FLAVOR PRO (Help me love it)

I see a lot of love for flavor pro around here and although I use it occasionally I don’t seem to get great results that make it a must have tool

Curious to hear how people are using it and why they like it so much.

Now, im mostly a crate digger/sample based beat maker. Boom bap hip hop shit. I’ll try to use it on drums and samples to emulate lofi samplers etc but get better results with the air lofi. Outside of a couple presets they all seem way too extreme and not very useful. Yes I have tried it from scratch and not focused on presets also. But presets should give you an idea of what it’s capable of.

The vinyl effect is very flexible but it’s much easier to just lay some vinyl sound over your track…. The distortion options are the same distortion efx we already have but admittedly have some nice additional features. But again, don’t sound great.

Anyways, curious to see how people are using it since it seems to get so much love around here

It would be nice to see a video of you using it. Sometimes when people say "I tried to use it" they didn't really understand the thing & more importantly didn't dig deep & really push it. Sometimes all they did is run thru the presets & tweaked them a little for an session, called it a day & said thing sucks or I don’t get why people like this. Not saying that's what happen in your case, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were, especially with one of the best plugins like Flavor Pro.

**** them presets! Take the time to just explore each of those parameters on different kinds of sound to see what it's best for. Knowing when not to use it is important too. Then start combining them like Vinyl sim & Digital Distortion or whatever & test it again with a set of sounds, keeping in mind when it would be cool to use it & save them as your own presets.

This was a great demo on Flavor Pro:

I second what B-wise posted. The amount of sonic possibilities that Flavor Pro can produce is immense so it's hard for me to understand how getting a sonically pleasing sound out of it is impossible. Maybe you don't like it sonically on every level or maybe you are locked into confirmation bias. You have heard it in ways you don't like so now you may expect it to sound awful, thus it always sounds awful. It may or may not be worth your time to explore it fully and grasp the things you don't like about it and what you feel is usable.

When I find a tool that I am stuck with and dislike, I try to quantify exactly what it is that I hate about it and how to eliminate or mitigate it's downcomings or decide to never use it again. For me personally the more I use Flavor Pro, the more I love it. I like to use it with automation and use it FX wise instead of just a static filter. It's not as sonically pleasing as the SP's filters, but I often find the difference is very subtle with good tweaking. I do agree that the presets all come off as a bit extreme. Akai seems to go a bit overboard with reverbs and filters in their stock presets.

Well thanks for the responses. These things are definitely hard to get across over the internet but was just hoping to hear how people use it, tips and tricks, etc. There’s very few tutorials or info about it so was hoping people could share their experiences

Again, I’ve mostly have tried to use it to add some character and saturation to drum buss or to dirty up the internal instruments and my external gear. Maybe I’ll post a video but don’t really see how that would help me understand how others are using it..

I’ve used RC 20 in the past and that thing sounded lovely and was really easy to dial in the sound you wanted. So I guess that’s where my bias comes from.

J.O.BEATS wrote:Maybe I’ll post a video but don’t really see how that would help me understand how others are using it..

I’ve used RC 20 in the past and that thing sounded lovely and was really easy to dial in the sound you wanted. So I guess that’s where my bias comes from.

This could help other people see the limitations in your process of using the plugin & can give you pointers from an objective standpoint which is something you couldn't never do for yourself. That's one of the powerful benefits of being in a community.

You could post a reference drum-break that you want to emulate but can't pull it off from using DrumSynth or drum samples & the tools available to remake that kind of vibe from the reference beat. Others may be able to give you tips based how they see you using it & just as important, how your not using it.

Flavor Pro is a hard fit if you are a RC-20 user.
Flavor Pro was basically created to give the ability of RC-20 to MPC standalone users, which it does, however if you do a direct comparison of the two you will find RC-20 just has a well rounded creamy smooth sound in comparison.
I would say if you aren't accustom to the specific sound of RC-20 then Flavor Pro will work nicely for most.
If you are a RC-20 user and have the need for the standalone aspect I would say to switch to Flavor Pro, ask yourself what is it that you are missing from the sound then see what other standalone Akai plugin can help put that missing element back.

Flavor Pro has the feature set to get the job done it's just that you are mentally looking for a specific sound based off another product.

I used the demo of this and was mostly uninmpressed; not to say it cant be useful and creative.

but recall when mpc renisanse first came out and the switch had mpc3000 and sp1200; and they claimed it was a hardware simulation, thats what got people excited, they need to revisit that in future models if they want people to have some excitment towards emulations, and this is what people was hoping for in the mpc x se

I've demoed both rc20 and flavor pro. My impression is the same as the op, flavor pro is very lacking in character.