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At 6/9/10 03:50 PM, Onilink69 wrote: I am actually going to start using FL studio soon and I'm glad that I found this thread. Anyone have any beginner tips just to keep in mind?

Here are some tutorials and stuff to help you out:

http://www.flstudio-tutorials.com/tutori als.php - great tutorial for beginners.

http://flstudio.image-line.com/help/ - the official manual for FL Studio. Not good for beginners, but good if you want to look for something specific.

http://nucleocide.net/tutorials-fl_studi o-fl_studio_mixer.htm - a brief but useful definition of FL Studio's mixer and its capabilities.

http://blackhole12.deviantart.com/art/Sy trus-Synth-Creation-Part-1-75704794 - An in depth, easy to comprehend, 7 part tutorial by Blackhole12 on how to make synths with FL Studio's Sytrus plugin.

http://www.blackspherestudios.com/submis sion.php5?id=359 - An intermediate guide on how to use FL Studio's Parametric EQ and FL Spectroman by Blackhole12 as well.

Plus, you can get more audio help over here, and if you need to ask any specific question, feel free to PM me :).

Before I start, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE read through all of this. It's not a TL;DR, I desperately need help.

Something is terribly wrong. I posted this question in the last page (I think) and didn't get an answer, so I'm reposting it except with much more details.

So, I open up FL Studio. Everything is working perfectly. I add VST after VST, and still everything is fine. No sticking at all; sure a few mess ups and glitches by East/West Symphonic Orchestra, but that's normal, and other than that, everything is fine.

I reach a climatic part of the song I'm making where there are like 4 different instruments playing at the same time. Suddenly, FL Studio switches to retarded mode. Now to explain exactly what 'retarded mode' is...

From when it was working perfectly fine, it's suddenly sticking like HELL. I can barely move my mouse properly since it laggs so much, and when I press play, the song plays really slowly, and you can see the time slider of the playlist moving very slowly and even taking a few steps back now and again. I can barely hear the instruments properly since they're drowned by a wave of 'grainy' static and loads of lagging. Everything is moving really slowly and lagging. Doing something simple which usually takes me 5 seconds takes me half a minute.

Then, after around 20-30 seconds of eternal lagging, FL Studio is PERFECTLY fine, if not BETTER than it was before it turned into retarded mode. Everything is playing smoothly and beautifully, and there are no laggs at all. I can work extremely efficiently and everything is working like a charm. I put my hopes up.

5 seconds later, kaboom, back to the eternal lagging for 20-30 seconds, and then the smooth and perfect running for 5 seconds, etc etc etc...

When I notice my CPU meter, I see it going to like 80-85% when it's in eternal lagg, and around 20-30% when FL's running really well. So, a recap:

1.) I open FL, everything works fine.
2.) I keep adding VST's, therefore increasing the amount of CPU FL takes, but it still works fine.
3.) Suddenly, when my song reaches a CPU-intensive part with many VST's playing at the same time, it turns into retarded mode.
4.) It laggs terribly for about 20-30 seconds.
5.) It runs very smoothly after that for around 5 seconds.
6.) Repeats steps 4 and 5 until I close FL Studio.
7.) When I open FL again and go to the same project, it works fine until it reaches a CPU-intensive part again and then it turns back into retarded mode.

I've never really done anything in particular which might have triggered this strange phenomenon. I had upgraded to FL9 a few months ago, but when I upgraded, everything was still working great if not better than when I was using FL8. Around a month ago or so, this started to happen, and I didn't install any new things (which might have given me any viruses) or did anything different than what I usually used to do.

Things I've tried:
* Using FL8 instead of FL9 and going to a CPU-intensive part. Same story, although even more grainy and staticy and even worse on FL8...
* Increasing AND decreasing my Buffer Size on ASIO4ALL.
* Un-ticking any unnecessary options and minimizing sound quality to Linear to maximize performance.
* Closing all programs except FL and ending all processes which I don't need.
* Not using East/West Symphonic Orchestra but using other VST's instead.
* Full virus scan on a daily-updated antivirus (AVG Internet Security).

Specs:
* 3.25 GB RAM.
* 1.15 TB space, and a bit over 1 TB space left.
* 3.17 GHz Uniprocessor.
* Microsoft Windows XP Version 2002 Service Pack 3.
* FL Studio 9 XXL Producer's Edition.
* ASIO4ALL latest version.
* East/West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Silver.

Things to note:
* When in retarded mode (i.e. 20-30 seconds of lagg then 5 seconds of perfect running, etc) FL Studio takes longer in lagging on more CPU intensive songs. 20-30 seconds is just an average. On songs which aren't so CPU-intensive, when FL is in retarded mode it spends only like 10 seconds lagging and then 5 seconds or so of smooth running, but sometimes the lagging can reach up to 30 or 40 seconds on really CPU-intensive songs.
* I haven't updated my OS for over 7 years. I can't update it since when we bought XP, the people we bought it from ripped us off and gave us a non-legitimate copy of XP, which means no updating or it'll recognise XP is not genuine, refuse to update, and furthermore retard-ate my computer.
* This probably doesn't have to do with bad system specifications. I had the same system specifications 2 months ago and FL was working fine at the time without any retarded-modes, even when it played very CPU-intensive parts of my songs.
* I don't know if this is a problem with FL Studio or my computer, although the dreaded retarded mode seems to happen only in FL.
* When FL goes into retarded mode, it can never go back into normal mode until I close FL and open it again.
* The difference between normal mode and retarded mode is that in normal mode everything runs smoothly, and in retarded mode, everything runs smoothly for 5 seconds before lagging badly for 20-30 seconds and keeps on doing that until I close FL.

Please, I've given all the information I can give, and I REALLY would like this to be fixed. I have a number of different deadlines to reach for making certain music, and this problem is making me take 4 or 5 times as long as I should to finish a song. If anyone could help me out, I'll be forever indebted to this person.

If you need to ask any questions, feel free to ask, maybe I didn't explain something clearly enough. If you want, I can record what happens on my mobile as a video so you could see for yourself.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far, and please help me out T_T.

At 6/10/10 12:38 PM, InvisibleObserver wrote: Does this issue occur with any other software you have?

No, although FL Studio is my most CPU-intensive program.

Are you using Z3ta either as an effect in a mixer channel, or as an instrument?

No. Sytrus, Hypersonic, East/West Symphonic Orchestra Silver, Virtual Guitarist and drum samples were the only things I used ever since this problem started happening.

Are you using any bit crushers within the song?

Nope. Actually, in some of the songs, I only used the mixer for a bit of reverb, and I've never actually used a bit crusher before.

Are there any specific samples, instruments, or automatons being triggered that sync to the "retard mode" beginning?

No. In a classical song with strings, piano, guitar and drums, it went into retarded mode, and similarly, in a techno song with synths, sounds and effects, it also went into retarded mode.

I think it depends more on when a song reaches a CPU-intensive part for it to go to retarded mode, rather than what instruments, sounds or effects it uses.

Does it consistently and predictably occur?

Consistent and fairly predictable. There hasn't been a decent song I've made ever since this problem started happening which didn't go into retarded mode at one point, and by fairly predictable, I mean that I'm quite sure that when a song reaches a certain CPU-intensive part in a song, it turns into retarded mode.

In fact, to test whether the same problem happens in FL8, I deliberately played 6-note chords with East/West Symphonic Orchestra strings, since I knew that if FL8 would ever turn into retarded mode, it'd be because I'd have such huge CPU-intensive chords. It did in fact become retarded :/.

At 6/10/10 12:50 PM, InvisibleObserver wrote: What sort of settings do you have set here? If you have varied sound drivers available, cycle through them and see if anything performs more adequately.

When I try and use the Primary Sound Driver or the Realtek driver, they're even worse than ASIO. Their retarded mode is different from ASIO's though. The other drivers just lagg less in the less CPU-intensive parts and much much more in the normal or high CPU-intensive parts. Static all over the place and extreme lagging, probably even worse than ASIO's lagging.

Does FL register the lagging as under-runs or not?

When the Priority is set to highest, it does register a few, but when set to High or Normal, it registers around 40 underruns per second, and after around 10-15 seconds, it reaches 2000 under-runs or so.

Settings:

At 6/10/10 01:07 PM, InvisibleObserver wrote: Is your soundcard integrated / a piece of crap?

Integrated and a piece of crap, although I had the same soundcard when this retarded problem hadn't come up yet and it still worked fine.

At 6/10/10 01:42 PM, B0UNC3 wrote: A4A tends to rape your entire system whenever the buffer overloads (processing power, affects the whole pc).
Is it full duplex or not?

I got Asio4All from here, although I really suck at this kind of stuff so I don't know how to check if it's full or half duplex :C.

Does this insane lag happen if you'd set the buffer to 8k samples?

Asio4All only reaches around 2.5k samples; if I use the other drivers which can reach 8k samples they lag insanely and even worse than with Asio4All no matter how high I set the buffer.

Also is the lag as extreme if you run everything with multithreading enabled?

I don't think so. When I have multithreading enabled, I think it takes a more CPU-intensive part for it to turn into retarded mode, but once it's turned into retarded mode, it's just as bad as if I have multithreading disabled.

At 6/13/10 07:38 PM, kniknoo wrote: Is visual smoothing off?

Yes.

No wave candy?

Nope, no wave candy.

Intense dynamic effect on the master? (Soundgoodizer, Maximus, Parametric EQ2)

The only effects I've ever had on the master are Fruity Reeverb and Edison, and I rarely do anyway :(.

Run the Auto-disable then re-enable for delays, reverbs, or synths with a long release. VST Sample your Sytrus into Direct Wave, or freeze it.

Sorry, don't know how to do those. I'm no expert :P. But note that in one of the FLP's, I only used East/West Symphonic Orchestra and drum samples, but the problem is still there, so I don't think Sytrus is messing something up.

Try using extended memory mode if you have 3gigs of RAM.

Hm, I have 3.25 GB of RAM but when I use extended memory it's worse. Instead of lagging for like 20 seconds and then working fine for around 5 seconds, it just keeps on lagging without working fine.

Note that I have a CD with Windows 7 that I've been meaning to install. Do you think the new OS might fix the problem?