist. So be cautious!
After normalization, save the changes to a WAV file.
STEP 5 – Create another empty FL Studio project and import the WAV to a Playlist.STEP 6 – Load the mastering plugins.
Remember, even though I’m showcasing a “mastering plugin chain”, the set of plugins you pick really depends on your mix and what kind of treatment you think it needs. The following plugin chain may very well not suit for your needs (you could do just as fine only with an EQ and limiter).
So here goes:
Open the Mixer and add these plugins in a following order to the Master mixer tracks FX slots:
Now, few words about the order of the plugins in the FX chain: notice that the eq used for cutting comes before the compression and eq for boosting, after the compression. Why? Because the eq settings affects how the compression behaves. For example, if you boost some low fequencies before the compression, you raise their peak level and compressor will react to these peaks by trying to attenuate them.
However, like always in audio production, there shouldn’t be too much do’s and dont’s: in some situations the aforementioned can be exactly what you need, but in a normal mastering situation, cutting frequencies might be best to be done before and boosting after the compression.
Below is a pic of the mastering fx chain:
Now, to the settings of the first eq.
7. Fruity Parametric EQ 2 for CUTTING.
This is the eq unit that comes BEFORE the compressors. You may wan’t to cut the very low frequencies from around 20-30Hz using high pass filter with steep filter slope and the high frequencies near 20kHz with low pass filter. Those are frequencies that can’t be heard through most of the normal speaker systems, but they might add unnecessary energy to your mix and may make it sound louder (not in a good way) than it really is. In case like this, it’s like leftover noise that needs to be cleaned.
However, if you’re making electronic music especially for clubs, you might wan’t to consider whether you cut the lows at all. This is because if the song is played through large PA systems, you might loose too much of the low end response. And even though human ear can’t hear frequencies of 20Hz and below, they still can’t be FELT in the club.
On the other hand, and correct me if I’m wrong, not nearly all of the large PA systems are able to go down to 20Hz. I’ve heard that most will actually roll off the 30-40Hz (?), so if your mix has a lot of energy in the 20-30Hz region, it will just uselessly waste the headroom of your mix. With that in mind, setting the cut to 30Hz might be something worth to test.
Also, remember this: if the PA system has been setup poorly, there’s always a risk that sub-bass heavy tracks may blow up the system. ?
Cutting the 30Hz range, when it’s not needed, removes the unnecessary frequencies and may clear up your mix nicely and gives a bit more headroom to raise the overall level of your whole mix.
But it’s really up to you and what you’re planning to do with your song. You may actually end up to not use the cutting eq at all.
Note about the high frequency cut: if you feel like it, you may also try to start rolling off the high frequencies already from 16kHz to reduce the occurance of ear aching high end on large PA systems.
Now, to the compression.
8. Fruity Compressor.
Fruity Compressor is a single band compressor and single band compressor is useful in mastering fx chain for leveling the dynamic-range variations in your mix. Compressor is great for “gluing” different sounds in the mix together to tighten up the mix. Fruity Limiter works as good (probably even better as you can SEE where the input signal is peaking so you can easily set a right threshold value) when you activate the compressor mode in it.
Let me explain the idea of compressor a bit more:
Basically, compressor is nothing more than a automated volume controller. The idea is pretty much the same like if you would try to manually tweak a volume controller in a response to the changing volume levels of your audio by trying to keep the overall volume level of the audio within a defined minimum and maximum range. With compressor, this all happens automatically: you can make the quieter parts in your mix louder and also make sure that the louder parts won’t cause clipping as the compressor reduces the gain of the peaks and you can set the threshold level where this is happening and how.
In a mastering situation, compression can be used to make your mix sound dynamically balanced.
Here’s the most common compressor controllers explained:
Couple of tips using single band compressor in a mastering situation: you might wan’t to try to use low ratio, long attack and release times for more transparent sounding results (transparent in this context means avoiding that squashed and pumpy sound… keeping the audio as original/natural sounding as possible).
Fl Studio How To Stop Recording Youtube
However, every mix is different so it’s IMPOSSIBLE to give any exact settings, but you can START experimenting with these:
If your mix starts to sound too squashed, try decreasing the Ratio. Experiment with different Threshold/Ratio combinations.
As a rule of thumb, use the compressor sparingly in a mastering situation to avoid squashing.
9. Fruity Multiband Compressor.
Multiband compressor is a great tool in mastering fx chain for fine tuning the volume levels in different frequency areas.
Let me explain the multiband compressor a bit: normal single band compressor (like Fruity Compressor and Fruity Limiter when the compressor mode is activated) affects to the WHOLE frequency band, but multiband compressor lets you apply the compression to a SPECIFIC frequency bands – in this case, low, mid and high. For each band, you can set the filter cutoff point. That means you can define what frequency areas the band compressors will affect.
Multiband compression is very handy tool in mastering because, if you wan’t to compress (control the volume behavior) of just the low frequency range, you can do that without affecting too much to the the mids and highs and vice versa. For example, if you have loud peaks somewhere in the low frequency area, you can attenuate these without reducing the gain of the mids and/or highs.
Basically, you could do this with an eq as well, but using multiband compressor here will give you a bit more different sounding results than eq – more “organic” or whatever the proper term is.
Here’s a quick introduction to different parameters in Fruity Multiband Compressor. Check the pic below (click to see it bigger):
What settings do I recommend to use with Fruity Multiband Compressor? Again, it’s impossible to give any recommendations as everything depends what kind of audio you are mastering. You can START with these though, but be cautious: these may NOT work at all with your mix (I actually feel a kind of dumb by recommending specific settings here…)!
LOW BAND:
MID BAND:
HIGH BAND:
Seriously, you need to learn to use your ears and let them judge what settings to use. ?
Now, to the boosting eq.
10. Fruity Parametric EQ 2 for BOOSTING.
This is the eq unit that comes AFTER the compression. If you wan’t to add a bit of brightness to the whole mix, try boosting frequencies around 8-15 kHz using peaking filter with a semi-broad bandwidth.
The boosting could’ve been done with multiband compressor gain controls as well, but the eq is here for even more precise control over the frequencies. Like I mentioned in the multiband compression section above, it will give a slight different results than eq when dealing with the frequency adjustements. Witcher 3 early game money.
11. Fruity Limiter.
Limiter is what you use for maximizing the volume of the whole mix without distortion and Fruity Limiter is pretty good for that. The purpose of a limiter in a mastering situation is to limit the output level to a defined maximum level (usually near to 0.0dB) to avoid clipping when you’re increasing the gain.
I’ll try to explain a bit how the limiter works:
Limiter is a close relative to compressor. It keeps the signal from going above a threshold value, just like compressor. If the peaks are trying to go above the threshold value, a gain reduction will occur.
However, in compressor, the gain reduction is applied in a more gentle way and it also affects to the quieter parts of the signal by making them louder, whereas limiter (at least brick-wall limiter) squashes the peaks that are trying to go above the threshold value and leave the quieter peaks alone. Limiters gain reduction is absolut and more aprubt than compressors. That’s the main difference.
In a limiter, you set the level above which the signal will be limited by using the output Ceiling. Usually it’s set to -0.3dB. Now when you start to increase the volume by using input Gain, the limiter will squash all the signal peaks that are trying to go above the -0.3dB. So the more you are trying to maximize the volume of your mix, the more squashed it will sound. Try to be gentle here by not destroying your mix ?
Some limiters like Fruity Limiter has the attack and release controls as well. Attack controls how quickly the limiter responds to the signal peaks. The Release controls how quickly the signal will “recover” from the limiting.
Here’s some of the most important Fruity Limiter settings introduced:
You can start with these settings, but remember that everything depends on the audio material you’re mastering:
Experiment with the input gain, but be gentle with it to avoid squashing your mix. You know you’re putting too much gain when the song is starting to sound like stressed or like it’s in great pressure. Try to find a balance between maximum possible loudness and not letting your mix to sound overly squashed.
12. Export the song once again to WAV using highest quality settings, except set the WAV bit depth to 16 bit as this is standard in mastering because you can’t burn 24 bit files to CD.
That’s it. Hopefully this tutorial gave you an idea what kind of tools you can use (and how to use them) to master a song in FL Studio.
However, I can’t stress enough that EVERYTHING starts from a good mix so it’s essential first to make things sound right and polished already in the mixing stage and not trying to use mastering to fix a clear mixing issues.
Also, mastering is not something you learn overnight. Personally, I’m always kind of struggling with it as well. It takes a lot of patience and trial and error, but experimenting is the best way to learn.
Remember also this: using compression in mastering isn’t necessity. If your song sounds good without compression, then don’t use it. It’s not something that is required for making a mix sound great. It’s just there to fix the dynamic range. Actually, EVERYTHING – be it eq, compressor or limiter – depends on the mix and what kind of sound you’re after for. Ask yourself: what do I want – and start from there.
And finally, download the FL Studio Mixer State file here.
Here’s how you load it to a mixer track.
Here’s an example song mastered with using this mixer state file. It’s one of my own songs.
First, the unmastered version:
https://howtomakeelectronicmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/audio/How-to-Master-a-Song-in-FL-Studio/Unmastered.mp3
And here’s the mastered version. It may be a slightly too much squashed, but anyway, compare the difference:
https://howtomakeelectronicmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/audio/How-to-Master-a-Song-in-FL-Studio/Mastered.mp3
Final tip: when you test this mixer state file of mine and you’re experiencing an overly squashed sound, firstly decrease the amount of input Gain in the Fruity Limiter as I’ve set it to pretty high.
For more about mastering, I suggest reading some of these articles:
What Is Mastering?
The Difference Between Mixing And Mastering How To Make Your Music Loud Using Compression Multi-band Workshop Advanced Compression Techniques, Part 1 Advanced Compression Techniques, Part 2
If you’re really serious about mastering your song to a professional level, using a mastering engineer is recommended. Check out some of these guys:
Ian Shepherd’s Mastering Media
Streaky Mastering SAS online mastering Pete Maher Tom Waltz Mastering
Ok. That’s about it. ?
Credits to Mo Volans tutorial, which I used as a reference to create this tutorial!
I hope this tutorial helped you to start mastering a song in FL Studio.
▲ up
▲ up
▲ up
▲ up
▲ up
▲ up
▲ up
▲ up
Categories
Arts & Humanities
Beauty & Style
Business & Finance
Cars & Transportation
Computers & Internet
Consumer Electronics
Education & Reference
Entertainment & Music
Family & Relationships
Food & Drink
Games & Recreation
Health
Home & Garden
Others
Pets
Politics & Government
Pregnancy & Parenting
Science & Mathematics
Society & Culture
Leader BoardWhat's this?
Although FL Studio has a deserved reputation for being an application that beginners can pick and start making music with quickly, experienced users will tell you that it can also be a deep and involved beast.So here’s a collection of tips that takes you below the surface and deals with some FL Studio features that you might not be familiar with, but once mastered will speed up and improve your workflow.
1. The secret volume control
A channel’s volume can be automated in the piano roll by right-clicking the grey box under the keyboard and selecting Channel volume. This is useful for adding tremolo and subtle variations in levels, which isn’t easily doable using note velocities. It’s also great for adding an organic feel to a phrase. A consequence of automating the volume in this way, though, is that it adjusts the channel’s Volume knob in the step sequencer, which can be an issue when mixing. A good fix is to use the Volume Multiplier knob in the Misc tab of the Channel Settings window to set the level before it gets to the Mixer.
2. Split and merge patterns
Patterns that contain notes on multiple channels can be split by channel, making it easy to build variations on a single pattern without having to clone it and edit the piano roll for each one. In the step sequencer, click the pattern selector and select Split by channel on the right. All of the notes and automation for each channel will appear in new patterns, named after each channel, stacked on top of each other in the Playlist. Patterns can be merged by selecting them in the Playlist and clicking Edit»Merge pattern clips in the Playlist options. Only the selected patterns will be merged – other instances of the selected patterns will stay as they are.
3. Dumping the score log
How often do you find yourself playing something really awesome on your MIDI controller and wishing you’d had Record engaged (or a better memory)? Even when not recording, FL Studio remembers all of the incoming MIDI notes from the last five minutes or so. To get that great riff back, go into an empty pattern and select “Dump Score Log To Selected Channel” from the Tools menu. Those MIDI notes will magically appear!
4. Set snapshots in the Browser
The Browser can be organised by snapshots – specific locations accessible via number keys 1 to 5. To set up a snapshot, navigate to the location in the Browser that you want easy access to and click the Current Snapshot dropdown menu, next to the Browser label. Choose the number key you want to associate with this location and click that snapshot. You can also rename and freeze the snapshot. When you want to navigate to that location in the Browser, press the associated number key while the Browser is in focus.
5. Scale automation clips
Automation clips can have their minimum and maximum values scaled, enabling you to edit the depth of the automation without going through and tweaking each point in the clip. In the Channel Settings window of the automation clip, the MIN and MAX knobs at the top will adjust the range of the automation clip. To the right of these knobs, the Timestretch knob can be used to adjust the clip’s timing and length.
6. Scale note properties
In the piano roll, the velocity levels or other parameters of the currently selected notes can be scaled by pressing Alt+X. This affords you a lot of flexibility when it comes to adjusting note properties and can be very useful when a number of notes are too loud or too soft and you want to make them fit better without sacrificing their relative levels.
7. Zoom in closer
To set the resolution of FL Studio’s sequencer, select the project’s General settings from the main Options menu and change the Timebase (PPQ) value. Higher values will enable you to zoom in closer on notes and draw smaller ones more accurately, as well as being able to adjust the start and end points of the notes to a finer resolution.
8. Slice up pattern clips
Pattern clips in the Playlist can be sliced and rearranged. Using the Slicer tool (C), click and drag across a clip, or hold Shift and click to slice without dragging. The new sections of the clip can be moved around as you see fit. Be careful when slicing a pattern: any notes that start before the slice will be omitted from the resulting piece. The slip tool (S) can come in handy for remedying this.
9. Metronome customisation
To change the level of the metronome and the audio preview in the Browser, go into the Audio Settings window – which is accessed from the Options menu – and select a Mixer track with the Preview Mixer track selector. Now you can stay on beat to the sound of a less annoying tone.
10. Smooth event editing
To quickly edit events smoothly in the piano roll or the event editor, enable Auto smoothing in the piano roll’s Options menu and edit the events with the pencil tool. Then set Snap to Step and draw in your automation. Once that’s done, FL Studio will make the events smooth and rounded, rather than jerky and broken.
11.Snap to events
At the bottom of the Snap to grid menu in both the piano roll and the Playlist is the Snap To Events option. With this enabled, notes and clips won’t snap to anything except the start and end points of pre-existing notes or clips. When the note or clip is at a point at which it will snap to another one, the other notes or clips will be coloured purple. This can be useful when you want to add notes to a phrase that isn’t strictly quantized without them overlapping, or when slicing audio in the Playlist.
Original source: here.
Blips, pops, clicks, and crackling are the terrorists of the music production world. They lay hidden and silent in the mix, striking with explosive and unexpected fury to decimate the eardrums of anyone unfortunate enough to hear them. As irritating as they are though, you will not need to invade a country to fix them. They’re relatively easy to understand and fix in FL Studio, and this quick tutorial will show you how.
What Causes Crackling and Popping?
Blips, pops, clicks, and crackles are caused by two things that are overloading your computers processor:
If it’s caused by a very fast change somewhere in your mix, you can pinpoint where the problem is by simply playing your track and looking for samples, automation clips, or plugin envelopes at those points in time at which you’re hearing the glitch.
If it’s caused by the buffer underrun situation, it’s pretty easy to identify. It sounds like Megatron dumping Rice Krispies into a jet engine, and it can happen throughout the entire track if the buffer is set very low, or just for the parts that have a lot going on if the buffer size is decent, but just not enough.
Once you determine which one it is, you can remedy the problem accordingly.
Bad Samples
With samples, you will experience this glitch when the sample volume starts at a non-zero value and goes from zero to non-zero instantaneously. This creates a slope of infinity in the volume parameter and gives your computer’s processor a brain freeze, resulting in a pop, blip, click, or crackle at that point in time. http://www.synapticsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pattern-1_18.wav
For this example, I took a stock FL Studio SFX sample called FX Blackhole and edited it in Edison so that it no longer starts at zero volume. Here is what it sounds like:
We can hear the blood-curdling pop at the beginning as a result of the poor editing I did. Now lets see what it actually looks like in Edison.
At this level of zoom, everything looks normal and fine. Now lets zoom in very close on the beginning of the sample waveform and see what’s going on.
We can see at the very beginning, on the left-hand side, the sample starts at a non-zero value in the middle of a peak in the waveform. This results in an infinite slope and some crackling. To fix this, we need to declick the sample, which just means we’ll make our sample start at zero volume.
How to Declick a Sample
First, go to your Mixer, select a random Mixer track, and add Edison to the processor chain.
Once you have Edison open, navigate to your Channel rack or Playlist and click and drag the faulty sample into Edison. In Edison, zoom in close to the beginning, select a few cycles of the sample waveform, and then hit the “Fade in/declick in” button on the top toolbar in your Edison window. It looks like a ramp, labeled “1” below.
We can see the sample starts at zero now and gradually slopes up. It’s important that we don’t declick too much of the sample. This will end up making it sound too different from the original. We want to slope just enough to get rid of the clicking without excessively modifying the attack time. Usually 5 or 6 waveform cycles will do. Here’s what the declicked FX Blackhole sample sounds like:
http://www.synapticsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pattern-1_18-declicked.wav
Now we need to replace the old sample with the declicked one. Deselect your declicked sample clip by double-clicking anywhere in the Edison window. You can either click and drag the “Drag/copy sample/selection” button to your Channel rack, or just click the “Send to playlist as audio clip/to channel” button to send it to the Playlist as audio. Both of these are labeled “2” above. All that’s left to do now is to replace all of the instances of your old sample with the declicked one in either your Playlist or Step sequencer/Piano roll.
Bad Automation Clip & Envelope Design
The same concept of infinite slope applies for automation clips and plugin envelopes. The instantaneous step change confuses the processor very briefly, and you hear a crackle.
Fl Studio Recording Software
I programmed a Sytrus saw synth pattern to play a few notes along with automation clips that control the synth mixer track volume and the mix level of a low-pass filter in the signal processor chain.
Looking at the clip and pattern arrangement in the Playlist, we can see the sharp vertical changes in clip levels at the end of each saw tooth. You can hear the resulting bruxism-inducing pops below:
http://www.synapticsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/bad-clips.wav
There are a few ways to fix this type of problem, but we’ll cover the quick and easy one for now. Again, we just need to smooth out the automation clip transitions so the clip level changes aren’t as abrupt. Just click the automation clip channel in the Channel rack, and then the wrench on the left side of the new window. Then click “Smooth up abrupt changes” in the menu.
I did this for both automation clips. We can see there is now a slight slope at the beginning of each saw tooth and the blips have been reduced significantly. Not perfect, but OK for a quick simple fix. I’ll cover the more complex techniques in a later post.
http://www.synapticsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/good-clips.wav
Buffer Underruns
The crackling and popping issue caused by buffer size is slightly different. A buffer in computing is like a bin where data collects while in transit between two places in a computer. For us, data is being sent from FL Studio to our CPU for processing. After being processed, it collects in a buffer, and the sound card/audio interface pulls from the buffer and converts the data to an analog signal for your speakers to use.
Buffering is useful for handling large spikes in data processing demand from FL Studio. If the processor can’t process and feed data to the buffer fast enough, it’s got some “backup” information waiting in the buffer for the sound card to continue to pull from while it’s hashing out the 50+ different things you’ve got going on in your song. If the buffer size is too small, it empties too quickly under high CPU load and the sound card flips out. This is called a buffer underrun, and it’s what causes our snaps, crackles, and pops. So to fix that, we increase the buffer size.
Adjusting Buffer Length
First, navigate to Audio settings located under the Options tab at the top left of your FL Studio user interface.
Once there, you will either see a slider labeled Buffer length or a button displaying the current buffer length setting and “Go to ASIO panel” if you are using an ASIO driver.
If you’ve got the slider, play your track and increase the buffer length until your buffer underruns counter stops increasing. You may want to go a little further just to be safe.
If you’re using an ASIO driver, just click the “Go to ASIO panel” and adjust the buffer size from there. You may need to access the ASIO panel by clicking one of the small icons in your Windows toolbar. It may take a couple rounds of trial and error to set the proper buffer size for your specific hardware setup.
Latency
Worth adding to this is a word or two about latency. Latency is the time it takes for all of the above to take place from FL Studio to your monitors. A larger buffer size will increase the latency. You’ll notice that as you increase the buffer size, you’ll experience a lag that’s very noticeable in your user interface graphics and audio. The rule of thumb is to keep your latency less than 10 ms. If you’re serious about producing and you can’t get your latency below 10 ms without causing buffer underruns, it may be time for a hardware (CPU) upgrade.
Fl Studio Recording Delay
That’s it for today. If you liked this 100% free FL Studio tutorial, let me know what else you’d like me to cover in the comments, on the Synaptic Sound Facebook page, or YouTube channel!
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |