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 
The contrast with how the slickness of simpler plus Push is probably the main reason that I’ve gone back to using Live a lot more than Bitwig these days.
Also having gotten used to having skipback sampling in my 404 I think every DAW needs it. Most of the time in Bitwig these days I have the 404 on the master and use it to grab what I want - don’t tend to hit the record button much and don’t really want to.
You’re absolutely right man. Sorry about that. Thanks for checking me in a not over-reactive way.
I have an IRL buddy I get into these kinds of tiffs with and I was projecting that on you.
He has a very strong wall of “I don’t see the use, therefore it doesn’t make sense for anyone.” that is frustrating to deal with.
I’m considering a mac mini to use with bitwig and I’m hoping to get away with one of the cheaper options, maybe get 24gb of RAM. I’m wondering if anyone knows how bitwig does on M4? I have found comparisons with other DAWs but not for bitwig.
Im on a M1 Studio and it doesn’t blink so im 100% sure you will be flying on a M4!!
Also it is rock solid on my Mac - I think I have had it left open for over a month with a few projects loaded and not a single crash!!! Live 12 fairly solid nowadays but still has the odd crash
Bitwig, considering that it uses real-time audio engine, 4x oversampled Grid, audio-rate modulators, etc. - is incredibly well optimized for multicore processors, much better than e.g. Ableton Live.
CPU performance is something I never think about (on 12-core M2 Pro Macbook).
M4 Pro will work great.
I think you’d be fine with regular M4, too.
…i still did not manage to see my m1 pro cpu with 16 gigs of ram broke into sweat, or even start ventilating, no matter what i throw at it, when it comes to bitwig and any audio tasks…
Sounds safe enough. Thanks for the replies.
Same computer here. A heavy grid project is enough for that, and that’s a little annoying.
…oh, i see…i’m not in too heavy gridding…
but since they switched heavy loads from cpu to more gpu loads, i also had the feeling, bitwig is not that slim efficency coded anymore…before 4.3 ur really could get IT going on even pretty outdated machines…those days are defenitly over…
I’m running 5.1 on a dual core i5 Thinkpad from 2012 and it runs great doing a few audio channels with built in FX and sending external MIDI clock + MIDI sequences, but I’m hesitant to install 5.2+ since that’s when they added GPU hardware acceleration.
I also feel like it got heavier somewhere around BW 5. I’ve got an NVIDIA card and thought it would be smoother. The GPU cores on a mac may be an entirely different story. Does anyone know?