Next up in the latency/jitter testing is FLStudio!

If you don’t understand what this is, please read the introduction post (This article is being updated if/when changes are made!).

Other parts in this series:

Contents

Introduction

Read the introduction post. I have updated this post since it was originally published.

For FLStudio I used Sampler Channel.

Interestingly, I was not able to get Sampler Channel to output a single sample pulse cleanly no matter what settings I tried, and nobody (of dozens of people) that I asked was able to offer ideas. Slicer and SliceX were able to do this, but I decided to use Sampler Channel as it’s the primary sampler for most FLStudio users.

Somewhat notably, FLStudio also dropped notes during my testing. I am skeptical of the cause, but around 1% of MIDI notes did not trigger playback for some reason. The higher the buffer, the fewer notes were dropped. It’s possible that my test setup is triggering an issue, as I’d expect to see complaints of this by users, but with my test setup the number of non-triggers was proportionally correlated to buffer size.

I did not locate any settings that changed the behaviour, so there are only 3 tests.

Reminder, don’t trust dweebs on the internet. Do the tests yourself, or at least double check my data.

64 sample buffer

Reported Latency

  • Unlabeled path - 2ms

64 sample buffer

FLStudio - 64 Sample Buffer (Video)

256 sample buffer

Reported Latency

  • Unlabeled path - 6ms

256 sample buffer

FLStudio - 256 Sample Buffer (Video)

1024 sample buffer

Reported Latency

  • Unlabeled path - 21ms

1024 sample buffer

FLStudio - 1024 Sample Buffer (Video)

Data

Here is a csv of all the data, including the config files used to plot it using deltafinder.

FLStudio data

Conclusion

  • FLStudio has about 2 buffers worth of jitter.
    • With the Komplete 6, that’s over 5x as much maximum latency as FLStudio reports! (At least 3x for other devices.)
  • FlStudio seems to drop MIDI triggers in some circumstances.
  • FLStudio’s Sampler Channel HATES missed note-offs or velocity 0’s. I had a lot of trouble with that.
  • Sampler Channel seems incapable of playing back samples untouched, or I’m missing some setting.

Based on my preliminary testing, this was the worst result of all products. I’ve changed my methodology and measuring since then, so please check other articles for more up to date comparisons.

Meta

This post took:

  • 1 hour to capture signals and graph them.
  • 1 hour to fiddle with Sampler Channel.
  • 2 hours to debug dropped MIDI triggers, channels “dying” (missed note-offs), and then just give up and assume FLStudio expects MIDI in a way that no other DAW does.
  • 1 hour to write the article.