Works great, but not for me.

I bought FL Studio (I believe producer edition) back in 2025 so I can fully pursue my music & production career. Having used it since around 2022, I gotta say, I'm not as big of a fan of it as I was back in 2025. I do a lot of Rock music with a ton of sampling. For recording, FL Studio is not my go to. But if I need to use software instruments or edit audio clips, it works perfect for me. It's much more user friendly than most DAWs which is something I do like about it.

My all time go DAW

FL studio is quite simple & user friendly DAW compared to any other DAWs out there. Top notch producers like martin garrix & afrojack are using FL studio! So don't just believe that FL studio is for newbies only.

Coming to its user interface part and workflow, it is easy to understand and you can work as fast as you want when creativity strikes your mind.

I have been using FL studio since FL studio 10. What changes I have observed is that it has evolved to make banger music as quickly as possible with reduced cpu usage! This is game changing for me because no one likes their cpu usage hitting 100 % while producing. Each new release has improved FL studio in a quite unique way but still it needs a lot of improvement.

So before you buy FL studio or any other DAW, keep in mind to go for DAW which is compatible with YOU! I like to draw my creative ideas quickly in piano roll, but I find it hard in Ableton piano roll compared to FL piano roll. So again telling DAW which is compatible with you!

So what after choosing the best DAW? Yes, your operating system and its capability. I am using FL studio on windows 10 with 8 GB RAM, dual core i5 7th gen Laptop. But what I have figured out is that when using some big VSTs (Kontakt, Massive, Serum etc) with multi layer stacking, my CPU usage skyrocketed to 80-90% resulting in lagging my production process. This is frustrating because nobody wants their creative process to get disturbed by such issues. So my suggestion will be to go for 16 GB of RAM with octa core processor to go for smooth production. Of course you can consolidate tracks to reduce cpu usage but still, it requires time for rendering which I personally don't like to keep on doing for every track.

FL studio got some impressive stock plugins like harmor, sytrus, maximus and Fast dist which are very handy while producing on FL studio. Even if you are producing music of a specific genre, both stock generator plugins and effect plugins can make your workflow faster. No need for any 3rd party plugins unless and until you need some specific effect or sound from 3rd party plugins.

On the other side of the coin, FL studio has its own drawbacks when you compare it to a bunch of top notch DAWs. Major one is you can't freeze track as you can do in ableton live. It's pretty easy in ableton to freeze track to reduce cpu usage when you are working with some cpu eating VSTs. When you are going to stack layers (not all the time!) to get rich and thicker sound in FL studio, you have to consolidate your tracks to reduce cpu damage.

Anyway, If one asks me to choose a DAW for music production, I will certainly go with FL studio! Because it is a DAW which is compatible with me and vice versa!

A Great DAW, and You Keep It Forever

FL Studio has been my go-to DAW for years, and I honestly can’t recommend it enough. As someone who started as a beginner, I’ve found its interface super intuitive, which made it easy to dive in and start creating right away. The piano roll, mixer, and plugins are all incredibly powerful and flexible, allowing me to bring any idea to life. What I love most is the lifetime free updates—once you buy it, it’s yours forever, no need to worry about paying for upgrades down the line. For me, that makes it a fantastic investment. Whether I’m making beats or full tracks, FL Studio has always been reliable and constantly evolves with me as a producer.

A huge upgrade compared to my first DAW (LMMS) but I soon grew out of it

One of the first friends I ever made on the internet encouraged me to buy this and it was a great choice at the time I learned a lot through FL's user friendly piano roll, playlist/pattern based UI, and simple controller integration.

I would have never switched if I hadn't started investing in vintage sound modules. FL didn't integrate too well with external sound modules: - the recording process was primitive and I didn't like it. - I/O setup is also quite primitive. (Compared to Cubase or Studio One) - It didn't support midi spec very well either which gave me some issues with collaborators and clients when they'd share .mid files with me and they needed it to playback accurately or certain CCs they wanted me to work with (pitchbend for example) would be skewed and/or certain curves wouldn't playback accurately on my end but in other DAWs like Cubase, Reaper or Studio One it would sound how it should.

I say all this to say this is one of the easiest to use DAWs for a digital music producer (very easy to optimize for that setup) and it is servicable for hardware recordings but only if all of your collaborators use FL Studio so you can share fl project files instead of .mid files.

Preferred Settings + Usage:

Good DAW

I enjoy the workflow of the DAW. Didn't take long to learn how to use it and I really like the channel rack. The browser having the ability to link your drum sounds is also amazing. I can just type the drum kit I'm looking for, and quickly assemble my drum sounds in the channel rack.

Keeps Getting Better

FL was my first ever DAW I bought with my own money, as the entry price was actually affordable enough. I used to think the list of effect plugins wasn't extensive enough after trying other DAWs, but that has since changed with the recently added effects, most of which are included for completely free.

I also cannot emphasise enough how big of a deal lifetime free updates are. Having to buy Ableton Live AGAIN, just because a new version is torture, its insanity.

To summarize, as the kids say - It's the GOAT

Great sequencer but weird DAW

It is almost perfect for electronic music. Very user-friendly interface, huge stock plugin base and a large amount of tutorials make it very easy to use. But when you try to use it as a recording DAW, it starts to be uncomfortable and frustrating. But still usable, so yeah.

my favorite

it's been here since the beginning.

if i had everything i ever wanted, such as even a casio fz-1, i'd still use fl studio for all my work. i ain't ever getting rid of it.

kthxbai >w<

Preferred Settings + Usage:

Awesome

I'll try to be as helpful as I can to anyone reading this review, however I've only been using FL 10 & 11 scarcely in the span of the last three years; I don't know the complete ins and outs of this product. However, I must say that FL 12 is a serious step up from the previous version. With the unlockage of plugins like Sytrus and Maximus, literally anything is possible to produce now. I started out with the Fruity Edition of FL 10, which needless to say, is extremely difficult to produce with and terrifyingly limited. Seriously, my upgrade to Producer Edition made me cry after finally having the ability to make as many automation clips as I pleased, and to add wave files directly onto the playlist, so much easier than placing audio into FL's built-in sampler.

In my experience with FL 12, everything is much more visually appealing, it looks very sleek, very beautiful. Everything is "vectorial based," or so I've heard, meaning you can stretch the resolution of the program to just about any resolution you want. You can even have multi-monitor set ups and large screen portrayals. I think the limit is like 1200 screens. Seriously. You can have FL run on one master screen, and still show up vectorially on 1000 other monitors. That's crazy, and probably makes for some cool visuals at EDM festivals and whatnot.

I've also found that the audio is a bit more noticeable when you click on a track, not when you solo it, which adds for a nice groove to the parts you're singling out in your track, but leads to poor mixdown ability on the behalf of the producer. It forces you to click on the master track to get an accurate read of where all your instruments sit in the mix. Of course, maybe this has always been the case in FL, but I haven't noticed it until I downloaded my free upgrade to 12.

That's another thing, once you buy the software, any software from Image-Line, it's always yours. Your upgrades from one FL Version to another are always free, and the plugins that you have bought in the past always stay with you and your upgrade. That's a HUGE plus because some DAWs and plugins out there require you to pay a bit of money in order to upgrade which really hinders your ability to work on something that sounds fresh and sweet, in my opinion because you're too busy trying to work and save money to buy the next upgrade. I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to settle for not-up-to-date software, but with Image-Line you won't have to. And it's never going away is the best part. When FL 997 comes out, it'll be all mine for free, because I paid for the Producer Edition of FL 11. SCORE!

This is really a huge piece of software not for the simple-minded. This isn't a toy, it's a tool. It is incredibly powerful, and constantly challenges you. Even when you're going through bouts of creativity block or just pure laziness, you'll always find something to be uncovered or treasured within this software. It's performance mode is phenomenal. It's ability to work on your tablet and your monitor is flawless and ingenious. This will always be my go-to product for anyone trying to get started with Audio Production because this software will show you just how grueling, tedious, but also rewarding and enticing making music can be.

The best DAW. Period.

I know I wrote a great review about Bitwig the other day, but FL Studio is the DAW is started with. Yes, I use other DAWs sometimes (Bitwig, Live), and yes, I've downloaded and then uninstalled like 5-6 more DAWs (like Studio One & Reason). I think I've tried everything (except Logic because I don't have a Mac), but I always come back to FL Studio.

Where should I start? Automation, piano roll, stock plugins, 32-bit VST support, more demo projects than every other DAW, easy UI for beginners, great and huge community, lifetime free updates and so on. Sure, it also has some cons, but the pros outweigh them, plus many major artists like Martin Garrix, Brooks, Jonas Aden, Mesto, Jay Hardway and Madeon use it. I would include more, but I have to keep my review concise, so check this link for more artists using FL Studio: https://www.image-line.com/artists/.

Now, everyone has their prefferred DAW, for various reasons, but for me it's FL Studio. Nothing else feels like home.

(For those still wondering about Bitwig: yes I use it, but not as much as FL as I'm less used to it.)