As @antic604 predicted - appears quiet on the Bitwig DAW this year promoting Connect hardware
“ Visit our booth (tent Z105) to meet the team, demo Bitwig Studio 5.3, and get your hands on our new hardware, Bitwig Connect”
Unless a 5.3.9 surprises us but guess anything major likely to be a 5.4 or 6.0 release
Glad to hear Bitwig 6 has actually been mentioned. Was hoping some hints would be mentioned and leaked 
Unfortunately only Windows isn’t supported, macOS and Linux got the device aggregation in Bitwig. Windows’ audio stack seems to be such a pain to develop for 
New premium pack just dropped:
accompanied by interview with its creator - legendary (for me, at least) Cristian Vogel:
I wonder if anyone is buying these? Call me a sceptic, but these were the sort of things that used top drop free with an active licences…
In this case, I’d think it’d be worth the purchase just because it’s from Christian Vogel. He’s a brilliant designer. I’ve bought many of his Neverengine Labs products for Kyma and they never fail to inspire me. That guy knows his stuff. 
I think you need to be on 5.3.8 (latest release) since they also merged two old sound packs by Cristian Vogel - Bitwig Lab I and Bitwig Lab II into Bitwig Lab.
I don’t know if that could be the case but in 5.3 they added new features, maybe some new modules were used in those packs so they are not compatible with versions before 5.3, idk.
Nothing like seeing the Bitwig 6 rumors and then promptly getting the reminder email that my plan is about to expire 
I hope Bitwig 6 finally comes with native video support
Polygrid, custom drums, custom sequencers, custom shit. Can’t find another DAW that let’s you create these typical janky modular rhythms. That’s my jam.
That would be very welcome.
Personally, I’d still like a simplified slicing workflow like Ableton’s simpler.
The new master recorder is cool. Would be even cooler it could function like Rolling Sampler. You could set a time limit and just have it recording the last few minutes, but purging as you go unless you decide you want to grab that audio. Then a simple drag and drop.
Agreed. I was envisioning a “recording buffer” feature already a decade ago, where you could just set a suitable buffer size (in minutes, say from 5 to 90) and everything from the audio interface output would be captured at all times into it, redardless if the actual DAW transport was running or not, you could access it anytime and “recover” stuff from it if you happened to hit a great spot while rehearsing/jamming/etc… Bitwig folks are forward thinking enough, they should adopt this feature indeed.
I don’t know - this never bothered me 
Sure, slicing to Sampler (by grid or transients) isn’t as flexible as Simpler’s slice mode but the end result is the same - you get a MIDI track with a device that plays slices chromatically.
On the flipside, in Live I still can’t get over the fact that you can’t edit audio clips in Session View and that consolidating audio destroys all the edits. This is so backwards, that I can’t imagine why there’s not a bigger uproar in the community… 
Both Live AND Bitwig could take a page from Studio One (or Cubase, which has the same feature):
I can only assume that many (like me) use the hotkey for ‘open in external editor’ feature- I open in Wavelab (elements) and it has extensive editing (probably more than we can ever hope for in a DAW)…that said, I wouldn’t say no to quick edits like reverse and delete…but surprisingly after using it in Bigwig I didn’t find myself missing it in Live as much as I thought I would…Wavelab opens very fast and I just consider it a pop up editor! I guess others edit in arrangement view, I know some people, work there almost exclusively!
Sure, but external editor still means that the result is destructive, i.e. all the reversing, stretching & re-arranging will be backed-in into a new audio file, whereas in Bitwig (or S1, or Cubase) the clip is a container, so all the audio slices & their edits are preserved.
But perhaps my inability to commit is to blame here, not Ableton 
I can only assume that after all of this time (and it often being a top user request) that the fundamental framework of Ableton prevents it (which was pretty much suggested by the Bitwig team when the left Ableton to 'recode from scratch) - no idea why but I recon if it was possible they would have done it buy now! S1 was always my go to for stuff that would be heavy on audio (Melodyne Studio integration!) as neither Bitwig or Live offer even simple audio pitch correction (even Reason does!) so when I pick up my guitar or (try to) sing, its S1 for me! Bitwig great for hardware integration/modular, Live for fast, fun looping and quick arrange of ideas…
Lots of folks have such a hard time getting past the “I don’t see a use for this personally so it doesn’t make sense” barrier.
User experience is worth quite a bit to me. You can achieve largely the same result of Elektron boxes in a DAW but nobody would question the desire for dedicated tools that do things in a unique way.
Bitwigs lack of slicing has slowed me down time and time again. It’s not nearly as smooth or fast, which are things I prioritize.
I don’t want individual drum machine sampler instances. I’d like a simpler slicer like thing that’s mono voiced, allows me to pitch around the sample as a whole, not have to work with individual samplers in a drum rack.
Same goes for applying macro level transient shaping across all slices. It’s just stupid quick with Ableton’s Simpler.
Nothing is perfect, so bitwig is still my main DAW.
Bitwig is flexible enough where I have actually hacked together a creative substitute.
I have a sampler present saved with key note modulator and a bunch of macro knobs that send the key note to the sample start point.
Drag sample in. Move macro knobs to fine tune “slice start”. It’s a mono device by default, so it handles a lot like simpler. Though it’s only 12 slices and doesn’t have any transient detection.
I can love and utilize this flexibility but still strongly wish for something akin to simpler.
If you get the transient settings wrong converting a sample to drum machine in bitwig, you just start over. In simpler, it’s a trivial process to fine tune the detection.
If you want further granularity, convert to drum rack. Often times I don’t.
I was careful to not suggest that and I definitely don’t think it doesn’t make sense.
It just wouldn’t benefit me personally.
But I’m not against you getting it.
Please don’t put words in my mouth 
