i think everyone generally knows how amazing we have it and how easy it is to do some very complicated things that in the old days would’ve taken ages to do and required a bunch of hardware… i think people describing something in a modern DAW as limiting is equivalent to saying it lacks a feature that should be obvious or would be an obvious improvement to workflow or is available in other DAWs so “why can’t bitwig do it” etc etc…
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Yes, Bitwig is supurb for anything creative/left field with midi and loops (as is Live)…very much a DAWstrument but less of a workhorse for live audio recording, mixing and mastering.
There is a reason why a lot of people had 2 DAWs, something like Cubase and Live or (as in my case’) Bitwig and Studio One. Between those 2 I feel I have everything covered…
I think it’s not about if Bitwig is good enough to make music on it’s more about if it does enough to convince people to use it over Live, Logic, or FL which are the default choices for electronic music.
Scaling apps is hard; however playing in the sandbox with industry leaders forces users to expect not only top line features to be peppered in frequently; but for foundational elements, aka true time savers and workflow sanity elements to be addressed over an 8+ year timeline. My ask is not trivial, or lacking merit.
Well, yes, but you do acknowledge that there are dozens of other options out there. Those “industry leaders” of which you speak are yours to choose.
Bitwig has distinguished itself from the start. Indeed, that was their original mission statement. And what a breath of fresh air it was. Provided, of course, that you were actually looking for a change, and needed what they were bringing to the table. To that end, I did.
I work with these platforms on a professional level, and I left Ableton for Bitwig years ago. I am content with that decision. That’s not to say that I don’t miss certain aspects of Ableton, but Bitwig is not holding me back in any way.
On the other hand, Bitwig’s modularity has allowed me to design instruments and templates that remain impossible in other DAW environments to this day. They were lightyears ahead of the competition (if it’s to be considered a competition) in that regard, and that was my reason for defecting. They also enjoy the benefit of not having to retrofit legacy code to modern specs and expectations. Hell, when I bailed on Ableton, they still hadn’t even scaled their U.I. to high DPI monitors on the Windows platform yet, or embraced MPE.
So, while it could be said that ALL requests are reasonable, it’s silly to be so put-out by what you see as shortcomings in the software, when there are already solutions out there waiting for you.
Cheers!
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…all complaints about the new browser, are complaints about an official beta version…yet 'n still…let’s keep that in mind…
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Although radical changes to the new browser are not expected at this point, they keep improving its usability based on the feedback received, beta after beta. This one released just today:
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Segments broken in the Grid with Beta 12…hope 13 is lucky!
Version 5 grid test
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Love everything about this. I swear Bitwig is worth the price just for the grid. And it’s got a whole DAW on there too! And that DAW can modulate and be modulated by the grid! It’s madness!
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man, i’ve been using bw since 2018 and have maybe used the grid for 5min. what are some good resources to start diving especially in regards to creating sfx?
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Same here
I use Bitwig all the time, but I’ve opened the grid about twice and thought
“Hmm looks complicated” and then closed it again.
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This playlist is really good
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfXKHnSL0KtTfn8BX6TBxWfyVqr8Iu6Ue
I’ve been using Cubase since 2012 and bought Bitwig last year just because of the Grid 
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The Grid is half the reason I open Bitwig most of the time. Good resources are Taches Teaches and Polarity. Both on YouTube.
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That‘s how I bought it, as a modular synth environment/sound generator first, DAW second.
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Bitwig’s own “modular concepts” series is pretty good. It gives you a good grounding in what’s possible and how to approach things from a grid point of view.
The in-app documentation is, as always with Bitwig, spectacular. Once you know vaguely what module to pull for a thing, the help view will tell you all the details about how do use that particular thing.
When it comes to innovative ways to put everything together, I enjoy Polarity Music’s creations.
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The Grid is imposing but it takes only a bit of puzzle/lego mentality to understand the basics, enjoy it, and learn a ton about why things sound the way they sound. I had almost zero experience with DAWs and modular and I got Bitwig among other things because of the enigmatic beauty of the Grid. I haven’t produced anything useful, even less remarkable, but I had lots of fun and I feel wiser now. 
Another way to learn is to see how it’s done. Open the famous browser, filter results by FX Grid (or whatever Grid you are interested) and pick a preset close to whatever you want to create. Some of them are very complex and scary but some are simple, effective, and very illustrative. See for instance “Freeze Delay”, it even comes with an explanation:
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In addition to the resources already mentioned, check out the Grid tutorials from XNB and Andrei Olenev.
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Thanks for posting all the grid links everyone I need to look into it more deeply as well… I have never used it because I have a lot of 3rd party plugins I love and I was under the impression that it is hard to integrate those into it… Kinda like trying to make a mutable clouds with doepfer modules or something 
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Using it with plugins is probably how I use it the most 
I’m usually either:
- Setting up some sort of generative or mathy sequencer in the grid that sends MIDI to a softsynth
- Modulating/morphing between simple sounds in the grid that then I dirty up with plugins.
- Lately, playing softsynths through an FX Grid (which I had overlooked for a long time) to perform DSP.
That’s part of what makes the grid’s integration with Bitwig so great. It’s not a replacement for plugins so much as a hyper-flexible way to control/route/process them.
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