Fl studio on mac?!?

Does anyone on here run fl on there mac? I saw a video online and noticed the guy was using a mac then I searched it and a few things came up but nothing pointed me into the right direction as to how to go about this. I’ve bought parallels for my mac to run fl and it was just a mess everything was super slow and laggy.

As far as I know, FL studio for mac is currently in beta. I’ve tried it and it’s quite buggy and slow tbh. Also, unless you want the demo version you have to buy a copy just like on windows.

From their site:

We are pleased to announce the FL Studio Mac Public Beta is now available. This is a custom Crossover wrapped version of FL Studio for Mac OS X and so is bit-identical to the Windows installer.

NOTE: This is an experimental project and the response from testers will decide if and how we proceed with it.

Yea I got it on my mac now. It’s pretty sweet I really love the layout and the tools. It’s super easy to learn and so much you can do with it.

Yeah use the OSX beta, some say its awesome some cannot be bothered.

It’s finally here:

Not going to switch back from Bitwig Studio to FL, but would love to use some of Image-Line plugins on OS X. They’ve been developing native versions, but put that work on hold some time back… Missing Sytrus a lot, really one of the best FM synths ever.

what are you saying about bitwig? is it ready for wider usage now yeah?
i’ve not tested it out in about 5 years now. should get round to that really.

you might as well use this thread to list some pros and cons of bitwig in comparison to other DAWs now, in true dsf style.

Gantz uses Fl on Mac using Wine, as far as I can remember.

I’ve bought Bitwig half year ago, really enjoying it. I use it for both production and DJing and gotta say it’s quite solid now.

The things that made me consider switching to bitwig were:

  • Modulators - you can apply LFO, ADSR, keytracking, Midi/Audio sidechain, randomisation and even math to every device parameter (including parameters of external VSTs). E.g. it’s extremely handy for adding movement to the sounds, for mixing (you can make dynamic EQ easily without external plugins). Can’t imagine my workflow without modulators anymore. Oh, and you can modulate the other modulator parameters too :robot:
  • Best devices & sounds browser I’ve seen. Mark what you use the most often as favourite, create collections based on your search parameters, tag things. And it looks for files in subfolders, lack of this feature was driving me mad in ableton live.
  • Bitwig doesn’t crash if some plugin has crashed. Moreover, you can instantly re-load the crashed plugins with their settings restored (doesn’t work for some plugins, though).
  • Hybrid tracks: you can have both midi and audio on one track. For example, you can bounce-in-place some part of your midi and reverse/edit the resulting audio. Coolest part here is that if you have some FXs after the synth that plays midis, bounce-in-place will record output of the synth and not of the track. So you can keep on adjusting FX settings without having to bounce/edit again.
  • Additive and multiplicative automation. It’s better just to check the video to understand how it works.

… and I’m not even close to finish listing all cool bitwig features. If you’re really interested, read this article and watch some vids on bitwig’s youtube channel.

Now time for some cons:

  • Some built-in devices are real crap. Their FM synth doesn’t support oscillator phase restart and has only sine waveform, which makes it almost useless.
  • I had to write a controller script for my Allen & Heath XONE K2 to make it work the way I want it to. No problem for me personally as programming is what I do for money. Many controllers do already have scripts, though. I enjoy my Ableton Push in Bitwig even more than I used to in Live.
  • Bitwig has bugs. They really need to work on fixing bugs before adding new features.
  • Works slower than ableton or FL studio (which is a god damn ferrari IMO). But nothing critical, pretty heavy projects work well on my 2012 macbook pro with i7 and 8GB of RAM.

I guess there are other cons, but nothing pops out in my mind right now.

2 Likes

Some big producers, of course, use Bitwig too, check Last year’s neurofunk banger Mr Frenkie - Bass Symptom or read/listen to some other works at https://www.bitwig.com/en/community/artists.

Anyway, it’s worth installing and giving it a try :slight_smile:

yooooo that’s sick.
i do this in FL already on some tunes to try and keep them sounding live/imperfect/vibing, but it’s not intuitive and it takes more time than it should.

i don’t think i’m ever gonna switch from FL9.1 at this stage but i’m happy things are moving forward for DAWs slowly

1 BigUp

Completely understand you :slight_smile: If I didn’t have to switch to mac sometime ago, I’d still probably work in FL studio. Few weeks ago was visiting the parents house and my younger bro asked me to show him a couple of production tricks on his PC with FL studio 12. It was damn fun even although I forgot how to do some of FL essentials.

Fl Studio 20 runs on mac now.