KVR Audio

koshal · Post by **koshal** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 3:54 pm

For me the primary limitation was the way Bitwig currently handles midi tracks going into a multi-timbral / multi-out plugins (or to external instruments).

The problem is that their instrument tracks are paired 1:1 with audio channels. Solo and Mute work on the audio not on the midi. So if say you are sending 5 tracks of midi to Battery or Maschine with different patterns on each track and the audio return is coming through a single output it's damn near impossible to solo (or mute to some extent) anything quickly from the sequencer.

You either have to try to do solo/mute in the target instrument, deal with individual clips on a track by track basis or try to get the audio routing to match the midi tracks (none of which are really feasible when you have tons of midi tracks with varying amount of samples /instruments triggered per track).

There is a long thread about it here with people griping about it.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6100755

And a couple other examples:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5813217
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6015549
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5965656

For a few people this is huge workflow killer. For others seems to be expected behavior. Just make sure you understand how it works if you do a lot of stuff with external instruments or multi-timbral plugs. For me the issue is that really kills my drum sequencing workflow. I didn't pickup on how this worked while playing with the demo. After I purchased I tried working around it to no avail. My guess is though that it will be get better in future versions (maybe in 1.2 w/ group tracks ???) and once it does I'll probably be right back on the Bitwig train.

Ableton has the concept of "midi tracks" which are tracks that send midi only but have no audio return so it has a clean way around this issue.

dplduffy · Post by **dplduffy** » Wed Jul 15, 2015 1:33 pm

all the issues have been talked about here thoroughly, but I'll throw in another vote for bitwig!

If you do end up going that route, be sure to stop by the bitwig forums.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=259

Good luck!

arca0 · Post by **arca0** » Wed Jul 15, 2015 1:51 pm

Thanks for the suggestions and information - especially about problems with Bitwig. It seems like these are not crucial for me just yet, so I've decided to choose Bitwig in the end. There is a small chance that a perfect Ableton Suite, cheap offer would change my mind, but I am not counting on this

Robmobius · Post by **Robmobius** » Wed Jul 15, 2015 1:58 pm

arca0 wrote:Thanks for the suggestions and information - especially about problems with Bitwig. It seems like these are not crucial for me just yet, so I've decided to choose Bitwig in the end. There is a small chance that a perfect Ableton Suite, cheap offer would change my mind, but I am not counting on this

Good choice...

I found the Bitwig problems minor and I always work with multi outs. But there's no piece of software that does'nt have a few problems. Luckily, Bitwig's are not too bad (for me anyway).

Enjoy!

Tonberry · Post by **Tonberry** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 8:41 pm

arca0 wrote:the 8 scene/16 track limitation in Ableton is really putting me off and I like the simplicity of Bitwig licensing - just buy one product and you're set.

And for this sole reason I'd choose Bitwig. The whole "different packages, different limitations" thing is a trap for new people. Because mainly fresh faces buy those products and as a newcomer you have no way of knowing if and when will you hit that skill ceiling. How is a fresh user going to figure out Cubase's comparison tables with vst expression etc. when he barely knows what midi is?

You can of course look at it the other way and say: before I am good enough, it will suffice, until then I'll get the money for an upgrade. But it's still a gamble in my opinion, some of those restrictions are very crippling.

By deciding to go the Bitwig route, you have to realize though that it's a new kid on the block and is nowhere near Ableton level in general (but then much cheaper), but it already has some interesting features, is much lighter on resources, has a Renoise sort of interface which I much prefer over Ableton (a matter of taste though) and it's more an investment in the future, because few years from now Bitwig will probably be able to give Ableton run for its money in some departments. Check their update policy though, they have been unclear about that and I don't know if that changed. If it's good, it's another +1 for Bitwig.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 8:59 pm

I used to use Live exclusively for years, and i was a beta tester for the latest releases in the past year. On the beta testing forums I remember seeing a request for PDC fixes for 3rd party plugins and the developers said they were not going to focus on this until they get the PDC fixed on all their own effects & instruments.

Now this is great for people who use Ableton & the instruments + FX that come with it, but it sucks for people who have a big custom 3rd party library of plugins.

What made me switch was doing a comparison project where i used 3rd party plugins in real-time that add lots of latency. For ableton i would use the track delay and set negative values so it would compensate for the delay, but i always found that it was not working consistently.

This proved to be very frustrating, and upon using bitwig in a similar setup I found it just worked, so the obvious choice for me was to go over to bitwig and sell live. So far I am only noticing that for some things Bitwig uses a bit more CPU than live does with some plugins.

Now this is not to say Live is inferior, or worse it just works better for "me" to use bitwig with the plugins I like to use. Also not all plugins in live are affected by PDC, and with the latest release you can actually see the latency added which is handy.

Bitwigs PDC is working great for me, and the new workflow is quite nice so I have no regrets.

BDeep · Post by **BDeep** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:46 pm

PDC is fixed

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:02 am

BDeep wrote:PDC is fixed

I found this on Gearslutz and it basically hits home for me and my setup, maybe it's not everyone.. but still I'll reiterate what i read on there here.

"Firstly - to all the people who chirp up and say "it's working fine for me" - it isn't. Ableton have admitted the issue - if you add a latency inducing plugin on a track with automation, then the automation goes out of sync. This is the same for all users of Ableton, unless you have somehow rewritten and recompiled the code yourself. So please stop saying it's working for you, what you should actually be saying is "I don't use complex automation or latency inducing plugins, so it's not an issue for me". Rudimentary.
For anyone who hasn't seen the issue - just add Fabfilter Pro-Q and set it to maximum latency(linear phase mode). Regardless of which track you put it on, you'll notice the display goes out of time. If you have any automation, it will also now be out of time. Really annoying to work with."

BDeep · Post by **BDeep** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:14 am

Have you actually tested this yourself? On the latest version of Live that is.

Because I knew it was bull when I read it, but I went through the trouble of actually doing what was suggested, just now. I made a clip, snare on it, volume envelope (very short). Now, if automation would really not be compensated, it would immediately be obvious from a change in sound, right? So I inserted ProQ2, Lineair Phase, Maximum. Sounds -exactly- the same.
This is fixed in 9.2
Only time-based plugins (as trancegates) still have issues if placed after a plugin that introduces latency.
And indeed, the playhead appears to be out of sync. This however, does NOT impact automation.
Again, all in 9.2

arca0 · Post by **arca0** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 2:54 pm

this is interesting although does not really impact me in any way - It'll be a while before I am able to pick up problems like these. I've worked with both, Ableton and Bitwig and preferred Bitwig almost in every case - the only merit of Ableton was the vastness of the Suite library in the demo (compared to Bitwig's demo version), but I cannot afford Suite atm anyway (there's still my home studio I need to complete).
Limitations on different versions of Ableton were not clear to me and it seemed only the Suite version makes sense anyway. With this in mind, as well as so many people voting Bitwig around here, I've decided Bitwig is the way to go.

billcarroll · Post by **billcarroll** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 3:05 pm

BDeep wrote:Have you actually tested this yourself? On the latest version of Live that is.

Because I knew it was bull when I read it, but I went through the trouble of actually doing what was suggested, just now. I made a clip, snare on it, volume envelope (very short). Now, if automation would really not be compensated, it would immediately be obvious from a change in sound, right? So I inserted ProQ2, Lineair Phase, Maximum. Sounds -exactly- the same.
This is fixed in 9.2
Only time-based plugins (as trancegates) still have issues if placed after a plugin that introduces latency.
And indeed, the playhead appears to be out of sync. This however, does NOT impact automation.
Again, all in 9.2

It affects 3rd party delays, Sidechain tools like VolumeShaper and LFOTool (which has a scope an offset to deal with this unreported latency), and any 3rd party tool that needs latency info from the host.

PDC is not fixed in Ableton 9.2.

Here is another vote for Bitwig. Collaboration and the modular environment will be game changers.

Regnas · Post by **Regnas** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 5:11 pm

billcarroll wrote:Collaboration and the modular environment will be game changers.

Yeah, but for when, 2020?

billcarroll · Post by **billcarroll** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 6:28 pm

Regnas wrote:
billcarroll wrote:Collaboration and the modular environment will be game changers.
Yeah, but for when, 2020?

No idea, but it seems like Bitwig development is moving quite rapidly to me.

elxsound · Post by **elxsound** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 7:57 pm

billcarroll wrote:
BDeep wrote:Have you actually tested this yourself? On the latest version of Live that is.

Because I knew it was bull when I read it, but I went through the trouble of actually doing what was suggested, just now. I made a clip, snare on it, volume envelope (very short). Now, if automation would really not be compensated, it would immediately be obvious from a change in sound, right? So I inserted ProQ2, Lineair Phase, Maximum. Sounds -exactly- the same.
This is fixed in 9.2
Only time-based plugins (as trancegates) still have issues if placed after a plugin that introduces latency.
And indeed, the playhead appears to be out of sync. This however, does NOT impact automation.
Again, all in 9.2
It affects 3rd party delays, Sidechain tools like VolumeShaper and LFOTool (which has a scope an offset to deal with this unreported latency), and any 3rd party tool that needs latency info from the host.

PDC is not fixed in Ableton 9.2.

Here is another vote for Bitwig. Collaboration and the modular environment will be game changers.

And I can vouch for this as well as I've stumbled onto this with a couple plugins of this type, but I do believe they are continuing to work on this.

But BDeep is right, that what VORT3X mentioned has been fixed. It's a bad example, that somehow persists.

These two programs really are great. I've said before that I can't wait to see Bitwig complete, but can't touch until at least version 2.

I really don't understand the fandom that's come with Bitwig, but Reaper was the same way. The thing about using a DAW is agreeing to work within its limitations. Every DAW has them and this affects workflow. Workflow is everything, but when you are starting out this is the process you are just beginning to develop, so it's hard to suggest what works for me, or someone else will work for you.

I can say that if part of the concern about using Bitwig over Live Suite is that it doesn't come with as much content, then not to worry. Having less right now is probably a good thing. Too many distractions can stunt your progress. This is true unless you decide that using/creating with Max 4 Live is part of what you determine to be your progress.

Robmobius · Post by **Robmobius** » Sun Jul 19, 2015 12:08 am

elxsound wrote: These two programs really are great. I've said before that I can't wait to see Bitwig complete, but can't touch until at least version 2.

I'm sure the v2 of Bitwig will be class...

But I don't agree with your, 'can't be touched until then' rule. Bitwig is as complete as every other DAW is. IE - Not complete, but they all can produce top class music and all have advantages and disadvantages.

elxsound wrote: I really don't understand the fandom that's come with Bitwig

Hmmm.... I'd say the same about Ableton. In my opinion S1 V3 is a lot better. You say 'X' and I say 'Y' that's how this goes right?

Choosing between Bitwig and Ableton