Fruity Loops FL Studio 6 Instruments

February 2006

Are Fruity Loops FL Studio 6's instruments ready to produce the sound you like without compromise?


The new version comes with an array of sound generators of different quality and complexity. Some of them are included, some have to be purchased separately (see "ni" besides the name).

If this would be not enough, VST or DX instrument (VSTI or DXI) are also supported in FL Studio 6.

You get a battery of more or less useful instruments. Some of them are everyday tools and some are pretty unique.

What were the most impressive sound modules that are hard to get somewhere else?

• Sytrus - A very advanced Synthesizer

• Slayer - An interesting guitar-sound simulation

• FPC - A powerful Drum-kits/MIDI-beats combination

• Wave Traveller - A brilliant tool for producing Scratches

• Speech Synthesizer - "I am a robot"-text to speech generator
   

In order to get a better overview of what's available, I grouped the instruments in different categories. You can go there directly by clicking one of the following headlines.

1. Synthesizer

2. Instrument simulation

3. Drums

4. Sample Playback/Manipulation

5. Sound Effects

6. Visual Effects

7. Tools

What do the abbreviations beside the names of the modules mean?

(ni) ....... Not included in the FL Studio 6 package, needs to be purchased separately.

(m) ....... Monophonic sound module. All other modules are polyphonic.

Synthesizer

Sytrus (ni) - Advanced FM/RM/Subtractive/Hybrid synth.

This Synth is FL Studio 6's advanced polyphonic synthesizer, featuring...

• Six customizable operators for FM (Frequency Modulation)

• RM (Ring Modulation) synthesis

• Plucked string synthesis

• 3 filter modules

• Effects module with chorus

• Three delay lines

• Unique programmable unison mode. with three different sound generation techniques.

Unfortunately also it's greed for CPU power is "advanced". But it's well spent power.

It produces great pads, arpeggios, great bass sounds and a lot of sounds that smell like the "real thing", not cheap plastic.

You can produce whole rhythms with drums, bass, arpeggios with this module alone.

You might be used to get very simple and uncomplicated instruments in Fruity Loops. Well, this one is a little different.

It takes more time to dive into the depths of programming this synth than usual. But it's wisely invested time. You get better and more individual sounds than with the standard modules.

But also if you just use the presets you have plenty of stuff to work with.
 

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The next 4 synths of FL Studio 6 are quite similar from their sound character. In Dance music you often need simple direct sounds, like a sinus or a rectangle wave with sometimes no effect, or just a little delay on it.

These are the modules to choose for such tasks. They can also produce the whole range of well known standard synth sounds like brass, strings, bass, etc...in short, they are the "working horses" of FL Studio 6'es synth department, also because of they need just moderate CPU-power.
 

SimSynth (ni)- Subtractive synth with chorus.

A good Synth for standard synth sounds like the Roland MKS modules or some Moog sounds. Comes with a variety of presets to cover the range of standard dance sounds of the 80ties and 90ties.

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3x OSC - Subtractive 3 Oscillator synth.

Very basic synth that feeds the sampler module of FL Studio 6. No presets, so you have to roll your own from scratch. The only real reason to use it, is its low CPU power usage.

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Wasp (ni) - Subtractive synth.

A standard 3-oscillator synth with 2 LFO's, 2 ADSR envelopes, a ring modulator, FM, PWM and a distortion unit. Can produce a fat bass and because of the ring modulator also very strange sounds.

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Wasp XT (ni) - Subtractive synth.

Is just an update of the Wasp with a few more modulation parameters.

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TS404 Generator - TB303 emulator.

A polyphonic sound module that should reproduce the sound of the legendary Roland TB 303 - Bassline synthesizer.

How good does it emulate the TB 303?

Well, I wouldn't compare it to the real thing or to Propellerheads "rebirth". It just sounds vaguely similar to a TB 303 but cannot produce that chirping sound of fast closing filter envelopes the TB 303 was famous for.

It doesn't sound bad however and you can use it for bass-lines or arpeggios where the expectations at filter quality are not too high.
 

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Fruity DX10 (ni) - Basic FM Synth.

This FM Synth is basic indeed. You get some well known basic FM Sounds, but nothing extraordinary.

As you probably know these days a great share of hits contain such basic sounds. You actually never can tell if a sound is good or bad until you hear how it works in an arrangement.

This module (like Simsynth) might also be a source of simple but effective sounds.

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Instrument simulation

FL Slayer - Electric guitar simulation of FL Studio 6.

This is an interesting Module for E-guitar sounds. It has a good guitar amp simulation and you can choose from different playing styles like strumming, power chords solo etc...

For Power chords you just have to play the basic note and Slayer plays the chord.

Has an integrated effects processor which is also not bad. You can add effects like Leslie, Phaser, Delays, Harmonizer, tremolo, chorus, ring modulator, etc...

You can build up and fine-tune the sound with a variety of functions. So you can choose the type of strings, the coils, the amp, the cabinet, the guitar options and much more.

While the output is not as advanced as Steinberg's Virtual Guitarist, it is a very useful module with great guitar and much better bass sounds than the also included BooBass.

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Plucked! (m) - Plucked string modeling Synth.

Nice gimmick, but not very flexible module that reminds somehow at a sound of a plucked string. I found it not very useful.

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BooBass (m) - Bass guitar simulation.

Inflexible, monophonic sound generator that also produces clicks when you cut off one tone with another. Sounds like a bass with round wound strings but I think I wouldn't bother to use it much because there are much better instruments in FL Studio 6.

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FL Keys - ROMpler for Piano, E-Piano and Organ sounds.

This is a very minimalistic sound module for the very basic keyboard sounds in music production.

I liked the piano, it sounded surprisingly natural over the range C3-A7. Don't expect miracles however. The piano is made of only 15 samples with together only 1Mbyte !!! sound data. No velocity layers at all!!!.

The e-piano is nothing for hardcore Fender Rhodes players but it sounds quite good within an arrangement. The default sound has infinite sustain and a delay effect on it. If you put that away you have a standard Fender Rhodes sound with 3 velocity layers. Nothing to brag with, but useful.

While it is quite O.K. to have one sound for Piano and E-Piano it is a bit poor for an organ. Without drawbars or at least a choice of different sounds it cannot be called a real organ.

But if you just need any organ sound to test an arrangement it might be good enough and doesn't capture a lot of resources of FL Studio 6.

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Drums

Fruity Kick - Kick simulation.

Quite simple and straight-forward module for Dance Tracks. You get a flexible bass drum with a good basic sound, that you can always adjust to your song with just a few clicks.

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Fruity DrumSynth Live (ni) - Percussion Synthesis.

A sound module for synthetic percussion sounds. You have a preconfigured drum set of Roland Tr-808 and TR-909 sounds on the keyboard and you can morph with a wheel between one sound that is already playing and another one that you choose from a list.

The basic sound character is of course very Roland TR-808/909 like because it utilizes a similar sound generation technique.

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FPC - Advanced Drum Sampler

This is not only a Sampler. It is something I have on my wish list for quite some time and I always wondered why the programmers of Sequencers didn't implement it earlier in their products.

It is a library of MIDI-beats and a Drum Sampler quite similar to the well known Akai MPC Drum computer combined in one module.

That means you can change the Drum set and what it is playing very easily and independent from each other.

It has some very groovy beats and sequences in it's library that range from straight dance over funky break beats to Rock and World Music.

Included are only two Drum Sets but there are more to buy.

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Sample Playback/Manipulation

Audio Clip Generator - Holds recorded audio.

This module is the simplest sample player and mainly intended to play recorded audio in the audio tracks.

Despite that, you still could choose from a variety of functions like remove DC offset, normalize, reverse, etc... but you would most likely not touch them but do most of the sound refinement in the mixer.

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Sampler Generator - Basic channel sample playback.

This is the most basic sampler of Fruity Loops FL Studio 6. It is fed by a Wav sample and contains four envelopes and five LFOs for controlling volume, panning, pitch, cutoff and resonance of the output.

Beside the usual Sampler functions like looping, tuning, normalizing or reversing you can choose whether you want the sample stream from disk or load entirely into memory.

A crucial function for a software like FL Studio is of course how well the samples adapt to the project's speed. You can choose from a variety of options for different kind of samples.

The results are pretty good while you still can hear some unwanted artifacts when the tempo change is too drastic.
 

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Direct Wave (ni) - A more advanced sampler.

I was quite curious what the "advanced" sampler of fruity loops has to offer.

The description in the manual says that it features inbuilt FX, velocity-layering, looping, automatic sampling of VSTi plug-ins and the ability to record sound (sample) when loaded into a mixer track on an effect slot.

It imports the following sample file formats:

The Sampler of FL Studio 6 has most of the standard functions you would expect from a sampler. You can map samples in keyboard and velocity zones, tune, set root key etc...

But what does it offer beside that?

The more advanced functions are Beat Sync where you can automatically adapt the playback peed to host tempo.

Slice Mode cuts a sample into equal pieces and maps it to consecutive keyboard notes above root key.

What about Filtering?

Well, there are two filters either serial or parallel. You can even get them to resonate. But it doesn't sound good. If you don't take care it sounds distorted and when you turn the control knobs you hear glitches.

With the generous modulation matrix you can assign an LFO or any other source to the filter cut off.

Effects?

Per Keyboard Zone you have a Ring modulator, a Phaser and two rather strange effects called Decimator and Quantizer that reduce the Bit depth.

The Ring modulator and the phaser sound good. You can control them via the modulation matrix.

You can either sync the LFOs to your projects tempo or let them run free.

In the main section you have three common effects, where any keygroup can route it's own amount to it, a delay (either straight or bouncing), reverb and chorus.

Fortunately the delay can adapt accordingly to the playback speed.

The reverb sounds not bad and the Chorus more like a Phaser. Feedback setting should be low otherwise you hear a shutter effect.

All in all a useful module if not as "advanced" as it is announced. There are far more advanced soft samplers around, but you might not need them.
 

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Fruity Granulizer - Sample based granular synthesizer.

Basically a module for time stretching and pitch shifting but more to produce special effects, than to stretch without artifacts. It uses granular synthesis technology, but this is maybe not that important. It's more important how it sounds like.

Well it sounds unique. You can take a spoken voice and produce very strange "Max Headroom"-like effects with it. You can take a well known sample and change it to something completely different.

The effect is hard to describe because it is so different relating to the settings and the sample it is used on. Sometimes it sounds like scrubbing through a sound file where the part around the cursor gets repeated

An instrument for the "Tweaker". It can produce completely unique sounds but is not easy to understand and control. There is no other way than to play around with the controls and see how they influence the sound.

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Fruity Beat Slicer (ni) - Slices samples like drum loops for playback

This is a module that works similar to Steinberg's Recycle. The big advantage however is that it's already integrated into the program.

That means, if you load a sample in the module it either uses beat detection algorithms to slice up a wave file into pieces, or if the loaded loop contains already slices/regions they will be recognized and used instead of auto-detecting them.

It automatically creates a MIDI-note for each piece in the piano roll.
That means you can just load the loop-sample, click play and in most cases it's finished.

What makes this module a real no-brainer is the fact that the programmers obviously took care for the little problems that can make groove programming a rather tedious task.

They built in effective measures to prevent clicks, to fill the gaps between slices, to find the right transient points for slicing etc...That makes the life of groove programmers all over the world a bit easier.

You also have effective presets to rearrange the order of the slices.

In short, this is the module that makes it so easy to work with this software and justifies the name "Fruity Loops". ;-)

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Fruity Soundfont Player (ni) - Soundfont Rompler

Soundfonts are standardized sets of Multisamples that you can load into into any Soundfont player.

The original SoundFont specification was developed in the early 1990s by E-mu and Creative Labs. The first major device to utilize the technology was Creative's Sound Blaster AWE32 in 1994. A new 2.0 format was developed in 1996, and the current version is 2.1.

The sound quality of SoundFont banks is usually superior to standard GM banks, and many SoundFont banks have been created specifically to replace GM banks.

As you get lots of free Soundfonts and Soundfont editors on the Internet, it is the best opportunity to get excellent sounds for little money.

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Sound Effects

BeepMap - Image based synthesizer.

Makes sounds based on pictures.

As you can imagine this sounds are not really tonal but more like spherical and mysterious noise. Very interesting module for movie score composers to create atmospheres and background effects.

Imagine as many sine wave sound generators as the picture has vertical pixels. You can set the lowest and the highest frequency. These generators are triggered by a vertical line that scans the picture from left to right.

The red color triggers the left generators, green color triggers the right ones. For instance Yellow (a mixture of red and green) will sound equally on both channels. Optionally, the blue component is used to define the frequency range per pixel, but normally you choose that in the settings..

You can just make a graphic file, maybe with the above data in mind and save it to disc.

Beepmap can read the following formats: jpg, jpeg, bmp, png, ico, wmf, emf, dib

Load that graphic file into BeepMap and push the play button. The basic sound character is a bit ring-modulator like. You can adjust the frequency range and the playing speed to your needs.

This is again a module that lets you create unique sounds with a minimum of technical effort.

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Wave Traveller - Scratching Tool. Sample warper and slicer.

This is a sensational module for all dance producers that use scratches in their music.

With the Wave Traveller, FL Studio 6 lets you become the "Scratch Master" of all time. No kidding. You just load the sound you want to use for scratching as sample and draw your scratch with a rubber band curve.

Because you see the rhythm grid behind the curve you can build very exact scratches. They can be faster and more exact as with live scratching.

After you got how it works, no scratch is too difficult or too complicated.

Yes you can even mix it with transformer switching. As sections of the audio phrase can also be muted you get that well known rhythmic stuttering.

Each MIDI note can be assigned a different Scratch-effect from the same sample in case you need that.

It takes a little time to learn how to use it, but the outcome is very convincing. Great module!
 

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Speech Synthesizer - Text to voice effect

This is also a very useful tool, used by many Dance producers. It seems that Image Line, the developers of FL Studio 6 are really into the Dance scene and know what's needed there.

Works very uncomplicated. Type in your text and choose personality, style and mode. You can also select the speed and the pitch.

After closing the window the phrase is available as Sample in the Fruity Slicer for further use.

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Visual Effects

Chrome - Video Synthesis (lightshow).

A very nice gimmick that lets you play visual effects on a MIDI keyboard. So you can choose a scene and play a firework with your keyboard in it.

I don't know what someone would use it for, but it is really nice to watch and to play with.

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Fruity Video Player (ni) - Play videos in sync with FL Studio Projects.

A nice uncomplicated video player that lets you even play full screen videos. All native Windows formats are accepted. You can't convert formats or save however. It's only a player.

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Tools

Buzz Generator Adapter - Adaptor to host Buzz generators.

Buzz is a free modular system to create a complete virtual studio environment. See more information on www.buzzmachines.com.

You can download such machines as softsynths, effects, generators, etc...to use it as FL Studio 6 instruments.

While the user interface is graphically very minimalistic, the sound is not.

It's really worth trying. You get some interesting stuff and it's also CPU power friendly.

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Dashboard - Design your own internal controllers

Did you ever wanted to control all your external MIDI devices with dedicated on screen controllers that you can even dynamically automate?

Well here's the solution.

Dashboard is a construction set of FL Studio 6 with faders, Knobs and switches, that lets you create software interfaces for your external MIDI hardware, such as expander modules, keyboards, mixers, samplers, etc...

You can also record the changes as automation data.

Dashboard includes several pre-made panels (presets) for popular MIDI devices you can use directly in your projects. You can customize the existing panels for your own use or create new ones from scratch.

The presets include Peavey Controller, Phat-Boy and Roland XP-30.

This way, you can adapt Dashboard for any MIDI device you own without using plug-ins dedicated to a specific hardware.
 

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Fruity Wrapper - Hosts VSTi/DXi plugins.

For using 3rd party software like plug-ins or virtual instruments it's always the question how well they are implemented and how buggy they are.

Installation is not complicated. Just tell FL Studio 6 where your VST or DX instruments or plug-ins are (in the File settings menu) and you can load them into the wrapper.

After you have loaded your instrument you can load a preset that you like, tweak and save it, and then do other useful things. You can...

1. ...link the last turned knob to an external controller.
2. ...link all other parameters to an external controller
3. ...open an automation clip for that controller.
4. ...copy and paste the values of knobs.
5. ...define the position of the knob when song starts.
6. ...edit the last value.

In short, it lets you perform all the automation and the controlling via external controllers. Very good. That is what's needed.

You have also quite a lot of options to tweak problematic 3rd party plug-ins. This is very useful if you want to use some non standard plug-ins that caused troubles.

bugs: The first time when I installed the VST folder and some 3rd party VSTis, FL Studio 6 did not recognize it from the channel menus. All refreshing did not have any effect.

I could however choose them as mixer channel plug-ins. After I did that, I could also see them in the generator list from the channel menu. Since that, it recognizes VSTis correctly.

Generally the standard of bug prevention and 3rd party plug-in handling is pretty high in this program and you have a lot of useful options to tweak and control a plug-in.

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Layer Channel - Stack channels to play in unison.

That is a very simple module to build up a stack of modules that play simultaneously. It let's you set children that get played by this channel. It doesn't produce sound by itself.

If you play a note either all children play that note or, if set to random, one of them plays it. You can also cross fade between the children channels.

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MIDI Out - Control MIDI hardware and/or VST plug-ins in Fl Studio 6.

This Controller provides eight pages each with nine freely assignable controllers. It sends standard MIDI messages to plug-ins or instruments.

Of course you can link these virtual knobs to real knobs of an external controller.

You can also create automation for these virtual knobs.

Good designed module that has everything you need to effectively control your instruments, whether external or internal.

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ReWired - Host any compatible ReWire device in FL Studio

With this tool you can grab you one ore more of these cool ReWire devices like Rebirth or Reason and use it with your fruity loops software.

It supports sample accurate audio synchronization and MIDI compatibility.

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Conclusion:

The Fruity Loop FL Studio 6 instruments give you a lot of music production power. Some of them are also quite unique and hard to find in other software.

While not all of them are "state of the art" instruments, they are useful and combined with the superior workflow of the FL Studio 6 Software, they certainly deliver what you need for a dance hit.

If you need more there is also no limit. Because it supports DXI and VSTI Plug-ins, it became an open system with almost unlimited capacity.