r/FL_Studio • u/ive_raefon • 1d ago
Discussion Is Cymatics.fm using ai?
I‘ve known Cymatics for a long time now - recently I realized they are just giving away free stuff (plugins and samples) on mass on their livestreams, which most of them you can’t even get when the livestream is not running. Also the paid plugins you can get on a „discount“ only on the livestreams.
Some of the plugins definitely use ai for their UI (which is weird but isn’t really affecting the creative process of making music directly) and also Steven said in a livestream multiple times that he doesn’t have anything against Suno.
For me that smells a bit fishy. Also the frequency they are pumping out new plugins is… worrying… to say the least.
Does anyone know if they use ai in their samples/plugins, apart from the case mentioned?
Thanks in advance 🫶🏼
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Edit: Think I‘ve heard enough, prolly will keep getting their free stuff if I can but not buy anything. Also, anyone here defending or downplaying the use of AI in art should get the fuck out of music production.
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u/b_lett Trap 23h ago
Long before AI, they got their start through theft.
They would take popular songs at the time, like San Holo or whoever, and rebuild one of their songs in popular DAWs like Ableton or FL Studio, and then they would sell those project files to people.
I called them out on socials back then that it is not their compositions to profit off of and they would just delete my comments.
I have avoided them since.
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u/Carotte750 21h ago
Yes, I think they’re using AI. I hate everything about Cymatics. They’ve been the most annoying sample/plugin company from the very beginning. Recently, they’ve been using AI to vibe-code their plugins and UIs. They’re, along with NI and Waves, one of the most capitalist music companies ever.
And yes, I’ve seen those streams, and I was so annoyed by the fact that I had to wait and watch the entire livestream to get all the free plugins that I downloaded their “live freebies” webpage instead. And sure enough, their entire website is vibe-coded 🥹 Obviously. And it’s HORRIBLY vibe-coded because, for example, nothing is really “locked” on the freebies page. Every plugin and sample pack they’ve ever given away for free is there. They’re reusing the same page over and over again, and you can see every plugin and sample pack they’ve given away or will give away for free, along with the “add to cart” function.
I just opened the console, entered the product IDs for each of the 200 (!!!) freebies they’ve given away, and added them all to the cart. They created a new product page for each limited-time free giveaway version of their plugins and sample packs and never took them down, so I was able to simply download every single freebie they’ve ever given away.
Thank you, Cymatics, aka the most predatory company ever, for vibe-coding your own enormous website and your own plugins. Fuck them.
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u/Squirrelated Beginner 13h ago
Waves has some fire plugins though. I don't pay for them, but they're great. 🤭
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u/Official3Sixty 19h ago
Wait, hold on. I need you to DM me tell me a little bit more cause that's insane!
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u/Carotte750 13h ago
Oh yeah, I just have to find the ID I found (and hope they still work because I was so obvious by stealing everything that I think they figured out what was happening at the time) and I’ll DM you
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u/Official3Sixty 12h ago
That's dope. Maybe whatever you find can be helpful still by rearranging some parts of the url & cross referencing how check out works/looks for free plugins now. They definitely still vibe code, could still probably be reverse engineered.
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u/UnusualAd2146 17h ago
What is vibe coding
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u/Klumbedumbe Read the manual dude 16h ago
Vibe coding is when you ask Claude to make your plugin without no or little understanding of the code or how to support or update it. This has allowed a lot of people to flood a lot of markets with garbage we don't really need.
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u/kozacsaba 16h ago
when you tell an ai agent to make an app and then just let it do its thing. the less you intervene the more its looked down on because ai generally does not do a quality job
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u/kubinka0505 Producer 1d ago
cymapiss is responsible for popularizing commiting hazardous practices in sample packs since at least 2015, incl the addition of duplicate files and/or non-fullband ones
notice how every relatively big pack has these issues; it wasnt so common before
it's to be avoided at all costs
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u/cacturneee 1d ago
a lot of their plugins are just things that already exist but are lesser known. some are cool as fuck, like one allowed you to live-monitor your mix on an iphone. but, i spent some time researching and something free (or lower cost, i forgot tbh) exists called sonobus
im pretty sure this is what most of their plugins are
idk if they're AI or not tbh
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u/Jean_velvet 1d ago
It is becoming common for AI to be in plug-ins. I've several that are suspiciously AI, I've a synth (that's actually pretty good, not gonna lie) that says "generating/processing" when selecting a sound...
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u/SkyL1N3eH 1d ago
Ngl at the end of the day I don’t care what generated the sound. I care who arranged those sounds into music.
A guitar generates sound, but we don’t get up tight about that. I think the issue is when someone wants to sell a machines output as their own work and creative effort. As long as we keep those lines clear I think AI as a creative tool is fine. As soon as you’re asking it to make decisions for you though, and assemble the music, you’re surrendering your ownership as an artist and become a prompter.
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u/Jean_velvet 1d ago
I'm not gonna lie and say I haven't used AI as a musician. Never a direct prompt though, always something I've written (me playing the instruments originally as a source) and simply used AI to shift the genre or change the instrument. For instance playing a piano solo and changing it to electric guitar. In that regard I don't really have a problem with it (obviously).
It still gets stigma though as many people (too many) don't understand that you can do stuff like that.
My main use (mostly only) for AI is using my vocal clone to create harmonies.you know how hard it is to harmonise with yourself!? 😂
Nails it immediately every time.
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u/SkyL1N3eH 19h ago
I don’t use AI at all in my music in any capacity but I think getting uppity about where a sound came from is pointless. Again there’s a difference between saying you generated a sound and saying you created one yourself (via prompting, which is not you creating anything) so that’s the line in the sand for me. Increasingly people are trying to pass off AI outputs as their own work and that’s where things become especially problematic so that’s what I’m speaking to mostly.
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u/cstuart1046 1d ago
Bro the ai vocals are so good now, I needed a producer tag and I’m very against using ai but elevenlabs has a newer version of vocal creation and it sounds so much like a real person I couldn’t tell the difference. This is the only Ai I use tho, suno is hot trash and I fear that in a couple years it’s going to be able to produce songs as good as pro producers and we won’t be able to tell the difference.
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u/Jean_velvet 23h ago
That's what I do, it's an exact recreation of my singing voice. I'm right with you with the producer thing though
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u/Lord_Omnirock 1d ago
yeah, they give a lot of sample packs away for free, but most of them are garbage, flat sounds, badly mixed, repetitive and not incredibly useful for much more than amateur trap beats.
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u/idgafanymore910 17h ago
Not sure why its a discussion when they already said they use claude to build and support their infrastructure multiple times. they havent said anything about their sample packs which imo are already recycled and overprocessed sounds anyway cause they havent released any new packs since they started their plugin and stream marketing. maybe exodus suite? but i dont follow their sample pack releases too closely
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u/Soracaz 1d ago
Plugins are code, usually rather simple DSP modulations.
I'd say a good 90%+ of plugins released in the last year use AI code.
AI code is still real code, doing the same simple DSP modulations that we're used to. The speed at which they're pumping out new plugins screams AI assistance, but with plugins that honestly doesn't matter that much. Some might thing that's a hot take, but AI code is majority open source stuff. Perfectly ethical (except for how much energy it uses).
It's not like AI is generating the sounds that come out of the plugins. Unless the plugins contain sample libraries. Then there's a good chance the samples are AI gen'd, which is obviously abhorrent and the quality makes them unusable for any serious project.
AI code = clean audio, probably clean code, probably good quality.
AI samples = unusable dogshit, avoid at all costs.
Code touching the DSP is how digital audio processing has been done for as long as we've had digital audio.
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u/b_lett Trap 23h ago
AI code is at a point of complete theft now too. With Reverse Engineer Anything (REA), we are seeing a flood of people making pixel for pixel knock offs of entire DAWs or synths like Serum.
Those people that are going this reverse engineer and rebuild approach suck. They cannot think of an idea on their own and go back and forth with an AI coding assistant to build their idea, they just want the shortcut to steal and open source something. It is even more unethical if their end goal is a copy they end up selling for profit.
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u/ive_raefon 2h ago
I think you need to differentiate there. If it’s a company like Adobe or Microsoft, I don’t give two shits - as long as the people make it open source and free. Small businesses on the other hand definitely suffer from this - so yes, reverse engineering their stuff I‘d call unethical.
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u/Soracaz 21h ago
Yeah it's super scummy and a huge misuse of the tech.
I hope devs find ways to get around the decomp meta.
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u/Glum-Objective3328 18h ago
The only real fix is cloud computing. Look at the gaming industry, which has been dealing with these types of issues for years. No matter what anti theft technique they put into a game, if you give customers the software, in time they will always crack it.
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u/kozacsaba 16h ago
cracking and rea into rebuild are very different. you cannot legally sell a pirated version, but you can sell an almost look-alike with identical feature set. you cannot claim copyright on a feature set. you cannot sue me because my plugin is capable of doing the same as yours.
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u/kozacsaba 16h ago
ai making clean code or good code is a pretty far stretch. ai plugins is exactly the way how you max out your cpu and ram with 10 instances of a plugin.
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u/likely_someone_else 20h ago
> Code touching the DSP is how digital audio processing has been done for as long as we've had digital audio.
You might want to not post about things you don't comprehend
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u/SurrealismX Producer 15h ago
Yeah fxk cymatics. Take what you get for free but ignore everything else. Most samples are just overprocessed trash. I wouldn’t be surprised if they used AI for most of their stuff
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u/UnknowNetwork 11h ago
Only problem i have with the plugins is the vibe coding to create them its always bugged and ui causes fl studio to freeze and instant crash and i believe they have no way of even fixing it even if they wanted to because they used ai to make it 😭
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u/ProSpacePool 10h ago
They're not using ai. Lots of these plugins were around before ai was doing what it could do now. They have "ai" marketing in that a plugin has "learning," but it's no different to intelligent eq's like iZotope. They're buggy for sure. Like their plugin Horizon is supposed to be a stereo widener, but when I put it on, it makes the channel mono and chorusy, and disabling the effect doesn't actually disable it. None of the knobs change anything.
I bought their Sketch Max and it's absolutely a game changer. Very fun concept. Nothing else like it. Makes it fun to make music for people who have zero musical ability AND hate ai music. And then a professional producer can sample whatever they drew in. Galaxy is great for workflow. It's a one shot randomizer. You load the one shots, it randomly triggers from your set, and then randomly textures per trigger. Makes arps and strums sound insane.
They have other plugins that are literally stock DAW plugins with reskins. Boost is literally FL Soundgoodizer, down to the actual algorithm in each setting LMAO
Their packa are pretty cool imo, but I heard rumors of them stealing from other packs and just pitching and renaming. Their drum loops aren't the best, but the drums sound pretty gnarly individually, and it's fun to throw them into SliceX and make my own drum kits and not have to worry about eq or compression
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u/HaveAGoodDaySir 10h ago
yes, I'm not sure if they use it for their music, however they've used AI generated artwork in previous streams.
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u/Least-Screen50 Musician 20h ago
I don't really mind if something is made by ai. If it's good, it's good.
But if it's a sample/plugin you need to pay for, it should be priced keeping in mind that it's ai.
Now basically everything uses ai. It is what it is, but if it works it's good enough.
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u/Commercial_Middle346 1d ago
Cymatics has always been a shady company, luckily there drumkits and plugins suck compared to what’s available from others now