Prepare a Project in Your DAW

7/25/2019 Prepare a Project in Your DAW

1/9

TPREPARE A PROJECT IN YOUR DAWHi I am Enrique Nery from San Salvador in El Salvador. This lesson is for week 3: The DAW at

Coursera.org. I will be teaching how to prepare a project in FL Studio 12. I hope this lesson help you

to better understand how the projects are prepared into this DAW.

PRE PRODUCTION: THE PROJECT CHECKLIST

To ensure that the project is well configured, it's necessary to take in count the following steps:

1.

Proper Project Name and Location.

2. Digital Audio Preferences.

3. Hardware Settings.

4. Recording File Type.

ABOUT MY DAW

I have the FL Studio Producer Edition (Version 12.12)that supports full song creation and mic recording:

FL Studio Main window


2/9

STEP 1: SET PROPER PROJECT NAME AND LOCATION

To set the project name just click in: File -> Save:

It opens the following window:

As default the projectname is set to: untitled,

in this case I will name it

to:

My coursera project.

Before click in the save

button, its necessary to

create the project folder.

It has to be named the

same as the project.


3/9

The project file must to be inside this folder. At this point, we should have something like this:

The file extension created is: .flp(I think it means: Fruity Loops Project for obvious reasons).

At the beginning there are not subfolders, they are created when you want to create them. To make itgo to:

File -> Export -> Project Bones

FL Studio will ask you for the location you want to have the project subfolders, in order to have all the

things right, create them inside the My Coursera Project folder.

If you want to save the samples used inside your project, click the next option:

File -> Export -> Project data files


4/9

After doing the previous tasks, we have the project subfolder and all the samples used.

The subfolder created has the following folders:

As you can see, FL Studio creates five different folders to organize:

Automation: all the DAW elements and sintethizers automations created for make more

dynamic and realistic music productions.

Channels:Save information of the samplers and sintethizers related to mixer channels.

Effects:Holds the settings for every effect used in the project

Mixer:Here are all the channel configurations and the stack of effects setted for every one.

Scores:All the scores information you create for melodies, chords, etc.


5/9

STEP TWO: DIGITAL AUDIO PREFERENCES

CONFIGURING SAMPLE RATE

I have a Presonus Firepod Audio Interface. To configure the global audio interface sample rate I have to

click in the driver icon in the windows taskbar:

Enter the settings window and set the sample rate to: 48,000 hertz. And save the changes pressing the

Donebutton.

Presonus Firepod driver window.


6/9

To configure the sample rate that will be used into the DAW go to Options -> Settings -> Audio.

STEP THREE: HARDWARE SETTINGS

Select the device which in this case is the Firepod Audio Recording Interface(I select the Firepod ASIO

Driverbecause it has a very low latency. And set the sample rate to 48,000 Hz.

Then we can set the buffer length which in this case I let in 192 smp(Samples per second) this are the

same as latency option in the driver window. Since no latency problems occur at 192 smp, its not

necessary to use 128 smp.

The priority says to windows the priority processing level of the FL Studio application into the entire

Windows System.

Most of the new DAW support the use of multi CPU. This improves the performance of the system by

reducing the problems of clicking while playing the global song created.

The smart disablefeature disables all of the sintethizers and effects when they are not in use.


7/9

STEP FOUR: RECORDING FILE TYPE

For the recording process is necessary to configure one plugin inside the DAW, this plugin is called Edison.

Edison is responsible for carrying out all tasks of audio recording, is inside of this plugin where we set the

bit depth. In order to do this follow the next steps:

1. Go to the Mixer.

2. Select the channel of the mixer where the audio will be recorded

3.

Select the input type (Mono is recommended). In this case y select 1L.

Then is necessary to select the Edison Plugin.

1.

Go to the first empty slot (Slot 1).

2.

Select the Edison Plugin.


8/9

Select the Edison Plugin and it shows the Current Recording Configuration, to change it, Right Clickonthe marked area, it opens the following window:

Into this window you can set the

Sample Properties, among these:

the format which is the Bit Depth.

Set the Sample Recording Rate to

48,000 Hz, and the format to 32 Bit

float, Monoand click Accept.

Note:This DAW doesnt show the

24 Bit format. Because of it, I select

the 32 Bit format.


9/9

Inside of Edison, click the Save Asicon. It shows you the following window in which you can select the

recorded sample format.

The save options are:

Select the Microsoft wave file(*.wav). Another good option of uncompressed audio file is FLACwhich

means Free Lossless Audio Codec.

The only thing left is to select the sample titleand click save.

REFLETION

During a lot of time I didnt know what was the true meaning of terms like: sample rate, bit depth, latency.

I did not imagine how this basic concepts affect when I am going to the recording process. I have found that

this information is very interesting and helpful. I hope my research also might be useful to you. I now have a

better criterion for deciding the best settings to make the recording process and produce sound with good

quality standards.

Thank you very much for examine my work. The best regards.

Documents

Prepare a Project in Your DAW