I finally decided to setup a hybrid studio room for Techno, and have been extensively testing Live and Bitwig over the past couple of weeks. To my surprise, especially since I have owned an updated version since its initial release, Bitwig is my preferred option. I rarely used Bitwig over the years, and purchased Live a few months ago. Due to its high popularity, I assumed Live would come out on top.
The plan is to continue using all hardware instruments and drum machines, as well as outboard gear for audio tracking and mix bus processing. The DAW will mostly be used for sequencing, sampling, send effects, and insert effects. Right now, I am at 28 input and output audio channels, but will more than likely will expand to 48 in the future.
That said, I have always preferred to keep my Techno productions out-the-box, but primarily worked in-the-box for all other music endeavors. I am looking forward to see how this new workflow impacts my overall productivity and output.
Tried Bitwig when it came out and was quite happy with it untill it became buggy over time (what did I expect froma a try before you buy cracked newsgroup version). I own a payed version of studio one and Reaper so i dealt with the loss. Now 5 years later i gave it another chance and bought 5.0….well holy:: this is totally bongers! I get totally lost and experiencing the same fun as the first time with eurorack. If you can think it, you can build it! So much to explore but this whole Bitwig concept feels like the DAW with full focus for electronic music.
TBH with Ableton Live it never sat right with me. Maybe it’s the UI, the concept of how it lays out/works, I don’t know where to put my finger on it, it just always kind of bugged. I came from Logic PC, to Logic Mac, to buying I think Live 6? Barely scratched the surface with Bitwig but it does and handles everything I need it to pretty well. I do maintain a fairly sizeable sample library, so I use an application called Sononym for that (the browser is OK just not on par), and uh. I don’t know I picked it up started using it got a few pointers and I’m able to put ideas to sound while staying organized, that keeps it a cut above quite a few DAWs. Looks like the only two bugs I’ve found are fixed in v5 so things are coming along well with it.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Live putting the track controls on the RIGHT in arrangement mode always felt weird. I assumed I’d get over it but never really did.
EDIT: yes I’m on Bitwig now and very happy
Yup, just upgraded. I didn’t love the old browser. The new browser will take some time to figured out. Not obvious or intuitive how to find stuff that should be easy to find. I am guessing there are ways you can set up with some structure like other DAWS, but have just looked at it briefly this morning.
I’ve only been using Bitwig for a year now, and I’ve only used the new browser a day or two, so grain of salt on account of both. But I really like it!
The old one was a fantastic way to get a bird’s eye view of all the plugins, packs, presets, samples, etc. on your system, but that was also the problem. Even on a vanilla install, DAWs these days come with so much content that the old browser was always overwhelming to me. As a result, I’d always use it the same way: open it up, type something into the search field, and then select it.
Nothing wrong with that workflow; it worked! But it also wasn’t really a “browser” for me, anymore. I would never see what was available or what was off the beaten path, only the specific thing I was searching for. Any time I’d try to actually browse, I had immediate overload of colors, categories, and columns and shut down.
The new browser, by comparison, is a horrible bird’s eye view of everything on the system It severely limits what we can see to the context of whatever group is selected on the left (though the “type something into search and click it” method from the old browser still works great).
But here’s the thing, the new browser isn’t made to let you dive into all content, which can be overwhelming. It’s made to make creating these left-hand groups easy. I can easily make “smart" groups for things like “all bitwig patches for any of the grid devices” or “all presets with the word alien in them”. Or I see categories like “Wavetables” or “Utility Devices”. Or I can manually curate stuff like “Favorites” or “Sounds for that project”.
But at any time, the context of the selected group is the only thing I’m looking at. This lets me actually browse within the bounds of that group, but not drink from a firehose. I like it.
Oh, again they are introducing changes … with three different versions being available now. Just got the email… what I do not understand completely is whether I can buy an upgrade to the middle tier “studio producer” from an older 16-Track or if it has to be the full version.
Edit: Maybe they are slow upgrading their webshop. Will check again later.
Their email said it’s a free upgrade to BW Studio Producer:
Got Bitwig Studio 16-Track?
Here’s a special offer
With the introduction of Essentials and Producer, we’ve stopped selling Bitwig Studio 16-Track. For a limited time, we’re offering Bitwig Studio 16-Track users with an active Upgrade Plan a free upgrade to Bitwig Studio Producer. There are also special offers for those who own older versions of 16-Track. Log in to your user account to learn more.
Replying to myself here in case that’s useful for someone else:
Gear4Music has already got an upgrade from 16-Track to Studio Producer on offer. [Bitwig Studio Producer Upgrade from Essentials/16-Track – 79,30€] – I’m sure others will follow.
It severely limits what we can see to the context of whatever group is selected on the left (though the “type something into search and click it” method from the old browser still works great).
