Bitwig Studio

[Braintree]

https://www.bitwig.com/en/16/bastl-promo.html

 

 

 

Buy Bitwig Studio between June 1st and June 5th, 2016 (23:59 CET), and get a Bastl Trinity hardware synthesizer for free. Pick one of three Bastl Trinity modules: Drum, Mono FM and Poly.

 

Any Bitwig users here? Pros and cons?

 

I'm not a fan of writing in Ableton, but use it for live jamming.

[maitake]

I think it's more enjoyable than Live. The workflow is great. Most people just assume it's a Live clone.

[caze]

The touchscreen stuff for the Windows version had me interested when I saw it a year ago or something (though my tablet is only 8" and not fast enough I'm guessing, you would ideally want something Surface-sized to get the most out of it, Asus coming out with some similar (cheaper) tablets soon), but since then I bought the latest Cubase, so not really looking to buy anything new now. Next version looks like it'll have a buzz-like fully editable modular backend, which would be pretty great.

[Danny O Flannagin]

Anyone currently using Bitwig as their main DAW? Running demo and love how open and inviting the modulation is and I haven't even touched the grid yet. I'm about ready to switch over from Ableton but am curious to hear a critical view from active users.

[xy_politics]

active user.  there's very little I can fault. 

Piano Roll can be frustrating, being simultaneously cutting edge (e.g. chance logic, 2 axes of per-note modulation plus Gain and Pan for internal and CLAP plugins) and clunky (mouse pointer hotzones for drag/shift etc are easy to miss, not much in the way of note manipulation processes)

Also, plugins can only have 4 channels of audio input (Stereo in + Stereo sidechain) which gets right on my nerves sometimes

These are small potatoes though, compared to all the good and unique things it can do.  Selling Ableton was a very easy decision to make.  It's a very good fit for me (preferring to take the approach of building a track like a giant "machine" rather than laying down and arranging static events on a timeline) but of course a lot of people prefer a more trad/linear experience (which it can also do of course, but perhaps in a less distinguished way)

[Danny O Flannagin]

Running demo mode and yeah, piano roll was something that jumped out at me. Probably just used to ableton rn and need to get used to bitwig but it felt kinda clunky/glitchy.

One thing I'm trying to figure out is if you can do ableton style clip modulation. Like drawing modulation evelopes on the clip. I know Bitwig can do automation but I like the modulation behavior on a clip by clip basis in ableton. 

5 hours ago, xy_politics said:

These are small potatoes though, compared to all the good and unique things it can do.  Selling Ableton was a very easy decision to make.  It's a very good fit for me (preferring to take the approach of building a track like a giant "machine" rather than laying down and arranging static events on a timeline) but of course a lot of people prefer a more trad/linear experience (which it can also do of course, but perhaps in a less distinguished way)

I've always felt paralized by the timeline but building a "machine" is definitely what I'm going for. Good to hear

[Bubba69]

On 11/11/2022 at 10:11 PM, Danny O Flannagin said:

Anyone currently using Bitwig as their main DAW? Running demo and love how open and inviting the modulation is and I haven't even touched the grid yet. I'm about ready to switch over from Ableton but am curious to hear a critical view from active users.

yes I am. Love it.

[luke viia]

yep, came back to Bitwig in 2021 (after using v1.0 in 2014 and being pretty underwhelmed). It's now my go-to DAW for most projects, but if there's a ton of audio editing with long wav files going on (e.g. I've narrated a few short stories), I move to Reaper.

I have a few beloved plugins that are really into crashing at the worst times, and bitwig's "sandbox" feature is SO nice for this issue. The plugin is the only thing that crashes, and I can just reactivate it and be back to normal immediately.

also fully agree w/ @xy_politics regarding the piano roll. it's frustrating and awesome at the same time.

you'll also hear a decent amount of whining from bitwig users about not having native MSEG. understandable, but not a huge issue for me, idk

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by luke viia

[luke viia]

On 11/12/2022 at 9:27 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

One thing I'm trying to figure out is if you can do ableton style clip modulation. Like drawing modulation evelopes on the clip. I know Bitwig can do automation but I like the modulation behavior on a clip by clip basis in ableton.

idk if there's a "right" way to do this, but what came to my mind immediately was to put a macro knob or something similar on the track edit: device, then automate *that* in the clip. for instance have one clip with the macro turned to 0%, then duplicate the clip but turn the macro to whatever intensity you want, etc. multiple macros for different sets of modulation. a button modulator would work too but you'd lose the envelope part and just have full-blast on/off switches to play with per clip. i'm sure there are cleverer ways to achieve this... i'm not a power user by any means and usually get quickly lost in the sea of modulators available to me.

 

EDIT: realized that with a lot of the modulators (i tested this on 4-stage) you can just open the automation drop down menu on the track and write per-clip automation for the modulator(s) you want to affect. this will then interact with whatever the modulator is already doing. the macro thing should work too, but this way is more straightforward i think

Edited January 11, 2023 by luke viia

[Bubba69]

You can attach automation to the clip, if thats what you mean. https://www.bitwig.com/userguide/latest/the_automation_editor_panel/ - go into the automation editor panel and switch it from track to clip, then you'll be editing the automation for the clip itself rather than the global automation lanes for that track.

This is similar in concept to the audio editor view, where switching between the modes has effects on what is possible and your ability to directly modify the audio events contained in the clip. Bitwigs audio editing is super powerful but it can be confusing because of the hierarchy of audio events / clips / tracks and what you can/can't do in certain contexts.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Bubba69

[Bubba69]

On 11/12/2022 at 9:27 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

Running demo mode and yeah, piano roll was something that jumped out at me. Probably just used to ableton rn and need to get used to bitwig but it felt kinda clunky/glitchy.

One thing I'm trying to figure out is if you can do ableton style clip modulation. Like drawing modulation evelopes on the clip. I know Bitwig can do automation but I like the modulation behavior on a clip by clip basis in ableton. 

I've always felt paralized by the timeline but building a "machine" is definitely what I'm going for. Good to hear

I like that you can "print" your recordings in clip view to the arranger timeline and then further edit it from there. I haven't tried working that idea because I mostly just work in the arranger unless I need to save clips/ideas for later, but it seems like a powerful workflow

[Bubba69]

One of the biggest limitations of bitwig (And it has very few) is that the sampler still doesn't have a proper slicing mode like ableton's. You can take an audio clip and "Slice to Multisample" but it's not as powerful as a sampler w/ slices. You can also just do the slicing in the audio lanes, as it's very powerful and flexible with that stuff. I myself take a different approach in that I have a hybrid studio setup and do all my slicing on the octatrack, further manipulating.

 

That being said, people do to get around that limitation, which is pretty doable consider the extensive modulation system that bitwig provides in conjunction with the functionality of the grid. I actually had an earlier version of this person's slicer preset, he seems to be avoiding sharing the newer one but he built something incredibly impressive and cool.

 

[c0nsilience]

Longtime Logic Pro X user here, sometime Studio Pro One, and sometime Renoise.  I've tried Bitwig in the past and every once in a blue moon, still circle back around to it.  Ableton Live never really clicked for me - I use real and synthetic instruments.  Bitwig just seems to keep beckoning me to give it an honest go.  With massive time limitations these days, I'm hesitant to switch fully to another DAW.  That being said, anytime I've gone down the rabbit hole in Bitwig, it's been an enjoyable experience.

Edited December 27, 2023 by c0nsilience
More info

[Bubba69]

7 hours ago, c0nsilience said:

Longtime Logic Pro X user here, sometime Studio Pro One, and sometime Renoise.  I've tried Bitwig in the past and every once in a blue moon, still circle back around to it.  Ableton Live never really clicked for me - I use real and synthetic instruments.  Bitwig just seems to keep beckoning me to give it an honest go.  With massive time limitations these days, I'm hesitant to switch fully to another DAW.  That being said, anytime I've gone down the rabbit hole in Bitwig, it's been an enjoyable experience.

I've gone very deep into bitwig in the past year or so, happy to answer any questions about it's capabilities or workflow things. It's audio editing is crazy good once you get to know it. The grid is pretty much one of the best bread and butter synths and also a very deep modular synth at the same time, somehow struck a balance there that is kind of hard to understand why it's so good until you've used it extensively. The modulation system is unmatched in any other daw. Sound design capabilities are incredible. 

[c0nsilience]

1 hour ago, Bubba69 said:

I've gone very deep into bitwig in the past year or so, happy to answer any questions about it's capabilities or workflow things. It's audio editing is crazy good once you get to know it. The grid is pretty much one of the best bread and butter synths and also a very deep modular synth at the same time, somehow struck a balance there that is kind of hard to understand why it's so good until you've used it extensively. The modulation system is unmatched in any other daw. Sound design capabilities are incredible. 

Thank you!  Yes, as soon as I have more time to take another dive into it, I'll be sure to compile some Q's and hit you up.  Appreciate it!

[luke viia]

2 hours ago, Bubba69 said:

It's audio editing is crazy good once you get to know it

could you elaborate on this? audio editing is one of the things in BW that has yet to really click for me

[Bubba69]

23 hours ago, luke viia said:

could you elaborate on this? audio editing is one of the things in BW that has yet to really click for me

A few things on this.

You can either edit directly in the arranger, ableton session-view style, and chop up your audio that way, nudge it in time, add fades. Most ableton workflows can be emulated here, though you may need to remap some shortcuts and get used to a couple differences.

 

You can also chop up audio into smaller bits of audio within a clip, these are called "audio events" and it allows you do do all the chopping, warping you want. This is especially better than ableton when working with the live view, because you can chop up your sample without needing the arranger/session view, everything you need can be done inside a single clip.

 

You can consolidate all your chops in the arranger selection into a clip with cmd+j, but the audio events remain intact if you want to further edit the timing of them.

You can add multiple samples into one clip.

If you select multiple events or clips, you can adjust fades or make other changes to all of them at the same time.

You can have multiple stretch algorthims inside a single clip on different audio events and draw pitch expression envelopes or stretch expressions on them however you want.

You can also add repeats on single events with the operator functions (found in the inspector when you select an event or note). You can quickly bounce in place if you want to bake your changes back into a single audio file again, you can also bounce audio quickly w/ all of the effects destructively, and further edit them.

 

You can also do interesting things by selecting the different tools, like the knife tool, and holding alt+drag to add slices on the gridlines with a single drag of the mouse.

 

audio can be nudged/scrolled within single chops/audio expressions, not just on the arranger.

 

Additionally, the layered editing mode lets you take a microscope to multiple clips or lanes lanes and work with audio events across multiple lanes without having to jump. You can copy events between clips and between tracks all within the editor view.

There are lots of shortcuts for these things and they can be modified or customized however you want.

This video shows off a lot of the kind of thing I'm taking about (older version of bitwig but a lot of it still applies)

 

 

Shortcomings:

The biggest shortcoming compared to ableton is the repitch mode and it's inability to select semitones on a per-clip level. For some reason they still haven't added that, you have to be in a stretch algo mode, or just hope you can tune it by ear, it's super annoying. Best workaround is to slice to a sampler and do it from the sampler. However the sampler also has it's shortcomings in that there isn't a proper slicing mode, but there are handy shortcuts to rightclick and slice to sampler.

Edited December 28, 2023 by Bubba69