Acoustica User Forums

trevlyns wrote:Others may have better features and more bells and whistles

Ianpb wrote: I would be interested in what the software was that you rejected Graham, or at least a hint. After all, it's not as if you're giving it any high praise and recommendation over and above Mixcraft.

It will probably be in your best interest to NOT load PLAY instruments as tracks directly. In other words, DON'T load up a PLAY instance into the Step Sequencer/piano roll directly.

Instead, load up a MIDI Out track. Next, load up the PLAY instance as an effect into the mixer. It sounds a little counter-intuitive but doing it this way gives you significantly more flexibility.

Next, choose a Port number that isn't being used by anything else. To keep it simple, I use an Output Port the same number as the Mixer channel #. AKA. If the PLAY instance is loaded into mixer channel 1, I'll use port 1 for that instance. It just makes it easier to keep track of everything.

On the MIDI Out track, change the OUTPUT PORT number to that number.
On the PLAY instance, change the INPUT PORT number to that same number. Now this MIDI Out track controls this PLAY instance.

What you can do now is create multiple MIDI Out tracks and assign them all to the same Port number. PLAY (well, MIDI) can utilize 16 channels per port. At this point, simply match the MIDI channel number to the MIDI channel of the instrument that's loaded into PLAY and that MIDI Out track will control that PLAY instrument.

From there, you can simply write your music in the Piano roll (F7 is the hotkey, I believe) for your MIDI Out tracks and your routing will get all your data to PLAY.

Loading instruments this way will reduce your load time and RAM/CPU usage dramatically since you can probably fit your entire project into 4-8 instances for smaller projects and, at most, about 20 instances for huge projects. Compare that to one instance of PLAY PER TRACK! The difference is huge! You'll be able to get A LOT more out of your computer by doing it this way.

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If you've never used the INPUT and OUTPUT port system in FL, it's a little bit hidden:

The OUTPUT port on the MIDI Out is found by clicking on the MIDI Out track. On the popup for the track, there's a little Gear icon in the top-left corner. Click that and you'll be taken to another screen where you can change the port number.

Do the same thing on the PLAY instance to set the INPUT port. Once these port numbers match, the two objects (the MIDI Out and the PLAY instance) can talk to each other.

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Just one important thing to note:
Don't load a PLAY instance onto the MASTER track of FL Studio. Make sure you're loading into the other mixer tracks and you'll be fine.

Good luck! Post back if you have any questions! Be sure to let me know which version of FL Studio you're running. If you're using FL 12, a few things (such as getting FL to recognize PLAY as an effect that can be loaded into the mixer) are a bit different than on FL 11.x and earlier.