Bitwig

LAMeduck · Post by **LAMeduck** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:37 pm

Hello,
do anybody else experience Bitwig as a sluggish, slow to load, prone to freezing-type DAW? I often do and it's becoming quite of a problem when working with big projects.

The thing is, I really like Bitwig, it's fantastic in most respects but damn is it a hazzle to use in large, CPU-intensive projects. As soon as the plugin-count starts racking up it becomes harder and harder to even load projects succesfully. I have a modern PC with a fresh install of Windows 8.1 and the DSP-graph rarely passes the half-mark but still Bitwig freezes time and time again. It's annoying to say the least.

I have a hard time defining this as a distinct "bug" which prompts me to post it as a thread rather than a bug-report.

Is it just me or do other people experience similiar things?

llze · Post by **llze** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:40 pm

since the latest builds it's quite solid over here. Wich Bitwig version are you using? Still performance issues can have different reasons, so still might be better to write support, they can comment your setup and suggest stuff best.

abique · Post by **abique** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:47 pm

Also which plugins do you use?

c-wave · Post by **c-wave** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 8:18 pm

LAMeduck wrote:Hello,
do anybody else experience Bitwig as a sluggish, slow to load, prone to freezing-type DAW? I often do and it's becoming quite of a problem when working with big projects.

The thing is, I really like Bitwig, it's fantastic in most respects but damn is it a hazzle to use in large, CPU-intensive projects. As soon as the plugin-count starts racking up it becomes harder and harder to even load projects succesfully. I have a modern PC with a fresh install of Windows 8.1 and the DSP-graph rarely passes the half-mark but still Bitwig freezes time and time again. It's annoying to say the least.

I have a hard time defining this as a distinct "bug" which prompts me to post it as a thread rather than a bug-report.

Is it just me or do other people experience similiar things?

It's definitely just you. and I recommend that you :
1. try to isolate the usual suspects; the vst's.. (a) try using a high count of tracks first, no vsts what so ever.. say a 50 tracks song. (b) use same vst on all of these tracks then see what happens. (c) Try using a 64-bit vst first then replace those instances with a 32-bit version of the same vst. (d) If all works fine up to this point change the vst's on all tracks with another one.. again 64-bit first. (e) keep changing these variables until you start to see the system slows down as described.

2. Have your preferences point the cache to a 7200 RPM Drive.. better yet to an SSD drive if you can afford one.

Hope that works as a starting point.

takaii · Post by **takaii** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 8:51 pm

LAMeduck wrote:Hello,
do anybody else experience Bitwig as a sluggish, slow to load, prone to freezing-type DAW? I often do and it's becoming quite of a problem when working with big projects.

The thing is, I really like Bitwig, it's fantastic in most respects but damn is it a hazzle to use in large, CPU-intensive projects. As soon as the plugin-count starts racking up it becomes harder and harder to even load projects succesfully. I have a modern PC with a fresh install of Windows 8.1 and the DSP-graph rarely passes the half-mark but still Bitwig freezes time and time again. It's annoying to say the least.

I have a hard time defining this as a distinct "bug" which prompts me to post it as a thread rather than a bug-report.

Is it just me or do other people experience similiar things?

Bitwig is slow for me even with not much DSP load. This acts slow for me when alot of midi information and midi clips is in project. Like moving a clip or a note gets incredible slow... Ive repported this before, they would look on performence they said, they saw my video recording and they agreed. But i havent seen a perforemnce fix on this yet

u-u-u · Post by **u-u-u** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 8:56 pm

Do you get this bug window when Bitwig freezes where you can send the bug report directly from the program? If yes, definetely try to use that. AFAIK reporting it this way also sends some log file to the support which helps the devs tracing back the cause.
If not, regular bug report might help you nevertheless. Probably they have some experience where the best places are to look at first. Maybe you can send them the list of plugins (+whether you use them in 32 or 64 bit) you use?

blouaap · Post by **blouaap** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:03 pm

Some people might fetch the pitchforks here, but if you are dead serious about audio, get a Mac.

I'm collaborating with a friend that has a beast of a PC (32gb ram, i7, ssd. Massive specs) and we are sharing my Bitwig license. I just have a macbook pro 2014 i7 15". The exact same plugs etc on a massive project starts to get sluggish on the PC whilst my mac carries on without a hitch. We thought it was the Bitwig differences on the different platforms, so we loaded Ableton on both machines and made similar plugin heavy project on there. Also got a few dips and spikes on Ableton on the PC, no problem on the Mac.

If you really want to carry on with a PC, I recommend bouncing as much as possible and A/B between two projects, bouncing and copy/pasting the clips between them.

PolaroidThePenguin · Post by **PolaroidThePenguin** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:16 pm

It does freeze here and there, there are things that set it off. Slow? No. Mouse is slow. Like, try adjusting automation on several copies... you'll scream in frustration soon enough

llze · Post by **llze** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:28 pm

blouaap wrote:Some people might fetch the pitchforks here, but if you are dead serious about audio, get a Mac.

I'm collaborating with a friend that has a beast of a PC (32gb ram, i7, ssd. Massive specs) and we are sharing my Bitwig license. I just have a macbook pro 2014 i7 15". The exact same plugs etc on a massive project starts to get sluggish on the PC whilst my mac carries on without a hitch. We thought it was the Bitwig differences on the different platforms, so we loaded Ableton on both machines and made similar plugin heavy project on there. Also got a few dips and spikes on Ableton on the PC, no problem on the Mac.

If you really want to carry on with a PC, I recommend bouncing as much as possible and A/B between two projects, bouncing and copy/pasting the clips between them.

sounds like a misconfiguration to me

this might help: https://www.steinberg.net/nc/en/support ... -daws.html

blouaap · Post by **blouaap** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:31 pm

The only time java is slow and sluggish is because of a slow and sluggish developer

Edit: Oops wrong thread

Ch00rD · Post by **Ch00rD** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 12:30 am

The automatic data 'thinning' when recording automation from control devices sure makes me wonder if Bitwig Studio actually wants to behave like a slow and sluggish DAW.

tooneba · Post by **tooneba** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 1:03 am

I'm expecting it will eventually be better. It's still ver. 1.2. The journey has just begun.

Granum · Post by **Granum** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 5:55 am

I get severe slow down when selecting many clips, even on only 6-10 tracks. But otherwise I do not experience much.

mikoatkvr · Post by **mikoatkvr** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 6:39 am

I find the loading time a bit slow around 17sec compared to Renoise around 2 sec on Ubuntu liinux OS.

psycha0s · Post by **psycha0s** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 9:00 am

As I mentioned earlier, there is an issue with the TurboBoost on Linux. I had a poor Bitwig performance until I've switched CPU governor to the "performance" one.

Code: Select all

sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance

I suspect that you getting a similar issue on Windows. Though I don't know how to solve it on Windows.

Bitwig

KVR Audio

Is Bitwig a slow and sluggish DAW?