How to Get That "Southside 808 Mafia" sound on MPC

Some say FL studio has no sound, others say the best FL studio is FL Studio 11..Heres how to emulate that sound on MPC or any DAW

What’s up Forum,

So recently and for the past 20 years there has been a debate on whether FL studio 21 or FL studio 11 ‘hits harder’.

Even Image Line joined in the debate releasing this video explaining how FL studio’s audio engine is the same in every release.

I firmly believe in the simple (kindof unknown) fact that gear sounds good not just because of what it is but what it is doing.

So let’s look at what FL studio did great and let’s emulate that with plugins.

Does FL Studio 11 knock harder than FL 20??? 👀 🤯

”When you open FL 11, there is a limiter on the master just like FL 20. But when you look at the limiter, the gain knob is set to 5.5dB of gain.

In this two minute video Decap masterfully covers what Imageline took tein minutes to explain in their video.

If what Decap AND Imageline are saying is true, emulating this on any system shouldn’t be that hard technically.

Looking at the settings it seems that there is a slight envelope on the gain reduction. We can assume this is a kind of ‘soft clipping’ effect.

Clipping is not something you want to totally avoid, it can actually help add punch and dynamics to your drums in a mix without raising the dB too high.

But before we just run to slam our mix into a limiter, we know that after a few dB of limiting, we’re going to run into clipping in a bad way and destroy the mix.

Of course, we could just throw a limiter on, add 5.5 dB, and adjust the lookahead to 3-5 to match FL studio’s curve settings. But that would be boring lol..

The “Easy Way” add +5.5dB of Gain, 200ms release 5ms Lookahead ..

Remember we’re talking about mixing, so at this point, we’re throwing your ‘engineering hat’ on.

this way you can use this trick in all kinds of mixing or mastering applications


so first gain stage the mix so that each track is hitting the digital analog sweet spot (-18dB..) then of course push things forward or backward to your taste..

If we’re talking about that “Southside/ 808 Mafia type sound” then your Bassdrum (kick ) and 808 can be a little louder in the mix.
(Try to have a bare minimum -10dB of headroom on your master fader)

I highly suggest watching this video below.

So after watching the video you might be tempted to place your clipper before your limiter in place of AD conversion using the limiter to bring things up right?

But this is why we place our engineering hats on, FL is actually doing things a little bit differently.

So knowing what we know now, we’re going to put a clipper AFTER our limiter in the signal flow..



we want to reinforce the ‘pocket’ in the beat and have more of a polished release sound.

So first I grab my AIR Distortion Plugin.
You can copy these settings here

Essentially you want soft clipping and about 5dB of drive (the same amount of gain that FL studio 11 had)

We’ll add a bit of soft clipping to the signal before after we use limiter to add more consistent gain reduction.

Since we don’t want to completely slam everything remember the principle of mastering -2dB is pretty much the maximum amount we want to limit.

Use a short release that fits with the pocket of your track.

So this is where you just adjust your gain, aiming for -2dB MAX gain reduction on your 2 Bus.

If you need MORE punch I’ve found adding an MPC3000 emulation (or bit crusher) before or after limiting sounds pretty good too, it’s like 2 layers of clipping

Just know that if you’re sending it to Mastering it will have distortion and it’s LOUD.

And that’s kindof where their argument about ‘sound’ gets hilarious..

if you want that “sound” just turn the volume up.

Well, it used to be that simple in the analog domain, however, it’s the same concept in a DAW.

Just add a signal flow limitation that adds some great harmonics and drives that signal up until it sounds good.

So of course here are some examples

Track 1.

I use Air Enhancer to bring up the highs and the MPC 3000 emulation before the soft clipper to add more punch.

Track 2.

I turn off the ‘soft clipper’ and add 5dB to the limiter. While this mix is ‘cleaner’ it lacks that ‘finished’ sound of Track 1.

So in Track 1 you can hear that the soft clipper is pushing things up and in your face with that ‘finished’ or ‘polished’ sound.

For me this is the sound im looking for, if I wanted more clarity and space, I’d send in option #2.

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So try this out, make sure to gain stage your tracks, even if you’re working at 32bit float, plugins may operate differently

Also these are the types of mixes that mastering engineers HATE to get

At this point you’re kindof acting as the final engineer, you’re determining how loud the final product is.