Open FL Studio, open the options menu and go to the Audio Settings and set the device to Focusrite USB ASIO. You'll also need to set playback tracking to either Hybrid or Mixer. You can change the buffer size from the ASIO Control Panel, which you can open by clicking 'Show ASIO Panel' Step 3. If you select your audio interface’s ASIO driver, and you’re starting to get underruns (pops, clicks, and glitches), even at the highest buffer setting (2048 with triple buffer on), then you’ll want to try another ASIO driver. In the case of FL Studio, maybe you’ll want to select FL Studio ASIO, or the ASIO4ALL v2 driver.

  1. Here’s the MusicTech complete guide to FL Studio! We’ve just reviewed FL Studio 20 and believe that it’s so good that there will be a great many more users interested in adopting it. Not only that, but FL 20 represented the DAWs first introduction to the Mac platform so there will be a lot of Mac owners considering the jump too.
  2. What installer do I need to get FL Studio 64 Bit? Windows: FL Studio 20 only creates a desktop icon for the 64 Bit version (FL64.exe), its desktop icon name is FL Studio 20. The 32 Bit exe is FL.exe and is in the installation folder. You will need to manually create a shortcut if you want to use it.
  3. Optimizing FL Studio performance If your CPU or disk usage climbs too high you will hear clicks or pops in the audio (buffer underruns). The good news is, CPU and disk usage can usually be lowered considerably if you take the time to make some adjustments to the FL Studio.

FL Studio is one of the best music software solutions that can be used as a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).

It provides you with the ability to create your own music as well as edit other music files. But sometimes people can be heard complaining about FL Studio’s performance issues. Most of the complaints are centered around the ‘extra sounds’ issue which is very much audible at times. These are mostly glitches or crackles and the sound is often choppy and strange.

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There can be two different reasons related to this choppy sound. It could be because of some random plug-in which is behaving like this, or it could be the buffer underrun problem.

To fix the plug-in problem, you need to open the plug-in wrapper processing tab where you can find the Allow threaded processing option. Now deselect this option and check if the problem is solved or not. If the problem persists then you need to select the Use fixed sized buffer option. Once you’ve made these two adjustments, you will stop getting the ‘extra sounds’, in most of the cases.

But if the problem is due to buffer underruns then there are some steps which you need to perform to solve this issue.

  • Navigate to Audio settings and select FL Studio ASIO in the Device drop-down menu
  • Now you need to change the buffer length settings as well
  • Try to get the buffer length to somewhere near 10 ms (which basically means at 441 samples)
  • Make sure that there is little addition in Underruns Count during this process
  • If you find that underruns count stop increasing you can decrease the Buffer Length settings
  • Make sure that the Buffer Length settings value never comes under 10ms else the load on your CPU will increase sharply
  • Remember that Buffer Length and Underruns Count values are inversely proportional to each other
  • For ASIO driver, there can be three different Buffer Length settings
    • 1–4 ms (44–176 samples) which is very good but you don’t need this as it will increase the load on your CPU
    • 5–10 ms (220–440 samples) this is excellent and ideal setting. We recommend setting it at 10ms
    • 11–20 ms (485–882 samples) which is acceptable and can provide you with a reasonably good sound

With all these steps the choppy sound problem will be solved and you will be able to hear clear music. But if the problem persists, you can check its memory and CPU optimization section but at your own risk. You can also check different other programs which might cause FL Studio to make these unpleasant sounds. As an example, a program called f.lux that changes the color temperature of the screen can cause this issue. If you have installed it, please get rid of it at the earliest.

If the Buffer Length setting is more than 100 ms (4410 samples) and the CPU usage is at 80%, this is basically an indication to upgrade your PC because your system isn’t capable enough to support FL Studio in this case.

If you plan on doing any recording, you are going to have to setup an audio interface in FL Studio. So I’m going to show you how to now.

These devices are great for recording and playback. It will cut down on the resources that your computer is having to use to process audio in FL Studio. So let’s talk about what it will take to get you up and rolling with an audio interface in FL Studio.

The process isn’t too complicated. And once you do it, you really never have to mess with it again. The steps we are going to cover are:

  1. Install the latest driver
  2. Check for Firmware updates
  3. Select the correct ASIO driver
  4. Set the Sample Rate and Buffer size
  5. Start recording!

So let’s get to it.

INSTALL THE LATEST DRIVER FOR AUDIO INTERFACE

Download the latest driver from the manufacturer’s website.

The first thing you want to do is make sure you have the latest and greatest software driver for the interface that you purchased. So jump onto Google, and search for:

Audio interface name + driver

Go to the manufacturer’s website that comes up in the results. And download the latest driver that corresponds to the Operating System you are working with (Windows 7, 10, OS, etc.).

Don’t download drivers from sketchy sites that aren’t the manufacturers. That could end badly.

At this point, make sure that you haven’t connected the audio interface to your computer. Because you want to install the driver before you connect to the interface.

This is an important step to setup an audio interface in FL Studio.

So Install the driver then attach the interface to the computer. It should recognize the audio interface and tell you that the drivers have been detected or some other success message like that.

Buffer Underrun Fix

There will probably be an application that gets installed for your audio interface. Open this up and look for a way to check for updates to the firmware. Again, this is just to make sure you have the latest and greatest updates before you start using the interface in FL studio.

Now that we’ve gotten the boring stuff out of the way, let’s move on to getting the audio interface setup in FL studio.

SETUP AUDIO INTERFACE IN FL STUDIO

Open up FL Studio.

Press F10 to bring up the settings window.

Then navigate to the AUDIO tab on the settings window.

ASIO DRIVER SETTING

Under the Device drop down menu you want to select the ASIO driver that corresponds with your audio interface. My interface is a Presonus Audiobox iTwo. The driver for my interface is called AudioBox ASIO Driver.

I’m not going to get into the reasons why you want to select ASIO driver versus DirectSound Device. But the simple answer is that ASIO works better when it comes to processing the audio.

So now that you have the right driver selected, let’s talk about the sample rate.

SETUP AUDIO INTERFACE SAMPLE RATES IN FL STUDIO

Fl Studio Underruns

You will have a few options, like 44000 Hz or 48000 Hz, or maybe even 96000 Hz or 192000 Hz. This may not make sense, but it is just talking about how many times the audio is sampled per second. So the higher number you pick, the more information it saves, but it also increases the file size of the recordings that you make.

Most common are 44000 and 48000, some people want to do 96000 and above, but you take up a lot more space on your hard drive doing that. I recommend setting it as low as you can without compromising on the quality. 44000 and 48000 are safe bets here.

Just make sure you set the sample rate to be the same on the audio interface application, and in FL Studio. If you don’t, it can cause some errors that will prevent you from being able to record audio in FL Studio. If you change the buffer size, FL Studio will give you a warning that you are about to change the project settings.

The next part of the window is the buffer setting.

BUFFER SETTING

Buffer Underruns

The buffer size rule of thumb is this, you want to go as low as you can on the buffer size when you are recording without creating glitches, pops, and underruns. And then you can increase the buffer size when you move into a mixing phase if you need to.

It’s important to try to set the buffer size as low as you can. When you are recording, if you have the buffer size set higher, you will actually hear what you are recording on a delay, and it can really mess you up.

When you select the buffer size, or click on the button to select the buffer size, it might bring up the application for your audio interface to let you set the buffer size there.

Buffer Underrun Protection

Fl studio project files mac. For my audio interface, they call it block size instead of buffer size. So just look for a setting that is similar to buffer size and set it.

When you are done setting the buffer size, you need to check by doing some test recording for a vocal or a guitar or another instrument you run through the audio interface. If you need some help on how to do this, you can check out the article on recording audio. The buffer size is also important on playback of your projects.

When you have a large project with a lot of files, samples, instruments, etc. you can start to get glitches and pops when you play it back. So make sure that you understand you can adjust this by messing with the buffer size.

Again, you are making sure that as you are recording, you aren’t hearing any pops, clicks, or glitches being caused by underruns. And make sure that you aren’t hearing a delay as you are recording.

CONCLUSION

As you can see, there are only a few steps you need to take to get your audio interface setup in FL Studio:

Fl Studio Underruns

  1. Download the Latest Driver for your Audio Interface
  2. Check for Firmware Updates
  3. Select the correct ASIO driver in FL Studio
  4. Set the buffer size and sample rate to not get glitches
  5. Enjoy recording in FL Studio