Ableton Live or FL Studio? 🧐 Let me know!

Speaking of Lifetime Free Updates I bought FL Studio 4 almost 20 years ago, and today I own FL Studio 20. It was worth it.

It would be game over if Image Line and Ableton came together for a project and did a variant DAW and called it Able Loops.

With the exception of the piano roll (FL Studio has the best piano roll by far) - Ableton is my choice having worked with both. Ableton has such a great interface for creative workflow. However, once I am done with the creative parts, I mix in Cubase. No one DAW does it all.

I recommend getting the trials to a few daws and just seeing what feels natural at first. Once you learn one you can easily apply those skills to another. Personally I recommend fl to visual learners, and ableton to someone who values simplicity but they both can do the same things at the end of the day.

This is by far the most balanced comparison video I've ever seen. Most guys have a very biased opinio caused they've used one DAw for years, while the other they've tried for 30 days and suddenly they're gurus...

Ive been using fl and Ableton for 5 years and 4 years, respectively. and I can say that the quality of my production has gone up significantly after using Ableton. There are too many unnecessary things in FL Studio and some of the things are too distracting. AND THE AMOUNT OF WINDOWS YOU HAVE TO OPEN. Plus FL is really bad with CPU management. To run 4 instances of Serum with 32 Voices, FL was glitching, DESPITE THE BUFFER SIZE SET TO MAX. Meanwhile, Ableton handles it like a pro and my cpu usage was only 10%. The only place where fl takes the win is with its plugins. Stuff like Flex, Soundgoodizer, Harmor, Vocodex are the real gems. Other than that, Ableton wins by a MILE.

im still learning Abelton but im FLstudio for life..love Image-Line and there update policy

You don't actually have to live with the floating windows, you can resize, move and edge-snap them into whatever layout you want, even something more traditional with the mixer on the bottom half and playlist on the top half. You can also customize the top bar (I recommend removing the second row), add new tabs to the browser, make all plugins show over other windows, and most importantly - assign playlist tracks to the channel rack (instrument tracks) or the mixer (audio tracks). Am I the only one who did these things?! I would have never picked up FL Studio if I had to keep reopening windows like everyone on KZfaq seems to do.

I’ve been an Ableton user for almost 10 years now, but before using Ableton I bought a copy of FL Studio because it was cheap and my friend at the time was using it Despite being an Ableton user, I do absolutely love the fact that I can just download FL Studio at anytime and my license from a decade ago still grants me their latest software. I love having that in my back pocket whenever I need it. FL is a pretty sexy DAW tbh haha. Love that you can even have a background pic (behind all them windows, that is lol)

Fl Studio windows are not a problem for me. I have the mixer, channel rack, pop out search bar and playlist on screen all at once. This is saved as a template also, so the only windows which open up and close is the piano roll and plugins, that's it. In my template I even have spectrum analyzer visible at all times in the bottom right 😎

👑 👑 Ableton Live is the GOAT for these reasons: -Session View -Effects Rack and Chain Selector (this alone is enough) -Drum Rack (this alone is enough) -Dummy Clips/Momentary Effects -Simpler and all other Sampling Features -Warping -Create-Listen Feature -Browser Sidebar (can literally pull a track, a vocal, an instrument, anything out of another project via drag and drop...In --Real Time without ever stopping the project you're presently working on 🔥🔥 🔥🔥) ...do I really need to keep going??

I actually wish I went with abelton later on after I made my FL Studio purchase. All the windows and stuff clutter real quick and as a beginner it's hard to manage all those tabs and keep them cohesive with each other. So many different shortcuts and options that it gets overwhelming really fast. I like the clean look and feel of abelton.

Yes, Ableton Piano Roll need to improve for smooth work flow. But it's ok for me. I love Ableton Live too much❤️👍🙏.

I used FL for 5 years and Ableton for 5 months. The piano roll is ass in Ableton but 11 and LES makes it more tolerable and honestly I don’t think imma ever go back to FL 😂 the sampling in Ableton is god tier and the search is so much better and other stuff

LIVE WINS. But since I started using FL Studio, I fell in love with the interface which is so familiar, the pattern usage and it's easy to use overall. I think FL is more user wise. However, if you get into Live, you can become an audio scientific, thing's like a laboratory and a lot more complex. Live can change sounds into other sounds all by itself.

FL LIFE TIME OF FREE UPDATES!!!... no brainier :0)

Used Fl for about 4 years (first Daw) and it took me forever to learn the basics but the large community helped a lot. Switched one year ago because I hate the short cuts and windows management of Fl to Reason 11. I didn‘t want to change at first because all Daws do the same stuff but changing was huge for my motivation and music. Love Reason, great shortcuts, VSTs, and the cable routing is fantastic. I also own a copy of Ableton Live Lite but I never got into a really fast workflow and I don’t like the Shortcuts compared to Reason. It is a personal preference at the and I would suggest to try out the trial version if you want to change. If you are a beginner I would suggest to pick one and stick with it no matter what to learn the basics.

Like 2 minutes in and you've solved the issues I was having. I didn't realize that box for showing what was going on was there, I didn't

For mixer routing in FL all you really need to do is scroll the "track" number in the channel rack. Of course, you'll then have to rename the track in the mixer if you wanna stay organized but FL has multiple ways of doing the same thing. For instance, you can right-click an empty mixer track and route any selected channel in the channel rack to it, which is my go-to method.

If you take the price into account and the updates, FL is a winner. However, as a DAW, I still believe ableton is superior for many reasons like simpler workflow, better CPU performances (the main reason I switched), looper, follow actions, sample editing light years ahead of FL, better project structure and maintenability (nesting), comping (which is a huge time saver when recording), better effect system and much more. Now that I have ableton, I am never going back to FL :) only thing I don't like is it's complicated to learn, it's ugly and it's slow to start up.

I cannot work as fast with Live, but I really love all of the stock plugins on there and how they fit so nicely with the interface. The instrument rack is also a major selling point for me, but the one thing that absolutely kills it for me, is the fact that hardstyle kick pitching just cannot be done with Live's atrocious timestretch algorithms.

i'm Fl studios, but i'm learning ableton. FL studios piano roll is great. Ableton work flow is great, only caveat is the piano roll is not FL studios piano ROLL. lols

fl studio, if you add a mashine becomes unstoppable because you now have a propper looper/recorder. the parametric eq and compressor/expander (maximus) on fl studio is the best ive ever used. nobody can say image line didn't nail those plugins.

Im an Ableton guy, after spending a long time in logic and then a few years in FL and Reaper, before finally getting ableton around the live 11 drop. I think they are all great, the truth is they have strength and weaknesses. The great part about them all is they have reasonable trials or budget versions, id try them all out and see what works best. I still wish I would have tried ableton first but i can say being comfortable in multiple daws also helps a lot. I find myself opening FL for their amazing MIDI roll just to export the midi into ableton. Now thats not a great reason to buy both but since ive ended up here I can say Ive found uses for both.

At the end of the day it shouldn’t matter which DAW you use. It’s all about getting your ideas out in the world.

FL studio is much more visually appealing and inviting to spend time in... It's very important for the creative process. Ableton looks dry, cold and minimalistic. Almost like work, not play... More suitable for engineers or something like that.

I've been using FL for the better part of 20 years. I love it, I've tried other daws, nothing ever stuck w me. Image line has my loyalty 😅😅

I just installed and activate my Ableton Daw today spent hours understanding it but I think FL Studio is awesome and simple . But I intend on working in Both DAWs despite I'm a FL gang.

Love the fact that FL studio can do 100% of your imagination

Very good video! I'll add one thing, and that's just that FL studio has it's own max for live style system in it's "Patcher" plugin, It's a little harder to use, and It's definitely slower in terms of pumping out a useable plugin, however the amount of control you can have with a patcher plugin is unparalleled. Overall I still use both, FL has been my "go-to" for years so whenever I want to mess around and fiddle with sounds to get inspired to make something, It will always start in FL and after all the sound design, I'll bounce some of the elements into Ableton for some case uses that are handled better in Ableton. For instance Ableton's sampler is just so much faster at stretching and tuning, and If I just need to mess around with the timing and pitch of a vox I want running in FL, for my workflow it's honestly quicker to export the vox stem, pop it in ableton and mess around with it, bounce it back to FL and go. I feel like if Audio was NASA shit, the Astronauts would be running Ableton in the spaceship for the launch, while Command would be on FL running the fucking obnoxious amount of plugin windows across 30 monitors as to not clutter space. YES more control, but at the expense of not going to space and watching the astronauts fly while you're stuck behind a billion panels of information. Is this analogy falling apart?... Probably...

Very nice comparison, high detail, not biased and easy to follow. I have only one thing to mention,In FL Studio the delete button, delete not backslash, actually does delete stuff, but only selected notes inside the piano roll 😅 besides that nice video👍

When bought my first MIDI it came with Abelton Lite. I tried to learn and the curve was way too steep. So, I stuck with FL Studio. Nobody taught me how to use FL Studio, because it is so simple to figure out.

fl studio window management tip: get reeeally good with the hotkeys for opening/closing the main windows, the hotkey for closing all mixer plugin windows but not the main windows. This makes it sooooo much better to work with.

My man's dedication is over the top!

In FL you can resize every window in such a way that you won't have to switch through windows everytime

I was between Ableton and FL Studio, and couldnt sucessfully make a transition between one to another, so in one hand i couldnt keep making music in Flstudio because i was allready into some workflow things of Ableton, such as individuals tracks and so on, but at same time i couldnt get into Ableton because the midi piano roll was still miles better in FLstudio... So the solution i found was to deeply modifiy another DAW with high customizable features... and that DAW was reaper

For me it’s ableton. i also worked with fl studio when i started but it is a lot more easy to make a mess with all the automations and patterns. I love ableton i have worked with it for some time now.

I have both, but, pricing aside, to me Ableton Live 11 is better in every way, except for the piano roll (FL Studio still beat it by a short margin).

Only if the companies copied good stuff from each other it would be such a good thing.

I have worked on almost every DAW and ableton live is the best for music production and audio engineering

If you can play piano or want to record an instrument - go for Ableton. If you are more into editing music than playing music - go for FL.

I am a fl user. But I feel if you are dope producer. It don't matter what daw you use.

Just a note, you can make your own plugins in FL and share them with the community, altho it has a tedious workflow for both DAWs, I'd recommend just writing your own in C++ JUCE

Your actually the goat, This helped so much thank you.

It's been like twenty years ago that I didn't use a daw...well, let's hear what hapens. Wish me luck pals.

I used FL for years, but then I got a macbook pro. At the time, FL Studio didn't have stable Macbook support, so I switched to Ableton. I haven't gone back since.

I have push 2 which means I can build tracks live on the fly and use premade sessions to dj to perfection and I very rarely have to look at the computer, this cuts through so much bs when it comes to workflow and as for piano roll i dont reallt draw melodies and chords I play them on my komplete control, Push 2 and maschine 2. MPE is covered by my expressive e Touche of which I have two. Simpler and sampler are gems. Ableton packs are great. Instrument and drum racks brilliant - no longer need to scroll through presets on vsts i just load 127 instruments into a rack and use one of my 16 macros to dial through the presets instantly. And max for live is the icingn especially for sound design. The thing i like about LIVE is just that it is a live performers DAW as well as a producers.

The delete button on FL studio works and deletes everything, but you have to make sure that you hit "Delete" in the top-right corner and not "Backspace". You can select all the midi notes by keeping pressed CTRL and selecting, and once the notes are highlighted you press"delete" and all the notes are deleted.

You can do most of the things you mentioned in the piano roll also in Ableton. You can use the midi effects for that like randomising with velocity and strumming with arpeggiator. You have less control over the randomisation but it's still possible and gives you continues randomisation of what you want. So both have there pros and cons but you can do everything basically in both.

LOgic pro x gang has been summoned when lifetime updates were talked about

I personally was more a user of Studio One and got FL for its lifetime free updates, I'd say my main difficulty with FL is handling instruments like Kontakt that ends up requiring multiple midi input with multiple audio outputs out of a single kontakt instance like it's not specifically difficult to do, we setup multiple midi out channels and then set the output buses of kontakt but it's always long and annoying to setup, in studio one we just check checkboxes and studio one creates a bus linked to the plugin instance for the specific audio output

He's just like me!!!! I make drill/hip hop beats in FL and make songs in Ableton!

I use Studio One which is a great DAW for mixing making music but at the same time I notice Ableton and FL which are probably the current standards. Although I think Studio One is better!

I'm saying this because this is often the first problem people mention about FL... You DON'T have to juggle windows. Just resize and place them in such a way that they never overlap. You can even save the window layout. Maximize the piano roll and playlist whenever needed and they will snap right back into place when unmaximized. This is actually an advantage for FL since you have full control over every window size and location. Every window can be full screen if you wish. Recording in the playlist has become very intuitive in the latest versions of FL. It's on par with other DAWs. Sampling is arguably superior in FL since all samples are automatically placed inside a powerful sampler. What Ableton does better than FL in this regard is the re-timing of samples. This has to be done inside a plugin called Newtime in FL which is just as powerful as Ableton but takes a couple more steps to do. At the end of the day, it's the DAW you know best that's better. Whichever it is, you will have to put the hours into mastering it. If it's a good DAW, you'll probably have fun in the process. :)

Although you attempted to be fair, it was still obvious that you are far more well versed in the operation of Ableton than FL Studio. At least to any experienced user of FL Studio. Fair play in trying to stay unbiased, even though it's obvious which DAW you are more knowledgeable of and favour.

having used both, I'd say it's way more important to understand core concepts (adsr, routing, what each category of plugin is responsible for, etc). These will apply to any daw, and you can make great music in any daw. The real differences come with organization, keyboard shortcuts, who's using what in your area, what setup is required (e.g fl studio audio recording is terrible until you set it up right, then it's amazing)

One of the most fair and unbiased videos in this topic.👍

I spend most of my time on the piano roll so I guess I can't even consider Ableton

Its all about 'the man behind the gun' things . Nice vid btw 🔥

Im using Cubase / FL Studio (which ive used for over a decade now) and i wont lie i feel somethings missin with FL so ima give Ableton s ahot.

Studio One user here to crash the party 🥳 I have both FL and Ableton. Used FL for 12 years. I love it outside of the audio editing, multiple windows, and recording vocals. Ableton is dope, but it's something about the playback not starting from the beginning. When I hit the space bar, it starts in the middle of the song or wherever I do an edit. Maybe Im missing something. Studio One has it all. God level DAW mic drop 🎤 🔥

i use both to and i been working on both for 6 years and ima say they r both great honestly fl has stuff and do some stuff better then abelton but its also the same switched around they r both awesome i love them both and they both still make me happy on music makin

Honestly this was a fair comparison, they are both GODSENT this video needs an update because most of the features he mentioned, FL studio can do now with the new updated version by the way free lifetime, updates for FL studio users

Remake this video when FL21 comes out, I’d love to see how they compare!

Both are good. What matters is the person.

THANKS FOR THIS IV BEEN SEARCHING FO SOOO LONG

I wanna use Ableton just because of how it looks so much easier to manipulate audio clips but I have such a hard time figuring out how to do just the most basic shit, and if I look up a tutorial on how to use Ableton on youtube its some 40 y/o goober recording live instruments straight into the playlist like I wanna fucking make some country ass music like no dude, how the fuck do I put the midi I have here into the fucking song nobody fucking knows but you can just create a clip right in the playlist and put in your notes there but then what the fuck is the point of putting in notes in the other tab if you can not even use it. I know I know it's just because I don't know how to use Ableton but ffs maybe you have to be more sophisticated than the average fl studio user to understand the delicate intricacies of Ableton, but 90% of wannabe producers are idiots like me who don't understand shit unless it feels like playing with legos and that is why fl studio is so popular even though Ableton can do more.

Ableton just gives me anxiety looking at it lol... FL studio all the way for me. 10 years in and love it

Easy, I use both. Ableton for my main DAW and FL (Multi) VSTi with all the external sends. Set up a template that routs all the sends and manages gain staging. Those also allows use of some of the plugins, even if they are only in demo mode. They work seamlessly. Oh... Through Reapers remapping I could add a third DAW.... Oh oh oh... Also Cakewalk by Bandlab shows up as well in Reaper, so, if you all are as crazy as I am, you could be running Four DAWs at one time. (Just saying)

FL Studio is a viable option if you are not using a lot of hardware synths. As soon as you need to send synchronization signal to external midi keyboards, all hell breaks loose, it simply doesn’t work. This means that you can’t use external arpegiators, sequencers or synchronize anything to the tempo on an external midi synth that is also used as a midi controller. Lifetime free updates? Yes, also lifetime bugs not getting fixed. Ableton has a much better midi implementation.

I'm a younger ableton producer and have been making music for a while, its a learning curve but its really worth it i even only have the intro version and am really happy with the songs im making

thanks, it actually let me through so i could download it.

Hey! Thank u for this video! What daw would u suggest for me out of those two? I am doing futuristic retro and anti-pop music. What daw would be best for that. And I like to make my own drum sounds

Thank you men ❤️❤️❤️💙 It's the best video I've seen

You are dope bro! Damn , thank you so much, subbed

To be honest I would stay with FL Studio if they had better integration especially for the Native Instruments controllers.

You can actually access the fx plugins in FL Studio just by clicking "tab" on you Keyboard

So informative, thanks a lot!

Ultimately it comes down to personal feel. There is no better or best DAW, only which is better for the individual! I think the best analogy for choosing a DAW is like buying a car. Rarely would you buy one without test driving it first, and only then can you make an informed decision!

Im coming from a complete dawless ecosystem. I got lost in fl so hard for me. While in ableton 3 minutes i had almost a complete 5 tracks xox sequence. But fl seems it had a more raw dirty sound which i loved and better for techno and edm at least those 2 days i tried it. Or just my ears getting old. By your experience if you cant find the akai fl controller in ur country market which one suits for fl the best? Keyboard or push pads controller wont matter to me

as a studio one user I vote for abletons work flow and vote FL for its stock vsti..lol..as per as google trend, FL is the most looked after DAW in 2022..i guess all the new kid these days starts with FL..i feel so sorry for bitwig and S1..lol.. I feel these two program are way better then ableton or FL..

It is easy enough to export MIDI, loops, and stems from FL to Ableton if you want to use both. I do that all the time if I want to work in FL's piano roll. Another good combo is FL Studio and Reaper. Very low cost.

Very well explained 👏

Yoo tnx dude, everything works. I LIKE IT

I'm on fl but I'm interested in ableton

ableton is in my eyes way more accesible when it come to payment option because ableton can be bought with klarna basically for people who dont have a kredit card or paypal

Sometimes I wish they'd just merge DX Take the best of both worlds

fl studio is the best,but now is out new version OF FL STUDIO...20.8.4 WITH NEW UPDATES

This was so helpful!! Thank you

I'm so confused when i got ableton live, I can't understand mixing in live, they should too have a window for mixer. So i can't understand how u layer sounds in live because u can only put 1 sound per track and that track is in different mixer channel than track above or below, so how the f I can layer bass sounds or anything, and I don't know how to use bus'es.

FL STudio FTW. And you forgot to mention patcher. Not quite Max for Live but nonetheless able to create new synths and effects. And control panel enables you to make easy makros and complex controlls for easy sound manipulation. Also what a about midi scripting in FL? Its a bit tedious but man oh man is it powerful. I own FL Studio but have to work with abelton in our music studio. My choice is clear: FL Studio all the way :)

Thanks man it helped a lot. I tested this on my sisters laptop

I am completely new to all of that never even heard of DAW before today. And for me sadly it seems like FL Studio due to the lifetime updates because depending on how often Ableton releases something new, if I have to spend hundreds of dollars every single damn time its just financially stupid to me. But thank you so much for the neutral video and introducing these things to me

Really wish FL studio had better audio recording. This is something that should have been fixed years ago.

What psycho opens multiple FL tabs in small windows? I treat it kind of like how to ableton windows are used, I keep all the FL windows fullscreen exept for the channel rack and switch between them using the buttons. Once you start shrinking the windows and then trying to find them again its no wonder people get annoyed.

hanks lot Sir.. You helping us..

I have Ableton 10 and Reaper. I have used both, but currently using only Reaper. I find that my projects load way faster and it's much easier in the CPU. Crashes to desktop are not that common and backups easily recovered as well. I am tempted on trying FL Studio to see if the different workflow works for me. So far haven't used a DAW were sections of the track can be identified and named (Reaper regions) that really makes arranging easy. Arranging in Ableton requires using the Session view which I only use to come up with ideas, but after the ideas are there I switch to Arrange view and keep working there until I finish the track. Perhaps this is not the typical Ableton workflow. I wonder if I am missing something.

I have been making hip hop with FL since version 3.4 (2003) but I am considering switching to Ableton to make Drum and Bass.

I think they are both good....you get a lot of features in fl but I hate the whole put it in a rack then select patterns then put it on the arrangers page bullshit...I like how in abelton you add a track and boom that's everything from routing to midi to time line....just like a mixing board