Why so many people complain about Bitwig performance?

[fwsuperhero]

I dont use Bitwig regulary but when i´ve tried it i was blown away by its pefrormance.
I have two computers, one is an old mac from 2008 with 2gb ram and core 2 duo 2ghz.
And the second one is laptop with windows, amd phantom 2.8ghz and 4gb ram.
On both of them, bitwig works great (i use just its native plugins because it is what i love about it! I know it has bad support of VST so dont bother with it and i work in the box, limits can be inspirational...)

When i use renoise or tracktion, the first one can drain my cpu by its native effects fairly eaisily and they sound much worse than bitwig.
And the Tracktion makes gui of vst effects very clumsy on the old mac os x so it is nearly unusable cause it doesnt have enough native effects.
Bitwig is the only daw i´ve tried that work flawelessy on both computers. I´ve tried insert a lot of reverbs, synth etc. No problem here.

So i am just curious in what situation Bitwig behaveslike cpu heavy software.
The only thing i´ve observed is that Bitwig uses cpu a lot (the second computer can be overheated by it!) but its effects and synths doesnt change it so much... so it behaves less jumpy than other daw i know.

[PolaroidThePenguin]

how many tracks are you running?

[jaredf]

I've had issues as I normally have around 60 tracks. Lots of pops n glitches and it gets quite difficult to navigate without folders/groups.

[fwsuperhero]

I've never need so much tracks in any daw, 10 is usually fine for me as i render stuff a lot.
But i am sure that i cant use 60 tracks in any mentioned daw because of cpu .

[xanthos]

I have around 60-100 tracks in Cubase 7.5 with no issue at all. (Genre Trance, Film Score)

And I would be really scared to think of that scenario in Bitwig.

[urbangipsy]

Same problem with the newest track - 54 tracks and lots of pops/glitches. The glitches don't start immediately after opening project but always in 30min even if I don't create new tracks, VSTs etc. Sometimes I notice also some menu GUI glitches after this happens. Restarting Bitwig mostly helps for another 30min. If not, I have to restart computer. The most interesting thing is that DSP graph is only at about 70%.

[ThomasHelzle]

Are you sure your machine isn't either doing CPU throttling or some other process starts running in the background after that time? Could also be heat related: if the machine is getting too hot after 30 minutes and has to throttle the CPU to prevent overheating, that is what you would see.

So far most of this kind of report weren't related to BWS actually.

Cheers,

Tom

[crazyfiltertweaker]

Many modulations and Automation generates pops and clicks and of I try to resize the audio interface buffer there is a crash of the audio engine and after restart nothing is working.

and don't use 32 Bit plugins in a 64 Bit setup... The CPU can't handle big projects.

this is my experience so far with performance...



but the great workflow and the early state makes it not so bad...

[urbangipsy]

Are you sure your machine isn't either doing CPU throttling or some other process starts running in the background after that time? Could also be heat related: if the machine is getting too hot after 30 minutes and has to throttle the CPU to prevent overheating, that is what you would see.

So far most of this kind of report weren't related to BWS actually.

I am sure this is not the case here but I tried again nevertheless. After I woke up today I started my computer and opened the project. DSP between 60-70%, activity monitor shows around 40% of CPU is idle. This time the pops & glitches started immediately after opening project. So CPU throttling can't be the issue. Furthermore, many times I have worked in Bitwig with DSP on 90% and there were no such glicthes - but in these cases arrangement was light on automation.

I think @crazyfiltertweaker above is spot on, glitches & pops appear when there are many tracks in a project with heavy automation on them.

If I may add another thing. Before Bitwig I worked in Ableton and Logic where 60+ tracks, massive automation and CPU at 90% didn't produce any glitches like this. I am working on OSX 10.8.5, Macbook Pro Retina, i7 2.3GHz, 16GB Ram, SSD, samples on external hybrid SSD.

My workaround for now is to work on certain pieces of track in another project, then copy/paste tracks back to master file. But this is really a temporary fix since I can't audition the master file correctly.

Already sent a msg to tech support about this. Let's see what happens. I have been really patient about Bitwig and will be until 1.1 comes out. I am prepared to use workarounds for many things, but this one is not among them I am afraid.

[sardaukar]

In a previous versions (unknown in current version), I once resolved spikes and glitches by removing, one or more instances of the BitWig compressor. I'm quite sure it had/has problems. Might be resolved in latest version, not sure.

[urbangipsy]

I am pissed, angry, mad and I am crying at the same time!!! f*** I can't take it anymore. Bye Bitwig, I really really tried patiently just about everything, all workarounds and stuff. But enough is enough. I am forced to wait until you become mature or else I won't finish anything this year.

[PolaroidThePenguin]

Same problem with the newest track - 54 tracks and lots of pops/glitches. The glitches don't start immediately after opening project but always in 30min even if I don't create new tracks, VSTs etc. Sometimes I notice also some menu GUI glitches after this happens. Restarting Bitwig mostly helps for another 30min. If not, I have to restart computer. The most interesting thing is that DSP graph is only at about 70%.

There. That is about correct for me too. Plus it makes no sense as I would have another about identical project open with the same type of stupid plug ins and everything is ok. Then another, it starts messing up, sometimes unplayable. Could be any number of bitwigs sound fx I guess...

Other than that, check your computer, especially if it is connected to the internet. There is a lot of junk loaded on your system from stuff like google chrome etc that constantly connect to the internet to check for updates with sometimes 4 instances running at the same time. Etc... Mac wins here again.

Overall, I find it generally (repeat, generally) more stable than Live, lately, although with Live I could tell what is wrong if something is not going well. Bitwig so far has been very, very finnicky.

[ThomasHelzle]

I never wanted to belittle you problems guys. It's just that the kind of reports I often see sound more like problems with the system to me, especially if there is a certain time until it happens or other such curious things.
I run an as-clean-as-possible (windows) system here and don't see these kinds of issues.
- I don't use Chrome (there are alternatives like "Iron" that use the same code but without the Google crap).
- I have Windows Update set to manual and simply check every 1 or 2 weeks for it myself (and follow the tech news for urgent things).
- I don't use Adobe Acrobat (hog) but PDF-XChange Viewer (very light) set to manual updates.
- I disabled many unnecessary startup processes - in Windows 8 it's very easy in the Taskmanager -> Start-Up, but there also it the SysinternalsSuite from Microsoft that comes with a software called "autoruns.exe" that shows each and every thing that is automatically started at boot time and allows to disable or remove it. Most stuff is needed of course, but many applications slow down startup time by preloading so that they seem to load faster later on, which is a totally idiotic "improvement" IMO, since not only is overall starttime slower, but their starter stuff also clogs memory, even if you don't use the software in question in the current session. Quicktime, Acrobat, Open/Libre Office and many others do it.
- If you run an antivirus software, make sure it's not causing problems when audio is read or written. Avira is relatively light on hogging here and serves me well so far.
- Then there is CPU throttling. While doing audio, the machine should be set to highest performance, no sleep (usually not everything wakes up graciously), no throttling, no screensaver, no saving at all. If it's a laptop, connect it to the power plug.
- I never had a dual graphics system but I would check if there are ways to not switch graphics systems while working.
- Keep your graphics drivers and system drivers current, but again, don't install the graphics vendors autoupdaters or disable them at least while doing audio.
- Don't run other software in parallel if performance is an issue. No Browser, no Youtube, no Mail.
- Make sure your system can actually handle the I/O load. The CPU is only one part, but the harddrive and everything else has to keep up too. The thing is, even capable machines can create spikes if too much processes grab the CPU all the time. With realtime audio, there simply is no second chance.

Heck, I don't even use Windows Explorer since it's so slow and useless since Vista. Check out XYplorer if you want something extremely configurable and fast with great audio preview and extremely clever ways of making the work with (many) files easier, like batch renaming, colour tagging, file rating, file comments... This thing is extremely deep.

BWS does a lot of things that other hosts can't do - modulation at audio rate, free arrangement of devices in any order you want, modular system behind it - and some of it costs some cycles, everything comes with a price. But overall, I don't think it's that much different from other live oriented DAWS, at least in my experience.
Purely recording/studio optimized DAWs of course can do things differently.

Just for chuckles: I started out with an Amiga 500 and DeluxePaint was able to animate 150 frames in memory when I used only two colours. That really sucked since I just saw Pixars first animations, but that was what the system could do...

We came a long way since then

Cheers,

Tom

[ssl4000]

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[codec17]

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