> I'd like to try and kick off some discussion, so how about > if everyone shares the following: Hi all, My name is Gwydion, I'm 33 (34 on the 16th) and live in Sydney, Australia. My name is Welsh, and I'm male - I say this because I've found most people assume that such a name must be female! I've had FL for about a year but have not used it for much of that. I also have Reason, Rebirth, Reaktor 3, Cubase 5 VST (which I hate), Cakewalk Home Studio 2002 (if only it had rewire support), and a bunch of VST, DXi and Reaktor instruments, my favorites of which are Pentagon I and the new JP9000 from Dash. Although I have wide musical tastes, for composition I'm experimenting with styles similar to Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Kraftwerk and so on, so I guess generally you'd call that Electronica and Symphonic Electronica. The reason I like FL is that it allows me to build up ideas very quickly and then experiment with them in a non-destructive way. I tend to use a lot of patterns with just one instrument playing in each so I have maximum flexibility in the playlist to try different combinations of things. It's also astonishingly stable - I have never, ever had it crash. Dislikes in FL include the total inflexibility of the effects routing, and the browser pane which while convenient can get unmanageable very quickly. I wish FL would include rewire support as well! I get around the former by using my own Reaktor ensembles for unusual effects routings, and the latter ... well, we're stuck with that for now. I'd rather see a pane-based interface for the browser pane like Netscape (yecch) has - so that I can jump around the sections quickly. I have done some MP3s but they've been experimental and I haven't given them the time they really need to fully develop. You can hear them at my ampcast site - http://www.ampcast.com/gwydi - and please download them if you can because I get 5c per download and it all helps :) I'm involved in a very friendly musical community called the fin-music list, named for its creator Fin (http://www.mp3.com/fin) ... if you like JMJ type music, you must listen to Fin's stuff because he owns a lot of the same gear and his music is very, very good. If you're interested in a list full of electronic music gearheads that's not specific to any platform, hardware or software, you could do much worse than joining his list - so long as you don't mind 600 or more emails per month! In addition, I tune in every week to a live internet radio show run by another artist, Palancar (http://www.palancar.net) - this shows plays every Wednesday at 11pm Eastern / 8pm PST / 4am GMT (thursday morning) / 3pm AEST (thursday afternoon in Australia). This show features great electronic music from Ampcast artists every week and also has a hugely fun and active chatroom running at the same time - go to http://bluewater.palancar.net and from there you can find the link to "listen" and for the chatroom. I've made a lot of new emusic friends from this show :) I think that's the best info I have to pass on right now. I know it's not all specific to FL but I find it's easy to find specific program info but harder to find "communities" where you can meet people with similar minds and tastes. Looking forward to meeting you all :) Take care, Gwydion