Bitwig first impression?

The Lounge General Discussion
#12

Well, after about 40 hours of testing Bitwig I came to the conclusion that it definitely has potential but can not replace Ableton at the moment. The midi implementation is really awesome and hell, I can use some of my old plugins again, that went obsolete with the 64 bit installation of Ableton.

The downside of the current version is for sure the audio manipulation features. The timestretch has some flaws and warped audio starts to sound grainy quite fast.

Another huge bummer is the missing rewire function and M4L with its great convolution reverb and some other great tools.

So from my point of view they started not too bad but kinda too late. I expected something really mature after that long developement and testing phase but got kinda disappointed.

However, I bought my copy of Bitwig to support this company, hoping they work even harder on it…

Cheers,
C

#13

Bitwig have just realised another uodate which fixes the pdc issue. That’s pretty good considering ableton are aware of the issue but don’t care to fix it. One of the reasons I ditched live.
Really hoping they continue to fix bugs at this rate.
Anyway it’s great to see them so connected to their potential customers

#14

I’ve been shying away from DAW’s in favor of all hardware solutions. However the Linux support on this makes me at least want to try out the demo on Ubuntu Studio. Still not sure of the benefits for me of a hybrid in and out of the box solution vs full OTB.

#15

I have tried both ITB / OTB so many times back and forth but ended up with a hybrid solution and never look back.
Stuff like Nebula and Cytomic’s Glue can easily compete with decent outboard gear and having them on each channel is massive luxury.
Thats why I am extending my hybrid setup with a 32chan. FW mixer like the Midas Venice F :wink:

#16

I haven’t used Bitwig (not interested in switching DAWs) but I have watched several demos.

The GUI is very nice. Sounds like they’ve written the code in away that’s going to make add-ons and upgrades work universally (so no more PC or Mac versions) which is kinda cool when you think about how this could streamline development and support.

All the issues will most likely be worked out, as it normally does when a company releases a product before it’s 100% ready (Elektron does too).

I am surprised that the first version is priced as it is. You’d think they’d seed the market with a special "introductory offer’ just to get people using the product. Price should go to full value after bugs are fixed.

I think long time LIVE users will stick with what they know, unless Bitwig offers something ground breaking that can’t be done in LIVE. But new music producers (kids these days) will come with fresh eyes, and no bias for one product over the other. In that respect I think Bitwig has an edge because it’s interface look more contemporary than Live’s, and this could be a big draw for smartphone addicted youngsters.

#17

Nailed it.

#18

What is a pdc issue?

#19

Renoise 3.0 is pretty incredible.

#20

Lack of AU support is the killer for me. And the fact that my Push controller is quite possibly the best thing I’ve bought over the last few years.

Nice design though and some good ideas. Just doesn’t do enough different for me compared to Live 9 (+Max)

#21

I want to like Bitwig but they made a bit of an arse of the whole launch thing with an outrageous distant announcement then chucking out software that, for many, is highly buggy and missing in features. I’ll give it a few months before trying out myself.

It looks good, a little nicer than Live, but at the asking price I wont be considering a switch until they offer some sort of sale and/or let us know what the upgrade pricing model will be. Live’s steep upgrade pricing is always one of the things that pisses me off the most about it!

It’s good to have competition and now Live’s “unique” selling point is under threat. Time for them to step it up with v10 so I think Live users would be mad to jump ship until the see what Ableton offer in response however long that may take.

#22

I have no interest in a new DAW at the moment, i have my Reason.

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#23

Has anyone tried Bitwig lately?

I have recently spent two nights trying to overcome midi routing problems with Live 9 and got to the point that just installed the latest Bitwig demo version.

Haven’t tried it with any Elektron gear yet, but I would be really interested of hearing some opinions if anyone is still using Bitwig with Rytm and/or A4.

I love the interface and in overall it’s pretty logical after live (surprise). I like the possibility to have clips and arrangement visible at the same time. Note editors are also neat.

#24

i just can say that they improved the product with every update, and they provide updates very often.
in version 1.2 they added some essential midi/audio routing stuff and to me it looks like it will become a really good competitor to ableton.

i still miss a thing or two, but i don’t have to rush to make the switch, cause i can easily switch between ableton and bitwig

#25

since i’m linux user it is great to have good commercial products for it.
and bitwig is a good start in this direction!

having one software for all thre major plattforms has been an industry lack for years and bitwig opens a very important door!

the fact that the same guys who had developed ableton live are behind bitwig is also a good sign… at the moment it is buggy as hell but fun to play with!

cheers!

#26

i tried the demo when 1.0 was released - but at that point some subjective workflow related comfort was still missing for me (i could not drag&drop multiple audio files onto separate tracks, for example). but i heard that’s changed now and will definitely have go again at it soon.
one of the things i hope might ease the process compared to ableton is the way clips are handled in the clip view (such as swapping audio regions within the clip) .

#27

Ok, I ended up buying Bitwig. Cannot provide full insight yet, but damn, I really like how you can edit automation in either clips or arrangement. Also multiple automation modes and flexible interface are definite pluses compared to Live.

Gonna try to find some time to fix the full A4+Rytm+Bitwig setup.

#28

PDC stands for plug-in delay compensation
AFAIK, that’s how a DAW adapts to the audio and automation latency introduced by VST/AU plug-ins.

#29

Grr, it doesn’t seem to be as straight forward as I was dreaming. Most of the controls work fine with A4 and Rytm, but I bumbed into some weird issues with CC data. When I try to record Rytm channel mutes or scene changes the data values record but for some reason they won’t change Rytm as they should. Automation data shows for example value “1” for scene changes, but Rytm doesn’t change scene until that value is bigger than 1. When I scale the automation up by hand, the changes work. Really strange…

And in Rytm, when I press scene button, the button flashes briefly, but doesn’t stay lit until I press it again. Midi monitor shows that the value is changed, but Bitwig changes it back to original immediately.

#30

A post was merged into an existing topic: Bitwig

#31