FL Studio Edison Tutorial: Record, Edit and Clean Audio

What is Edison and how do you open it?

Edison is an audio editing and recording tool that loads into an effect slot on any Mixer track and records or plays audio from that position. You can run as many instances as you need, and it is available in FL Studio Producer Edition or higher^[1].

Think of Edison as the place for destructive, sample-level work: cutting a vocal take, cleaning hiss off a vinyl rip, finding the BPM of a loop or printing a blurred pad. Real-time mixing still happens with plugins on the Mixer. The slicing sampler built on the same editor is covered in the Slicex tutorial.

The shortcut behavior in the table comes from the Edison manual page^[1]. While Edison has focus, Space starts and stops playback inside the editor and F2 opens sample properties.

How do you record audio in Edison?

Select your microphone or line input in the Mixer track's Input menu, load Edison on that track with Shift+E, choose a record mode and arm Edison's record button. Image-Line says Edison is the better recording route when you are experimenting and plan multiple takes, such as loop recording^[2].

Edison has four record modes^[3]. Pick the one that matches how you want takes to start and stop.

1. Choose the input
   On an empty Mixer track, open the Input menu and pick your interface channel. Set the preamp so peaks sit well below 0 dBFS, around -12 to -6 dBFS as a starting point.
2. Load Edison to record
   With the track selected, press Shift+E.
3. Set the mode
   Pick On play for takes over the beat. For On input or Input, left-click the peak meter and drag up or down to set the trigger level^[3].
4. Loop a section
   Select 4 or 8 bars in the Playlist and press Play. Each pass adds a marker, so every take becomes its own region.
5. Pick the best take
   Stop, disable record, then use the left and right arrow keys to audition takes. Send the winner to the Playlist with Shift+C.

If the takes land late, check your driver. The manual warns that the generic FL Studio ASIO driver favors compatibility and can add latency, and recommends the interface maker's own driver on Windows^[2]. For mic setup and room treatment, see how to record vocals at home.

Which Edison editing shortcuts save the most time?

Most Edison editing uses a small set of shortcuts: select a range, then trim, fade, normalize or delete it. These are listed in Edison's menu reference^[4].

Turn on Click-free (smooth) editing with C before you cut. It smooths the edges of edits so you do not have to hunt for zero crossings on every cut.

Normalize samples you plan to chop, not full mixes. Normalizing a vocal take just raises its peak to 100%, so noise rises with it, which is why cleanup comes next.

How do you remove noise from audio in Edison?

Select a stretch of audio that contains only noise, right-click the Clean up (denoise) button to capture a noise profile, then select the part to process and open the Noise Removal Tool. The tool targets continuous noise such as hiss and electrical hum, and it can also repair clipped samples and remove clicks^[5].

It is not built for transient noises like a door slam or bird song^[5]. Cut or fade those by hand. For heavier restoration or AI tools, compare the options in how to clean up noisy recordings.

1. Find clean noise
   Select at least half a second of room tone or hiss with no voice or instrument in it. Longer noise-only selections usually give a steadier profile.
2. Capture the profile
   Right-click the Clean up (denoise) button, or click Acquire noise profile inside the open tool.
3. Select the target
   Select the section you want cleaned, often the whole take.
4. Set Amount conservatively
   Start low and raise the Amount (in dB) until the noise is just barely audible, then preview before you accept.
5. Check the tails
   Solo breaths and reverb tails. Watery or metallic tails mean the setting is too strong, so back it off.

Image-Line's own advice is to use only as much suppression as needed to make the noise barely noticeable, because excessive settings are guaranteed to cause audible artifacts^[5]. The Denoiser, Declipper and Declicker modules can run in one pass, though the manual marks the Declicker as Windows only.

For gaps between phrases, the Tools > Noise menu is faster: Acquire noise threshold (Alt+N) reads the level of your selection, and Gate noise silences everything below it^[4].

How do you detect a sample's tempo in Edison?

Open sample properties with F2 and use auto-detect. Edison offers three algorithms: a quick estimation for short loops, detection for songs with constant tempo, and detection for songs with variable tempo^[6].

When you already know the length, do it manually. Select a part you know is an exact number of beats, press F2, and the dialog shows Selection (beats) instead of Length (beats), so you can type the count. With tempo sync on, Edison can then stretch the sample to the project's master tempo^[6].

• Short loop (1-4 bars) Use the quick estimation, then confirm by looping it against the metronome.
• Full song or long sample Use constant-tempo detection for programmed music and variable-tempo detection for live drummers.
• Half or double results A loop detected at 75 BPM may really be 150 BPM. Judge by where the snare falls: on 2 and 4 of a bar, or on 3.
• Exact beat count known Select exactly 4 or 8 beats and enter the count in Selection (beats). This is usually the most reliable method for trimmed loops.

How do you use Blur and Reverse for creative sounds?

Reverse (Alt+Left) flips a selection, and Blur (Ctrl+B) smears it into a wash; both sit in the Tools menu next to Convolution reverb on Ctrl+R^[4]. Blur's main controls are Amount (the width of the convolution window), Offset, Mix and an Envelope that shapes the blur, which defaults to a Gaussian curve^[7].

Blur pads from a melody

Image-Line's blur pad recipe flattens a monophonic melody to one note, adds at least 4 seconds of silence before and after it, converts mono to stereo, and applies Blur with an Amount around 4000 ms. It also warns that S, T, C, CH and F sounds can turn into hiss after blurring^[8]. Load the result into a sampler, set the root note, and you have an evolving pad from a vocal line.

Reverse reverb swell

Duplicate a vocal word or snare hit, reverse it, apply Convolution reverb with a long tail, then reverse the result again. Place that swell so it ends exactly where the original hit starts. Because the edit is destructive, work on a copy and keep the dry file. For regular reverb settings, see how to use reverb pre-delay on vocals.

How do you send audio from Edison to the Playlist?

Press Shift+C to run Send to Playlist as audio clip, or use Send to selected channel from the Sequencing menu to load the audio into the selected Channel rack channel^[4]. You can also drag the sample or a selection straight out of Edison.

The clip lands as a new audio clip you can arrange, stretch and automate. How those clips relate to patterns and channels is explained in Channel rack, patterns and Playlist explained. Edison, like audio recording itself, needs Producer Edition or higher^[9].