The awesome sleeper feature of 2.5 Beta 4!

[meta-redundant]

Changes in Bitwig Studio 2.5, Beta 4
IMPROVEMENTS
When deactivating a plug-in (either directly or when deactivating its track) unload the plugin

Just discovered this. This is HUUUUUUGE. We can now create massive sample library templates with all our plugins! I do a lot of work on a deadline and this was the only thing keeping me from having my template in Bitwig (I was forced to use Vienna Pro, which is highly annoying for a multitude of reasons).

In case you're not familiar with the workflow, you load all the possible sample libraries you're likely to need (strings, percussion, hybrid, drumkits, SFX, etc), arranged by category - but disabled. Then, if you need something, you just hit the hotkey to enable it. This saves you lots of time digging through gigabytes of material because you have everything ready to go, in the format you're used to.

Previously, if you disabled a track, it would take the stream off the CPU, but would still leave the samples in memory. No longer! You can have 4 terabytes of samples in your set if you want, with instantaneous project load times

Also - very useful if you bounce something and then disable the source track...leaves zero footprint. Bravo!

[craigtumps]

Sounds good to me

[Yokai]

Nice! Also helpful for those synths with a big memory footprint, like VPS-Avenger or Pigments!

[antic604]

Not to be a party-pooper, but shouldn't the exact behaviour be selectable in Settings? Or even better there should be separate actions & shortcuts for only disabling (Alt+A) and disabling+unloading (Alt+Shift+A)?

Working on a weak hardware I often need to bounce the group channel & deactivate grouped tracks to progress, but likewise I often re-activate the devices back, change something and bounce again. If I'll have to wait 5-30 seconds every time (depending on the complexity of the chain) then that's not ideal

[Yokai]

Not to be a party-pooper, but shouldn't the exact behaviour be selectable in Settings? Or even better there should be separate actions & shortcuts for only disabling (Alt+A) and disabling+unloading (Alt+Shift+A)?

Working on a weak hardware I often need to bounce the group channel & deactivate grouped tracks to progress, but likewise I often re-activate the devices back, change something and bounce again. If I'll have to wait 5-30 seconds every time (depending on the complexity of the chain) then that's not ideal

I’d support this, because I’m always for more personalization. But in practice if I’m ready to flatten a track to audio, it’s pretty rare that I need to go back and redo something. It’s great to have the peace of mind knowing you can go back, but rare. I think the occasional extra load time to reactivate a track or plug or rack is worth the overall more optimized CPU.

I’m guessing this new feature won’t be unloading stuff inside FX Selector or Instrument Selector devices, because those need to be ready on demand.

[antic604]

It’s great to have the peace of mind knowing you can go back, but rare. I think the occasional extra load time to reactivate a track or plug or rack is worth the overall more optimized CPU.

But we're talking about RAM here, not CPU. CPU will be freed either way - with or without unloading.

And as I said, with weak hardware (CPU) bouncing & re-bouncing might be necessary even in early drafting stage, when you're far from being ready to commit.

I hope it's not to late to offer user a choice there, especially if it would be as simple as Alt+A vs. Alt+Shift+A (and corresponding tick-boxes in Inspector and option in right-click menu)

[Yokai]

My bad, I meant RAM But FWIW I agree with you. Making the new behavior configurable is vastly desirable!

[u-u-u]

Although I don't use too many sample instruments most of the time I ran into the problem of very unstable behaviour, crackles, sluggish GUI some weeks ago that was caused by the RAM being full and plugins wanting more of it. So I bounced them into audio + deactivated the devices but that didn't solve the problem until I deleted the plugins from the project. This made it very inconvenient because I knew I wanted to work on on the notes later. So, this improvement will fix that problem, right?

And yeah, maybe make it an option because as long as I deactivate devices to save only CPU, I find it convenient if I can reactivate them quickly (without waiting too long for loading into RAM again)

[askewd]

I was really stressed to discover this 'feature' today! ... I always use alt+a to audition various plugin combinations, ie A&B them INSTANTLY. Especially when mastering. Having them load back in each time is a nightmare!!

However i do understand the positive that the OP highlighted... yes that's pretty cool.

So i think really this one should be a setting. Ideally for me, deactivated tracks would completely unload, but deactivated plugins on active tracks would not.

Cheers
DALE

[Yokai]

Although I don't use too many sample instruments most of the time I ran into the problem of very unstable behaviour, crackles, sluggish GUI some weeks ago that was caused by the RAM being full and plugins wanting more of it. So I bounced them into audio + deactivated the devices but that didn't solve the problem until I deleted the plugins from the project. This made it very inconvenient because I knew I wanted to work on on the notes later. So, this improvement will fix that problem, right?

And yeah, maybe make it an option because as long as I deactivate devices to save only CPU, I find it convenient if I can reactivate them quickly (without waiting too long for loading into RAM again)

Yes, this improvement will fix that problem. Deactivate specific devices/plugs, or entire tracks, and you free up ALL the associated resources.

[Yokai]

I was really stressed to discover this 'feature' today! ... I always use alt+a to audition various plugin combinations, ie A&B them INSTANTLY. Especially when mastering. Having them load back in each time is a nightmare!!

However i do understand the positive that the OP highlighted... yes that's pretty cool.

So i think really this one should be a setting. Ideally for me, deactivated tracks would completely unload, but deactivated plugins on active tracks would not.

Cheers
DALE

If they decide not to make this behavior configurable, you can STILL accomplish this use case by simply putting your alternate FX devices/chains/racks, etc. into separate channels inside of an FX Selector device. (That device is useless if they're actually removing from memory the devices/plugs on the non-selected channels.)

So plop your alternate ideas into an FX Selector and simply click 1, 2, 3, etc. to instantly audition among them.

[pdxindy]

I was really stressed to discover this 'feature' today! ... I always use alt+a to audition various plugin combinations, ie A&B them INSTANTLY. Especially when mastering. Having them load back in each time is a nightmare!!

However i do understand the positive that the OP highlighted... yes that's pretty cool.

So i think really this one should be a setting. Ideally for me, deactivated tracks would completely unload, but deactivated plugins on active tracks would not.

Cheers
DALE

If they decide not to make this behavior configurable, you can STILL accomplish this use case by simply putting your alternate FX devices/chains/racks, etc. into separate channels inside of an FX Selector device. (That device is useless if they're actually removing from memory the devices/plugs on the non-selected channels.)

So plop your alternate ideas into an FX Selector and simply click 1, 2, 3, etc. to instantly audition among them.

Sorry, but I don't want to put a bunch of separate tracks into an FX Selector. The old behavior needs to be an option!

[antic604]

I was really stressed to discover this 'feature' today! ... I always use alt+a to audition various plugin combinations, ie A&B them INSTANTLY. Especially when mastering. Having them load back in each time is a nightmare!!

However i do understand the positive that the OP highlighted... yes that's pretty cool.

So i think really this one should be a setting. Ideally for me, deactivated tracks would completely unload, but deactivated plugins on active tracks would not.

Cheers
DALE

If they decide not to make this behavior configurable, you can STILL accomplish this use case by simply putting your alternate FX devices/chains/racks, etc. into separate channels inside of an FX Selector device. (That device is useless if they're actually removing from memory the devices/plugs on the non-selected channels.)

So plop your alternate ideas into an FX Selector and simply click 1, 2, 3, etc. to instantly audition among them.

That's not how it works, though.

If you bounce a track, then ALL devices are bypassed (and likely deactivated & unloaded with this new feature) and you're left with audio file that reflects the output of the track. If FX Selector was automated, you'll hear different effects at different points of the audio. But you won't be able to change them any longer.

If you do bounce-in-place instead, the bounce takes place at the output of device that GENERATES the sound, so if FX Selector is outside of the instrument (isn't nested in its slot), then it will remain intact in the chain, won't be deactivated and you'll be able to manipulate it live.

[Yokai]

I was really stressed to discover this 'feature' today! ... I always use alt+a to audition various plugin combinations, ie A&B them INSTANTLY. Especially when mastering. Having them load back in each time is a nightmare!!

However i do understand the positive that the OP highlighted... yes that's pretty cool.

So i think really this one should be a setting. Ideally for me, deactivated tracks would completely unload, but deactivated plugins on active tracks would not.

Cheers
DALE

If they decide not to make this behavior configurable, you can STILL accomplish this use case by simply putting your alternate FX devices/chains/racks, etc. into separate channels inside of an FX Selector device. (That device is useless if they're actually removing from memory the devices/plugs on the non-selected channels.)

So plop your alternate ideas into an FX Selector and simply click 1, 2, 3, etc. to instantly audition among them.

That's not how it works, though.

If you bounce a track, then ALL devices are bypassed (and likely deactivated & unloaded with this new feature) and you're left with audio file that reflects the output of the track. If FX Selector was automated, you'll hear different effects at different points of the audio. But you won't be able to change them any longer.

If you do bounce-in-place instead, the bounce takes place at the output of device that GENERATES the sound, so if FX Selector is outside of the instrument (isn't nested in its slot), then it will remain intact in the chain, won't be deactivated and you'll be able to manipulate it live.

Isn't the question of "how do I AB compare different FX processing choices?" entirely separate from whether or not you're flattening a track? You're going to decide which alternate chunks of FX processing you want before you do a standard Bounce. And if you're not yet sure which alternate chunk of FX processing you want to keep, then you'd (at most) do a Bounce In Place.

[Yokai]

Again, though, I'm not arguing against configurability for this behavior! I'm only pointing out possible workarounds if Bitwig decides to NOT make the memory unloading configurable.

I use FX Selector and Instrument Selector all the time when I'm in early stages of a project. I find them both invaluable for quickly trying different instruments (or processing chains) and then doing A-B testing to decide which ones to keep as the project evolves.

I find that clicking 1, 2, 3, etc. in a Selector device is much faster/easier than enabling keyboard mapping and making special toggle behavior (like you have to do over in Ableton). It's also a lot easier to clear out the "failure" ideas by just deleting a single channel from a Selector device.

And when I finally get down to the ONE choice I want to keep, it's very easy to multi-select all of the devices inside the winning Selector channel and then drag them outside of the Selector itself. Then I can just delete the empty Selector device.