FL Studio integration with Maschine/Komplete Kontrol

Cisele
Cisele Member Posts: 6 Newcomer
edited January 2022 in Maschine

I've been with FL Studio for about 10 years now. I don’t want to switch to another DAV, because fl is somehow more familiar. I bought myself a bunch of KONTROL mk3 + Maschine MK3. I noticed that it doesn't sync well with FL Studio. On KONTROL, cut-down features are found with other DAWs, and the Machine generally performs horribly in the sequencer. Undoubtedly, the equipment is very good and the software that relates to it is well thought out, but why is it so with FL, if a huge number of people write in it.

Guys, if anyone knows how to make perfect FL compatibility using a car and Kontrol, please tell me, we need help while our beloved NI is finalizing the DAW.

Comments

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 2,811 mod
    edited January 2022

    Please explain what you mean by "Sync" and "performs horribly", what exactly isn't working? We can't help you if you're not specific.

    Also, what's a bunch of "Kontrol" ? Did you buy a Komplete bundle and/or a Komplete Kontrol Keyboard?

  • Cisele
    Cisele Member Posts: 6 Newcomer

    By synchronization I mean the control by the machine as a whole of the FL interface. For example, I can't control the sounds inside the pattern. Everything is tied to the Mqschine2 application and only the converted sound is output. This is the simplest example. Perhaps the bundles I had in mind Machine and Keyboard s49. The keyboard syncs well and performs its functions.

  • ShelLuser
    ShelLuser Member Posts: 240 Pro

    So the funny thing is that I grabbed FL Studio ("FLS") last week as well, I'm using it to complement my home studio which fully evolves around Ableton Live. Normally I use FLS as a plugin in Live, but obviously I also have plenty of stand alone sessions.

    If I understand you correctly your main issue is that Maschine doesn't provide any control over FLS, right? This is a common issue which applies to more DAW's: Maschine is more or less a self-contained environment (at least by default) which main purpose is to be used as a generator. But the host will always be in control of things.

    However, you can set up Maschine so that it will output MIDI data which can then be used within FLS, however.. I discovered that "MIDI routing" is a bit limited; it's not that easy to use MIDI coming out of Maschine and use this for any of the FLS standard generators, but you can get this to work for other plugins:

    Set up a new Maschine group, press the first pad and then open the output settings for that pad as shown above. First click the round "IO" icon which I marked, then make sure to open the Output section and select the MIDI tab, set the destination to 'Host' as shown here.

    With FLS you need to open the VST wrapper settings (as shown above) and then set an output port, in this example I picked 2.

    Now add a new VST, I figured I'd use Absynth 5. In that new VST you need to open the wrapper settings again, but this time you need to set the input port. Once that's done change Maschine into keyboard mode and you can now play Absynth from Maschine through FLS.

    From what I gather it should theoretically be possible to use the Patcher generator so that you can play vanilla generators but I haven't figured... hmm... wow:

    That actually works... holy...

    So within the context I mentioned earlier: we have Maschine loaded and in the VST wrapper I set the output MIDI channel to 2, I also told Maschine to output MIDI to the host. Now add a Patcher (shown above), right click on the "From FL Studio" icon and make sure to enable MIDI channel 2. Then add a generator, as you can see I picked Flex. It'll get automatically connected, but that's not what we want. Make the new connection as shown above, so connect the 2nd node from "From FLS" to the second node on Flex (or whatever generator you selected). Tap your Maschine pads and you'll notice that you're now "playing" FLS.

    There's plenty you can do with Maschine inside FLS, but it may require a bit of tweaking.

    Hope this can help!

    FLS is frickin' amazing if you ask me 😎

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 2,811 mod
    edited January 2022

    Control Sounds? How so? Play sounds from the FL Piano Roll? That's possible too, let me know if that's what you mean as there's not just Audio there's MIDI too.

    Or do you mean using the MK3 as a Control Surface for FL Studio? If so: 2 things to note:

    1 - Maschine controllers are really designed to control Maschine software/plugin, anything other than that is secondary. NI has expressed that they have no interest in creating advanced ways to control DAW's that are feature-rich and have a complex learning curve; with that said others a free to do it.

    2 - FL Studio only introduced a Scripting API recently but there is some stuff already out there by 3rd party developers:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE-onhOQgN0

    You will have to do your own research to find one that does what you want, there's seems to be a lot of stuff in github as far FL scripts go. Just keep in mind this approach will always feel hacky and you would be using an expensive controller sort of like a generic one.

  • Cisele
    Cisele Member Posts: 6 Newcomer

    I understand. Are NI programmers going to soon bring the level of control of FL closer to the level of control using Komplete in Ableton? Or will there be no improvement in this area? By the way, the guy in the post above explained all the difficulties approximately.

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 2,811 mod
    edited January 2022

    My educated guess would be "No", they won't... they seem to have zero interest in making Maschine HW have advanced dedicated functionality for all the DAW's out there, maintaining that is a big commitment and they're focused on making MAS better at what it's designed for... But sometimes NI surprises us.

    I don't know what you think is available for Ableton tho, there's really nothing fancy at all, the only thing that is Ableton and Logic exclusive is "DAW Control" where you only have like 10 functions and the Pads don't even send MIDI, it's a Mode where you basically turn a 600$ controller into a 100$ one...

    Your terminology also confuses me, Komplete (as in the product bundle and Komplete Kontrol) works fine in any DAW.

  • xr0ckstar808
    xr0ckstar808 Member Posts: 6 Member
    edited January 2022

    I'm unclear of what exactly you're having trouble with. I have been working on getting a nice workflow with fl studio, maschine , and complete kontrol as well. We need more details. I think I need to pick shelluser brain :) . I never use maschine inside the FL sequencer as maschine has it's own sequencer. I've been using it more like doing patterns and such inside maschine then record it as a audio clip into FL from edison it's a little glitchy and time consuming but seems to work

  • abnegative
    abnegative Member Posts: 59 Helper

    @Cisele This is the closest thing I've seen to what you're requesting:

Back To Top