TMA: Live vs Bitwig (late 2016 edition) vs wild card?

[rod_zero]

Bitwig is good cause it copies so much from Live.

[pdxindy]

Bitwig is good cause it copies so much from Live.

and then goes well beyond it in a bunch of places...

[xbitz]

Really appreciate you taking the time to type this, very useful info!

Layered editing is kinda big. I've been demoing Bitwig now for a bit, feels really slick and smooth so far, no real learning curve either, feels like a lot of thinking has gone into the workflow. I try to finish something over the weekend, then compare with Live. I hope I get deep enough to see under and inside the extremely impressive UI.

welcome

Bitwig is rather well designed. I find it very comfortable to work in. There are still some rough edges, but it is so fundamentally capable that there is no way I'm gonna use anything else unless Bitwig just died.

The way it handles groups, group sends, the fantastic modulation system, capable routing, etc... great stuff!

The layered editing is a good foundation, but it definitely needs some work to refine workflow. The potential is there.

The way you can edit audio clips too is sweet.

VSTi sampling then sample based phrase(small key triggered fragments in Renoise )key triggered macro-controlled multi modulating/effecting quite fun in Renoise



so there is fun in tracker world too

[incubus]

Bitwig? What is that?

(invisible cat pic!!!!!)

Long story, Bitwig was rough on the ol' pacemaker......I mean CPU for me (it's nothing like reaper and how good that is)

Live was very good though. I enjoyed it mostly for about 2 1/2 years It's probably much better now.

But before you jump ship just because you are not happy about the updating, keep in mind, both of the mentioned companies have indeed had very long wait times when it seemed that nothing was going to happen. You can't escape that, those every-day-release days when reaper was fast and furious are over for ANY DAW.

[xbitz]

You can't escape that, those every-day-release days when reaper was fast and furious are over for ANY DAW.

Reaper
v5.27pre5 - October 14 2016
+ FX: add menu item for copy FX (include automation, bound to Ctrl+Alt+C)
+ FX: support drag and drop copy with automation via shift+ctrl+drag FX
# Notation editor: fix PDF export positioning of dynamics, text, lyrics

finally can copy fx with automation,

[tooneba]

B.t.w.: "if you're happy with it, please be but do it elsewhere, this isn't a reaper thread" WTF???

You were the first to mention Reaper, but we shall not reply?

I thought same thing and gave up writing post. Its trolly and seems bait. Traditional kvr thread

[incubus]

edit, even though true, I don't give a f**k.

[.jon]

Bitwig? What is that?

(invisible cat pic!!!!!)

Long story, Bitwig was rough on the ol' pacemaker......I mean CPU for me (it's nothing like reaper and how good that is)

I did a simple CPU test (load up tracks with heavy Reaktor 6 instances until dropout crackles appear), and as expected, there's absolutely no difference between Bitwig, Live or Reaper in terms of real life performance. None. All three fluctuate in the same % range in Windows task manager, and all three start to crackle at the exact same point (increasing note polyphony in the last track).

Should be mentioned that it was necessary to adjust the settings in Reaper from defaults to get the same performance as from the others, without "Allow live multiprocessing" enabled it crapped out way before the other two.

But before you jump ship just because you are not happy about the updating, keep in mind, both of the mentioned companies have indeed had very long wait times when it seemed that nothing was going to happen. You can't escape that, those every-day-release days when reaper was fast and furious are over for ANY DAW.

I don't care for DAW release frequency (which is still 1-2 per month for Reaper!), but for the quality and direction of development, and whether or not a DAW works for me as it is. I don't have the time nor motivation for buying into future maybes, not with all the options available to us.

Back to Live vs Bitwig, I'm slightly disappointed in the modulation system- it's pretty much identical to Parameter Modulation in Reaper, I would have wished it to be cross-linkable between tracks. I guess this level of modularity is coming in 2.0, but not sure I wish to bet on that (see above.). Then again, to get similar to Live would require Suite with Max?

Not seeing arrangement while launching clips (Live) feels pretty cumbersome now, but on the other hand with several tracks this isn't that awesome in BWS either. Discovered the second window feature in Live.

Testing will continue.

[xbitz]

I've added some quite comprehensive posts (with videos and pictures) about the workflow of Bitwig http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 6#p6331726 worth to check it

[.jon]

Very nice. Routing is clearly one point for Bitwig, using midi generators in Live is awkward.

[.jon]

Life's too short for this!

I was afraid it would come to making lists with pluses and minuses, but what I didn't expect that even they solved nothing- Live and BWS are really quite equal, Bitwig guys have done an incredible job to go head to head with a v9 of a world class DAW. For every weakness or thing one has, the other counters with something else, making a rational choice proved to be impossible.

So I made the choice based on pure gut feeling- for reasons I can't explain, I find Live more inspiring and immediate. It's uglier (a lot), but also easier on the eyes, I find it easy to keep focus on the music. Everything is where I expect, stuff works. Last time I chose the DAW based on features (an area where Reaper wins all DAWs together by a mile and half), but didn't have the feeling. In electronic music, the DAW is the instrument, and this time I'll choose the instrument that inspires.

Thanks everyone & have a nice autumn!

[MarlaPodolski]

I'm giving up on the sinking ship of Cocks, Reaper, and looking at either Live or Bitwig, or maybe there's a third option I haven't considered.

How is Bitwig coming along? Is it 100% production ready, or are you still waiting for "that one thing"?

Smart Man. Yes, either Live or Bitwig -- for what music you're into, you can't go wrong with either.

I got going with Live a little before Bitwig was even a conception in anyone's mind... There sure was a long build-up and delay before Bitwig's release. And I think it looks sharp and they say it's had a good record and a couple important updates, but I became very content with Live before Bitwig and, since they are quite similar in many ways, see no reason to defect to Bitwig. Especially now, as Live has recently had some awesome update releases, not to mention that Ableton themselves now build and sell PUSH (now in version 2), and Push 2 is getting plenty of raves.

I don't have PUSH yet, as it is pricey and I've had other 'fish to fry' of late, but I really would love to have it and hope to within a year, 2 at the most I'm sure.

Don't care to badmouth Reaper today, and even though I don't think of it as newbie-ready or user-ready right out of the box, and in serious need of individual user customising and tweaking before being of any real use, it has a couple of features that I did like. For example, after spending half a night searching and searching in its resources "Stash", I actually did find and install 3 or 4 user-made themes to it while I was demo-ing that DAW. I can't stand the current v5 default look of Reaper, but I found some older skins called "RADO"-This or That which I thought were beautiful. They even made the WAV-forms colourful and very nice to look at.

Even so, I could see I still had many nights ahead fixing Reaper's menus, layout, settings and more before I would consider it ready for efficient and pro use, so I confess I chucked it - gave up - and continued on with Live 8 I already had.

In Live, you can be recording pro projects within an hour, even before reading any or much of any manual pages. This is because the whole right-side column of Live becomes a very helpful tutorial area and literally whips you right through the Basics in an extremely organized and logical way. When done with perhaps a half dozen tutorial project chapters I felt confident enough to begin straight away, was rather much-inspired by the Live Tuts to get working. I know much less about Bitwig but all I've seen and heard seems strikingly similar to Live.

[pdxindy]

Back to Live vs Bitwig, I'm slightly disappointed in the modulation system- it's pretty much identical to Parameter Modulation in Reaper, I would have wished it to be cross-linkable between tracks. I guess this level of modularity is coming in 2.0, but not sure I wish to bet on that (see above.). Then again, to get similar to Live would require Suite with Max?

Not seeing arrangement while launching clips (Live) feels pretty cumbersome now, but on the other hand with several tracks this isn't that awesome in BWS either. Discovered the second window feature in Live.

Testing will continue.

Give an example of a desired real world use case for linking between tracks. There are already ways to accomplish it in Bitwig today depending on what you want to do using the Note Mod and Audio Mod devices. The Dev's could make some tasks more straightforward, but you can already do just about anything using existing modules.

Reaper is amazingly powerful... being able to do anything is not its weakness... workflow is. The Modulation system in Bitwig is easy and creatively fun...

[.jon]

Give an example of a desired real world use case for linking between tracks. There are already ways to accomplish it in Bitwig today depending on what you want to do using the Note Mod and Audio Mod devices. The Dev's could make some tasks more straightforward, but you can already do just about anything using existing modules.

Just to control various parameters on other tracks with the same LFO for example. Obviously pretty easy to achieve the same end result in various ways in most DAWs, but I thought that BWS modulation could use any parameter on any track as target, instead of just inside a container. Just a comfort measure really, several LFOs with the same settings do the exact same thing with only neglible extra effort.

[deastman]

Live and Bitwig are both great, and you really can't go wrong with either one. I love using Push 2 with Live, but I switch over to Bitwig for MPE support. Regardless, I'm sure you'll be very happy with Live.