I actually much prefer FL Studio UI over Ableton's

Funny! I think fl studio ui is the worst, ableton is better than fl, and bitwig much better than both. I guess it really is just personal preference or maybe we mistake familiarity for ergonomics because we build muscle memory for tools and then if we try anything else, it'll obviously feel worse because we don't know how it works.

> I guess it really is just personal preference or maybe we mistake familiarity for ergonomics

These are mutually exclusive the way I see it, and I would argue that personal preference is the right one.

I tried learning Ableton but didn't find joy in it, I think it's because FL Studio has closer origins to the music tracker days whereas Ableton avoided that.

I would say they both offer different mental modes that are orthogonal to one another

For sequenced music, I love FL Studio, and I think you get a lot of value from it too. Free updates for life has been amazing.

Agreed, it's really intuitive (or it was for me). I feel like it has just the right learning curve, it just makes sense.

For me it was through comparison I realized this. I used some other DAWs and found Ableton to just make sense. They jam so much into a simple UI that it all just makes sense.

Same. To be honest I tried using FL Studio (back when it was "Fruity Loops") and it never fully clicked with me. Live immediately made sense, it's been home ever since.

Fl studio browser was the biggest turnoff for me.

100% agreed, gold standard in creative software design

I moved from Ableton Live to Bitwig and found Bitwig's interface even more intuitive than Live's. There are some idiosyncrasies in Live's UI that aren't hard to learn but definitely non-intuitive, in my opinion Bitwig has a more polished experience for interaction/intuitiveness.

Would you mind describing an example?

Modulators [0], for example, they are available as a side-panel on any device which you can click the rectangle with a "+" button and select any type of modulator: LFOs (many different kinds), curves, envelopes, segments, etc.

Instead of creating a LFO as part of the chain of devices it's clearly a thing embedded to the device itself, including on VSTs (so any VST can have more complex modulation than they offer natively). You can multi-target the modulator to affect any parameter on any of the devices across the whole track, so a LFO modulating something on the 1st device in the chain can also apply the same modulation to a parameter on the 9th device so they can be "coupled" to that movement, this mapping is also attenuated per application so even though the movement is the same it can have different magnitudes when assigned.

It completely removes the need of LFO Tool for complex curves/ramps, etc., or the LFO as a device with the "map" button to assign to parameters, if I want 10 LFOs I can just have them all together as a side-pane of a device or the track itself. It makes much more sense that a modulator is attached to something instead of being its own thing on a long list of devices.

Another improvement: macros can live on a control panel for a device, whole track, or even the whole project, so you can create a macro knob at the project-level and map it to affect any parameter of any track, and just map the project-level macro knob to a MIDI controller to modulate whatever parameter in the whole project.

These are just a couple of intuitive features from the top of my head I use in almost every single project.

[0] https://www.bitwig.com/userguide/latest/the_unified_modulati...

I love that it is not only clean and usable, but also they somehow managed to make it cool in a very minimalist and utilitarian way. It is like a digital version of a sleek physical synth with very raw industrial design. Reminds me of how NAD amplifiers look ugly-beautiful with their greyish chases.

It's because they grew up playing with Fischer Technik.

i just like that theres a damn plugin rack at the bottom. most other DAW's i can't stand how i have to click some tiny little button to see the plugin window. its nice to be able to tweak knobs on different plugins in your chain easily

Dunno... but coming from Studio One, I find Ableton’s interface very off-putting and ugly.

Yeah, I know... personal taste :)

They really do a good job especially considering how much complexity is contained within Ableton.

I started on Logic and it was a perfect intro to Ableton. Only after struggling endlessly in Logic could I truly appreciate the elegance of Ableton!

Counterpoint: the UI is usable but ugly. Logic Pro does a better job of clean UI while maintaining the OS look, more or less, and still being very usable and flexible in a similar creative space. I love both programs but I "feel" better in Logic.