Bitwig Studio announced

[headquest]

Robert Henke is still working at Ableton? Nice! I always thought he left it a long time ago
Can't wait for his new LP by the way. The preview sounds amazing again!
Sorry for the OT!

Cheers
Dennis

He doesn't work there day to day, but is still involved behind the scenes. His most recent development for them was the Max4Live "Granulator" synthesiser, a flagship of the Max4Live range, and which is free for all users.

Most of the employees at Ableton are also very much involved in performance, DJing, etc. It's actually quite a creative company

[headquest]

From the website:

Who Ableton is about 130 software developers, business people and product specialists. The company is run by Gerhard Behles (CEO) and Bernd Roggendorf (CTO), its original founders, and Jan Bohl (COO/CFO). Most Abletons are active in music production, performance or DJing.

What We make software for creating, producing, and performing music. Our flagship product, Live, has introduced a new approach to making music with computers on stage and in the studio that some call revolutionary. Live has received outstanding feedback from the international press and artists. There are now several hundred thousand Live users worldwide, and the number is growing fast.

When Ableton was founded in 1999 as an AG under German law. Live was introduced to the market in late 2001. Ableton Inc., our United States subsidiary, was incorporated in 2006.

Where Ableton headquarters are in Berlin, Germany, in the central "Mitte" district, near many great clubs and music venues. Ableton Inc. is in New York, in Manhattan's Chelsea district, also near great clubs and music venues.

Why We started Ableton in order to realize our personal vision of a computer-based music-making solution. We now enjoy working with a team of exceptionally bright and talented people, and take gratification from serving and interacting with the Live user community, the coolest we know.

[Goratrix]

So just to be clear about what you are speculating here:

You think that perhaps Gerhard Behles, Robert Henke et al have - basically over night - morphed into arch-conservative business suits with no creative vision for the future of music software...

...and that a couple of (actually fairly minor) programmers within their company picked up the mantle and became super-visionaries.

Interesting though your comparison is, I would suggest it is flawed on a number of levels, and suggests that you really don't know much about the experimental musician founders who are very much still in charge at Ableton.

It's not about being "conservative business suits". The story with NewTek also has another parallel in the 3D graphics industry, Softimage. Softimage did what they needed to do, threw the old codebase away and developed a new one (XSI). It took them a few years, during which they could not provide updates for the old one, and in the process, they lost most of their userbase, who migrated to other programs. And the company never recovered from that.

Also, it doesn't matter if Henke or anyone else is a bigger visionary. If they are stuck with tens of thousands of lines of legacy code and old frameworks that don't support new development, they need to start all over again, nobody is going to come up with a new product overnight.

Do you think Ableton could have done what Softimage did? To basically shut down for a few years, no updates, no new development, nothing, just to focus on a new product? From a business perspective, could they risk it? Risk losing most of their userbase? I don't think so... And you can't do this in parallel, because you would need two sets of developers.

The same goes for FL Studio. It desperately needs a rewrite, using a different platform than Delphi, but I guess there are not enough resources to develop it and at the same time develop the old one.

[headquest]

Do you think Ableton could have done what Softimage did? To basically shut down for a few years, no updates, no new development, nothing, just to focus on a new product? From a business perspective, could they risk it? Risk losing most of their userbase? I don't think so... And you can't do this in parallel, because you would need two sets of developers.

I rather suspect that in fact this is exactly what they HAVE been doing for the last three years - a major rewrite that positions Live for its next phase. But we will have to wait a little longer to see

In the same way of course Steinberg did it with SX1 and Adobe have/are in the process of doing this with Audition. It's a necessary phase, as you say.

[aMUSEd]

Several of the most successful "modern hosts" don't have spline based curves (Ableton and Reason 6 don't for a start, and yes I know Reason 6 isn't a host but for your average punter it does similar stuff, simply using its own insttruments/fx). While hosts with spline based curves such as Tracktion 3 bombed. So it's hard to say what "people expect in a modern host". This feature is a request I would agree with, but for most people seems not to be a deal maker/breaker.

Well I would hope they aim to do better than Live with respect to automation generally (not keen on Live's approach there). I'm thinking more of apps like FL Studio, Podium, Logic and Reaper - and even Sonar has curves of a sort (although not spline based). As for Tracktion, it's a bit depressing that so many music apps are still having to play catch up with something that old in many respects (good interface design being one of them).

[dejaru]

Bitwig looks great so far, nice job Bitwig crew! The interface and it's colors look near perfect in my eyes.
Also looks like they've got all the good features from other DAWs in one package.
We'll see how it does in action.

[Johnny!]

alright, anyone keen to reproduce Bitwig Studio colour scheme in Ableton Live? would love to use it, it'll be perfect for eyes in dark lightning conditions

[todd_r]

(linux support too !!!!)

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

[gpunk]

While hosts with spline based curves such as Tracktion 3 bombed.

Rather all encompassing statement on two levels

1 There are plenty of apps with spline based automation that didn't bomb and certainly wouldn't bomb because they had spline based curves.

2 Tracktion didn't bomb, it's new owners did, and that was certainly no fault of Tracktion

Why would you need spline based curves in case you could just draw your own?

- Sascha

it's a case of going to 11, I believe

If you could draw a sine wave with a couple of clicks, you cant

[todd_r]

Anyone had their hands on it yet?

[liquidsound]

Maybe Ableton will buy them out and use it for Live 9....

[Muziksculp]

Maybe Ableton will buy them out and use it for Live 9....

That's the easy way out for Ableton, and they will also change the GUI to Live's lame look.

[headquest]

That's the easy way out for Ableton, and they will also change the GUI to Live's lame look.

Personally I hope that Bitwig Studio can be skinned to light colours or dark colours, just like Ableton Live can. I have windows in my studio, and need to different colour settings for eye comfort depending on the light. That's another must have feature as far as I am concerned.

Beyond that comment, I also actually think that Live looks a lot more professional than Bitwig Studio, which has a bit of a toy-like look in my opinion. The 2D look works perfectly for this type of software, that has its own modern paradigm, and trying to emulate 3D knobs looks out of place IMHO. Tastes vary

[pdxindy]

Also looks like they've got all the good features from other DAWs in one package.

Do they have the equivalent of Live's racks? How about the scoring in Cubase or Logic? How about support for external hardware controllers?

How about, how about, how about... There are dozens of important features not mentioned at all on the Bitwig page. There is no evidence whatsoever that they have all the good features from other DAWs.

[pdxindy]

Do you think Ableton could have done what Softimage did? To basically shut down for a few years, no updates, no new development, nothing, just to focus on a new product? From a business perspective, could they risk it? Risk losing most of their userbase? I don't think so... And you can't do this in parallel, because you would need two sets of developers.

I have no idea what Ableton is or is not doing, but it is going on 3 years since Live 8 so they have indeed had the time to do some serious re-writing for Live 9.