I’ve seen a lot of comments recently saying that the sound engine in FL Studio differs from version to version. I decided to look into this in response to the question, do FL Studio 20 and FL Studio 11 have different sound engines? I’m going to show you what I discovered.
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Testing FL Studio 11 and FL Studio 20 for differences
By default, when you open FL Studio 11, Fruity Limiter is on the Master, just like in FL Studio 20. If you take a closer look at the limiter, the gain knob is set with 5.5db of gain.
Now, when you open up FL Studio 20, you can also see Fruity Limiter on the Master, but the gain is set to 0. When I loaded up the default template from FL Studio 11, the gain was again set to 5.5db.
What’s interesting about that is people say that FL Studio 11 and FL Studio 20 sound different, and they do. By default, when you load up sounds in FL Studio 11, they’re going to be louder because of the gain set 5.5db higher. When the human ear hears something louder, it sometimes assumes that is better. The reason FL Studio 11 hits harder is only because the limiter is turned up.
I decided to take this a step further. I made a beat in FL Studio 11 and printed it. Then opened the same beat in FL Studio 20 and printed that. Both of these beats phase cancelled. This answered the question, do FL Studio 20 and FL Studio 11 have different sound engines. No, they do not. FL Studio 11 and FL Studio 20 sound exactly the same, so don’t spread that rumor. It’s just not true.
The Fruity Limiter turned up by 5.5db on FL Studio 11 gives the illusion that it’s hitting harder, and the look is different. These two things combined are why people have such a love for FL Studio 11 and don’t want to move on.
While you’re here, check out some additional FL Studio tutorials.
