The All In One Source Bitwig Information & Speculation Thread

[jeffh]

So if you make even one mistake (I don't agree it was a mistake)

Yes, we live in a world where actions have consequences, whether or not anybody believes it was a "mistake" or not. There was a direct relationship between the early promotion of Bitwig, the continued lack of an actual product, and the rise of our cat overlords on KVR. And yes, only Bitwig could've prevented it by either keeping it under wraps, or else releasing an actual product.

everyone should ridicule you forever about it...

Bitwig is, in theory, a corporation, and by extension has no feelings, so you don't have to defend Bitwig like it's your little brother or something...

The ridicule will cease and immediately be forgotten the minute they release a product...(and immediately be replaced with either delight or disappointment) Had they not announced Bitwig "back in the day"(aka "the mistake"), they would not be ridiculed at all, and predictably so.

Hey, I've got it! Let's take this to it's logical conclusion and just censor everybody who ridicules Bitwig for their ridicule-worthy early shenanigans!

you have such an intolerant and ugly view of how life "should" be.

That's really how the world works.... I'm not making it up. One day you'll understand.

[no_barcode]

you have such an intolerant and ugly view of how life "should" be.

That's really how the world works.... I'm not making it up. One day you'll understand.

How do we know that's really how the world works? You're just some guy on the internet! Where's your proof? I demand references!

[pdxindy]

Sweet! Glad to hear that is there. And to confirm, you can also drop 3rd party instruments in there as well yes? And... (sorry, but they are not quite covered yet! )

What facility is there for how the instruments are layered? I looked at the image of the Layer Tool but it gives no indication other than what appears to be mute/solo and volume control. Can you do a keyboard split? Or split by volume range? oh, and can you nest one inside another?

Another subject...

Another thing I would be interested to hear about are follow actions or the Bitwig equivalent to accomplishing this task. In case you do not know what follow actions are, it is the instructions for what happens after a clip completes. Does it go to the next clip, repeat itself and so on. Live's follow actions are capable, but I have always thought that they could work better/more intuitively. I'm curious how Bitwig has approached the task.

Thanks for your replies. Some of the Bitwig videos are very impressive!

- Third party is handled exactly like internal in the layer node.

- For the layering: ATM there is a note tool that you can insert in the layers which allows you to set note and velocity ranges.
But this is one case where I don't know if this part is final. But if you remember that Bitwig is nodal in the background, IMO it makes sense to keep the RISC/KISS principle

- Didn't try nesting, but so far I haven't found anything that you can't nest.

- Follow actions is more powerful than Live: You have "Return to Arrangement" (so you can fire a clip while playing the arrangement and when it's finished it goes back to the Arrangement You also have "Return to last clip" which does the same for clips - pretty cool imo. Then there is "Round Robin", "Stop" and then basically all the modes Live has.

- Just checked out "Drum Machine" basically the same as Lives Drum Racks. Each pad can have it's own Device chain and you have a FX Button to include global effects. There are specific synths for Kick, Snare, HH etc. NICE
And of course you have Presets (nothing in BW without them).

Cheers,

Tom

Thanks for your explanations...

Regarding synth layers... I really like that the key/velocity controls are just right there and fast to use in Live. Modularity is not always preferable... but that is a small point and the layering sounds good enough not to be a problem.

and your descriptions of Bitwig 'follow actions' sounds great. I am really looking forward to trying those! Bitwig sounds like it has a 'smarter' integration between arrangement and session.

Cheers

[pdxindy]

you have such an intolerant and ugly view of how life "should" be.

That's really how the world works.... I'm not making it up. One day you'll understand.

It is not how the world works (and there is a vast body of evidence to back that up)... it is how you choose to be. And you are indeed free to be that way... so carry on and let's get back to Bitwig discussion which is what this thread and forum are for.

[elxsound]

you have such an intolerant and ugly view of how life "should" be.

That's really how the world works.... I'm not making it up. One day you'll understand.

It is not how the world works (and there is a vast body of evidence to back that up)... it is how you choose to be. And you are indeed free to be that way... so carry on and let's get back to Bitwig discussion which is what this thread and forum are for.

I'm adding a +1 simply to help illustrate that this is not how the world works (if it were, we would all just simply agree, which we don't).

[elxsound]

- Just checked out "Drum Machine" basically the same as Lives Drum Racks. Each pad can have it's own Device chain and you have a FX Button to include global effects. There are specific synths for Kick, Snare, HH etc. NICE
And of course you have Presets (nothing in BW without them).

Cheers,

Tom

Thanks for the info Tom. Can you tell me if the drum rack have return tracks for their own send effects. And also do the drum racks pads have the ability to send to the master return channels for send effects like reverb and delay? And finally can the pads send levels be mapped to macros of that pad.

thanks!

I'd love to know this too...

Also any info about on how sends and returns work would be great too. The way Live handles sends is just ridiculously easy.

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks for the info Tom. Can you tell me if the drum rack have return tracks for their own send effects. And also do the drum racks pads have the ability to send to the master return channels for send effects like reverb and delay? And finally can the pads send levels be mapped to macros of that pad.

thanks!

Hm - this is one such case where I'm reluctant to say much, because I simply don't know exactly how this is meant to work and if it is finished already. Each pad has a pan and volume that can be controlled with macros, but I am not sure about how to route the sends of individual pads.

More later when I find out ... well ... more.

Just tried: you can have really everything on a pad in Drum Machine: A drum synth, a VST, a Loop (automatically loaded into the nice sampler).


But to return to an earlier track: I checked some more of the internal effects and there are several split effects that could be used very nicely in layering: Multiband FX which splits a signal at a certain frequency and has two signal chains for high and low. Nice
The same principle for Mid-Side Splitting.
And the most crazy: an XY effect where you have four device chains (one in each corner) that you mix via an XY pad + a post FX chain...
So I would say if you are interested in customizing your layering in fine detail, you should have a lot of options!
This really feels like a nodal system without handling nodes.


When testing this I created several clips and didn't even think about it when I dragged a midi clip in one clip-launcher on the same track with the drum machine and an audio clip into another (it was an instrument track originally). And it just worked. Brilliant! No need for specific tracks anymore. Woohooo.

I think this combination of arrangement and clips will be one of the major things for me. In Live I always found the arrangement "plugged on". Not so in BW.

What I also like: all devices in the chain get the midi data.

Cheers,

Tom

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks for your explanations...

Regarding synth layers... I really like that the key/velocity controls are just right there and fast to use in Live. Modularity is not always preferable... but that is a small point and the layering sounds good enough not to be a problem.

and your descriptions of Bitwig 'follow actions' sounds great. I am really looking forward to trying those! Bitwig sounds like it has a 'smarter' integration between arrangement and session.

Cheers

Yeah, ATM I'd agree with you, the layering is very deep in Live.

But one thing that may not be obvious about nodal systems:
I work mostly in 3D apps and many of them use nodes for surfacing, effects, particles, you name it.
I coded several procedural texture nodes in C and C++ myself and the cool thing is, that you can much easier create additional nodes in such a system than add the same functionality in a monolithic system (as I assume Live is? No real clue really, just an impression from the last years).

And since you can create presets of everything, you can create a layer preset with the features you regularly use and afterwards just reuse it an drop in what you want. Or create presets of the sub-chains...


That integration between Arrangement and Session is THE THING IMO.
I hated that in Live.

Cheers,

Tom

[Ogopogo]

Thanks so much Tom. This is all interesting.

Am I right to assume that there are no collapsible "sub" mixer tracks yet for different device chains, like there are in Live? For example if you load up a drum rack in Live you will get a little arrow on the side of the track that lets you see mixer strips for each drum pad.

I really like that but it doesn't I don't think it will bother me that much even if it's not there. It's not going to kill me to go without and they have gotten so much stuff right I bet they will come up with something in the future.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Hm - this is one such case where I'm reluctant to say much, because I simply don't know exactly how this is meant to work and if it is finished already. Each pad has a pan and volume that can be controlled with macros, but I am not sure about how to route the sends of individual pads.

More later when I find out ... well ... more.

Thanks, looking forward to it. I would be very surprised if drum racks didn't have send functionality for individual pads. that would be insanely limiting for drums. You can't very well have a single reverb or delay for the entire kit all the time, or put a separate reverb instance on every single pad. So I can't imagine such a big oversight as not having individual send levels for pads. But on the other hand i haven't heard anything out of anyone about this. And if you can easily see the pan and volume but not sends, that's a bit worrying.

[Ogopogo]

Hm - this is one such case where I'm reluctant to say much, because I simply don't know exactly how this is meant to work and if it is finished already. Each pad has a pan and volume that can be controlled with macros, but I am not sure about how to route the sends of individual pads.

More later when I find out ... well ... more.

Thanks, looking forward to it. I would be very surprised if drum racks didn't have send functionality for individual pads. that would be insanely limiting for drums. You can't very well have a single reverb or delay for the entire kit all the time, or put a separate reverb instance on every single pad. So I can't imagine such a big oversight as not having individual send levels for pads. But on the other hand i haven't heard anything out of anyone about this. And if you can easily see the pan and volume but not sends, that's a bit worrying.

I'm pretty sure you can't do sends per drum pad in Live drum racks.

[rockstar_not]

To ThomasHelze, since it seems you are an actual beta tester:

What can you say about audio? I'm not a Live user, so all of the comparisons to Live functions are a bit confusing, unless it's absolute that this product is fully intended to be a swap for Live. I can then simply check it off the list as the 'next' DAW for me.

I'm interested in whether there are innovations for audio that compare to some of the recent Bitwig videos for midi editing.

-Scott

[pc999]

Many thanks for the info Tom!!!

Btw did you tested any controller?

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I'm adding a +1 simply to help illustrate that this is not how the world works (if it were, we would all just simply agree, which we don't).

+1

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks, looking forward to it. I would be very surprised if drum racks didn't have send functionality for individual pads. that would be insanely limiting for drums. You can't very well have a single reverb or delay for the entire kit all the time, or put a separate reverb instance on every single pad. So I can't imagine such a big oversight as not having individual send levels for pads. But on the other hand i haven't heard anything out of anyone about this. And if you can easily see the pan and volume but not sends, that's a bit worrying.

Found it!!!!!

It's not in the device itself, but in the Mixer screen

On the track with the drum machine you have a little arrow next to the title and clicking that you have a full submixer for each and every pad, very similar to Live.

And yes, you have all existing sends on each pad! So you can really work very precise.
Each individual send can be set to auto, pre or post.
Therefore it's possible to use sends as subgroups.

And since you see your instruments and effects per pad in the mixer, it's easy to add effects on the fly.

I'd say this is brilliant.

Cheers,

Tom

P.S. See, this is why I'm reluctant to say certain things - I just hadn't found out yet

[elxsound]

Hm - this is one such case where I'm reluctant to say much, because I simply don't know exactly how this is meant to work and if it is finished already. Each pad has a pan and volume that can be controlled with macros, but I am not sure about how to route the sends of individual pads.

More later when I find out ... well ... more.

Thanks, looking forward to it. I would be very surprised if drum racks didn't have send functionality for individual pads. that would be insanely limiting for drums. You can't very well have a single reverb or delay for the entire kit all the time, or put a separate reverb instance on every single pad. So I can't imagine such a big oversight as not having individual send levels for pads. But on the other hand i haven't heard anything out of anyone about this. And if you can easily see the pan and volume but not sends, that's a bit worrying.

I'm pretty sure you can't do sends per drum pad in Live drum racks.

(In Live) Send levels per each drum pad, yes. You can drop up to 6 send effects in a drum rack, and each pad has it's own send level for each (up to 6).