The All In One Source Bitwig Information & Speculation Thread

[ezelkow1]

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).

To go along with this, from the same send/return setup from within the drum rack you can also do a send in a drum rack to an external project wide send, routing a single pad out of the drum rack to another send

[Ogopogo]

@thomas That is great. I wonder why they never showed it.

@elxsound, ezelkow1 Ah, I see it now, ty.

But the bitwig way of having the send automatically on the mixer strip makes much more sense to me!

Hail Bitwig. I should have had more faith.

[crashedthecar]

Hi Tom and thanks for the info.

Could you tell me, when you mute a track will it's devices still take up cpu resources?

[ezelkow1]

@thomas That is great. I wonder why they never showed it.

@elxsound, ezelkow1 Ah, I see it now, ty.

But the bitwig way of having the send automatically on the mixer strip makes much more sense to me!

Hail Bitwig. I should have had more faith.

There are sends built in to the drum racks in ableton too, what I was mentioning was just a way to also use your existing sends. If you open a drum rack, hit the chain list view button on the left, then the 'i-o' button, then you can hit the 's' and 'r' buttons beneath that. The 'r' button opens up your area to drop in effects, each one will create a return track within the drum rack and you can add multiple effects to each one. The 's' button shows the level settings for each pad to route to each internal return track.

Then if you expand the drum rack in session view you will also have the send levels available for the drum racks internal return tracks. So the return tracks are also automatically on the mixer strip as well but you have the option of using either your project wide ones, or ones specifically internal to your drum rack

[Ogopogo]

^Right, that's what I found when you pointed it out, ty. I was saying that simply having access to the project sends through the mixer right from the start makes more sense to me than adding sends to the device itself. That return chain box is tiny and hard to work with, and I think I would be just setting it up to go out to a preexisting project send most of the time.

[ThomasHelzle]

Does that drum rack send effect you talk about exist in Live 8? Never saw that but I'm not much of a drum person

EDIT: just saw the answer - well, that indeed is more involved...


As for Audio Editing: not sure what the question actually is? It has all the standard options like cutting and moving stuff around, fade-in and fade out times (with visual feedback in the wave-view), transpose (with automation), different stretch algorithms, "Onset detection" (sounds like what otherwise is often called transients) and you can automatically split at onsets and then move the individual snippets around (a clip in BW can contain multiple audio snippets ) - should be stutter-editors paradise You can revers audio, quantize lenght and tempo...

But it's not an "audio-editor" but a - AFAIK - nondestructive arranger, not Photoshop but InDesign.


I totally love the layered editing - see multiple clips/tracks stacked (midi or/and audio) so you can edit them in context.
Fullscreen if you want. Nice!
(you can switch between editing individual clips or whole tracks in that case).

Cheers,

Tom

[pdxindy]

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

Cheers,

Tom

That is sweet!

In Live, as you know, you have to have something like a 3rd party arpeggiator on a track and route it to the track with your synth. This sounds like you would be able to just use a single track!

[ThomasHelzle]

Hi Tom and thanks for the info.

Could you tell me, when you mute a track will it's devices still take up cpu resources?

I just tried with 10x Satin in one device chain, one after another (7% CPU @ 48 khz - not bad) and yes, they still use CPU - and there is hardly any way around it for a tool that is also meant for live use. You need to be able to mute and un-mute a track as part of the live show and the result has to be seamless. That's only possible if everything is running all the time. Otherwise notes would need to retrigger on unmute, delays would start anew etc. - you would get something completely differnt.

Cheers,

Tom

[ThomasHelzle]

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

Cheers,

Tom

That is sweet!

In Live, as you know, you have to have something like a 3rd party arpeggiator on a track and route it to the track with your synth. This sounds like you would be able to just use a single track!

Not sure about that. I tried that as one of the first things and had the impression that every device in a chain is getting the original Midi... which is a problem in most hosts, since some plugins don't let midi through, so you often can't "reach" effects.

But this may be again one of the things I haven't found out yet.


BTW: Just checked - the automatic sub-mixer thing is not only available for the drum machine, but also for the Instrument Layer module and for the FX Layer module. If you have both in one track, you see all the instrument layers as well as all the FX layers in the mixer.

Cheers,

Tom

[pdxindy]

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

I used to be involved in 3D work. I have had some paid gigs as a modeler and have worked with nodal shading systems.

The lovely thing about the Live racks is that they hit a kind of sweet spot. Capability vs Ease of Use.

I've generally found my favorite tools to be semi-nodal. For example, I like Zebra as an excellent example of balance between flexibility and ease of use. Bitwig (from the outside) looks like a fairly good balance as well.


One of the behaviors I have always found a bit annoying in Live is how the follow actions do not default to clip length. If I make a clip with a length of 4 measures, I am mostly likely going to want the follow action to act at the end of the clip. I think follow actions should have a default setting of 'clip length'. This way by default it just follows the length of the clip and if I edit the clip length, I do not have to also edit the length in the follow action. One can customize from there.

How does Bitwig deal with such default settings?

[crashedthecar]

Hi Tom and thanks for the info.

Could you tell me, when you mute a track will it's devices still take up cpu resources?

I just tried with 10x Satin in one device chain, one after another (7% CPU @ 48 khz - not bad) and yes, they still use CPU - and there is hardly any way around it for a tool that is also meant for live use. You need to be able to mute and un-mute a track as part of the live show and the result has to be seamless. That's only possible if everything is running all the time. Otherwise notes would need to retrigger on unmute, delays would start anew etc. - you would get something completely differnt.

Cheers,

Tom

Yeah makes sense, I guess the device it self has a power off button.

Cheers, look forward to it

[hibidy]

Regarding KVR:
My impression is, that there simply is a huge crowd of frustrated people here.
People who in one way or other are making music or want to and are not totally successful with it - for whatever reason.
(I can't imagine that there are too many really successful musicians taking part in "those" threads - they have work to do).

Now if you are not successful or not really making music, it is very easy in this day and age to blame that on the tools.
A lot of anger can be generated that way.

I don't really see that. Where the frustration comes from here is from other things. I enjoy the virtual music arena for the most part. I love gear, I love talking about it and have luckily been pretty happy with my gear for now about a year. Bitwig is simply a comic relief (well, it was) Let's be realistic, 20 months is a LONG LONG time for someone to wait for a daw.

Anyways, I know some people are endlessly searching and I'm pretty sure I'm the target of posts like this so wanted to clear that up. If not, good, but I'm frustrated with the idea that I'm this bitter person who just wants to make trouble. Nothing could be further from the truth in equipment/daws/etc.

[Echoes in the Attic]

edit: already answered.

[Echoes in the Attic]

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

Excellent, thanks!

But can you map the send levels to a pads macros? And the drum racks macros?

I'm also curious if you can make subgroups of drum pads (for a single level/pan,sends) as you can in Live.

cheers

[Ogopogo]

Of course you can. You must not be a Live user, but it's a crucial feature. Drum Racks have their own return channels for send effects. And you can send the drum rack return channels out to any main return channel as well so that each pad can send to the main send effects as well as it's own. Absolutely essential.

Others have enlightened me. I'm kinda/sorta a Live user. I've been playing with the demo for a long time but waiting to buy bitwig instead. I've just never been that interested in sends for individual drums. What's crucial is subjective. It seemed to me that if they were going to allow send for drums they would just put the send knobs in the mixer strips, but obviously I was wrong.