(I originally sent this message to the generic DAW forum, but I was instructed to send here too - fair enough!
)due to some frustration in Live 9 (mainly automation and DPC issues) and seeing how BitWig is doing some things so much better (32/64 bit with isolation, automation, bouncing, hybrid tracks, built-in modulation flow etc), I've been considering jumping to BitWig. However, there are few things that are unclear and/or annoying to me.
As a Live user I'm used to certain kind of behaviour in DAW, and in BitWig some of these are different, and I find myself constantly struggling to get the workflow right. Stupid thing is that they're really minor things in the end, but still annoying
A) Soloing tracks. In BitWig, Soloing is "additive" meaning that every click on the Solo button adds to the pool of tracks being soloed. I find this counter-intuitive. If I solo through different tracks, I need to remember to press Shift key to get exclusive solo. Live works other way around. Is there a way to toggle this in settings? Did not find anything about it. Most of the time I need to cycle through channels, and don't need additive solo.
A2) Same goes for arming tracks. It's additive, not exclusive. Not that bad issue as I get auto-arming when selecting tracks. But I'd still would like it to work in exclusive mode similarly to the soloing with shift key allowing to arm multiple tracks. I record primarily one VST track at the time, so arming multiple tracks is not something I use (sometimes when recording hardware synths, yes, but that's quite seldom)
B) Soloing MIDI tracks. I often use multitimbral devices (drum machines mostly, not really Kontakt) and I sometimes use separate MIDI tracks to control each part. In Live, when I solo a MIDI track controlling another track, also that another track gets soloed. In BitWig, soloing MIDI tracks mutes everything else, also the destination for the MIDI track!
To add to the confusion, if I solo an instrument track that is being controlled by a separate MIDI track, that MIDI track does not get muted. To me, this makes no sense. I think there has been discussion about it in the past quite a bit, but is it really like that? No way to change the behaviour? (i.e. soloing something also implicitly soloes everything that depends on that particular track...)
C) Sending more than one MIDI track to a same instrument track. For some reason if I send more than one MIDI track, only one of them is effective UNLESS I choose a different MIDI channel. But there is no way to combine MIDI tracks together. In Live this just works. The point is to be able to make complex MIDI patterns by combining multiple tracks/clips together. I can live with this issue, but I still find it weird that only one of the MIDI tracks gets used and others get ignored. What is the reasoning behind this?
D) Duplicating clip length. In Live, I can select the clip loop header in the piano roll mode and press Ctrl+D to duplicate the clip contents. This duplicates both the notes and the clip length, quick and easy.
In BitWig it only duplicates the notes, but not the length. Which means I would have to manually go and double up the clip length. Why does it work like that? I don't see point in duplicating the notes but not the length IF the clip is selected (ok for just notes).
However, there is "Content x2" button which does this clip length duplication so it's not really that bad. But I'd really like to Ctrl+D to do exactly that when the clip is selected. But definitely something I can get used to - shortcut would be appreciated.
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In the end these are minor things, but as I've really grown to love Live and its workflow, I find these issues really annoying, breaking the flow and making me hard to make the jump to BitWig. Comments would be appreciated.
