Finding Bitwig Studio 1.3.15 more CPU efficient than Live! :-)

[pboy]

For one production I moved over to Live and found that Live isn't really as CPU efficient as Bitwig. Well done Bitwig team!

I'm using the same 35 tracks, Kontakt sampler based, orchestral template in both applications. Live can freeze tracks though, so it is plain luck that Bitwig happens to be CPU efficient enough for providing a realistic alternative to Ableton Live. I rarely create larger projects than Bitwig can handle without needing for a few "Bounce In Place" so I still chose to work in Bitwig. It is alarming for the future though, that Bitwig doesn't have a freeze track function. In Logic, on a Macbook Pro laptop, that function makes it possible to work on really heavy projects without any glitches. I wish Bitwig too will soon get there.

[SB-SIX]

Cool!
In the mean time you could just create a copy of the track, bounce and then alt-a to disable the instrument (doesn't eat cpu this way)

[pboy]

Cool!
In the mean time you could just create a copy of the track, bounce and then alt-a to disable the instrument (doesn't eat cpu this way)

Thank you. Great advice!

[xbitz]

Bitwig only bounces-out the instrument related things (things in instrument containers, intruments+their post fx chains) but not the fx ones

- so create a group track put those instrument(s) + fxs which ones eat too much CPU into an instrument container and all the other things after the container (into an fx container for ex.)
- create some MIDI tracks inside the group track, route(MIDI) them to the group one
- put some MIDI clips into the grouped track(s)


--
if need some more CPU simply drop the MIDI clip to the group track then disable the clip (no needs double MIDI source, just need a clip with the same length as the original one) then bounce it out then stop the MIDI source = done, the fx(s) are still reachable but the instrument (with the CPU heavy fx) can be disabled

(this way is very good for creating risers, downers too ofc. and better than freezing (u can still reach the side-chaining, automations for ex.) )

[pboy]

xbitz, that's some valuable advice! *Thanks!

[Regnas]

Right!
I tried Live last week and that thing is a major CPU hog, I uninstalled it immediately....
I don't know how people are using it, I'm astonished.....

[pekbro]

Actually live reports CPU usage different than most DAWS. The indicator reports the CPU use necessary to calculate the audio without dropouts, due to lives focus on well... live stuff.

Most DAWS just report raw usage. E.g. Live is going to show higher CPU than most, when it's not really the case. Their goal is different. Because it's made for live play.

Or something to that effect anyway.
AFAIK.

[Hez]

TBH I missed the freeze function at first but Bitwig has encouraged me to be a lot more confident with bouncing stuff out and just going with it, and this improved my workflow/general production quality by a noticeable amount.

[pboy]

Actually live reports CPU usage different than most DAWS.

Right. But my finding was based on what I'm hearing. The same project in Live starts crackling a lot earlier than in Bitwig. So I can finish up a track in Bitwig with all software instruments running live, while I have to start juggling with freezing tracks earlier in Live.

TBH I missed the freeze function at first but Bitwig has encouraged me to be a lot more confident with bouncing stuff out and just going with it, and this improved my workflow/general production quality by a noticeable amount.

True! I'm doing a lot of bouncing on my Macbook Pro, since the lappy can't handle too large projects. A workflow I got into from using Logic. Bitwig 2.0 will be a lot better in this regard, with the new audio clip cross-fading function. To compare, my Win7 box is so powerful that I don't need to bounce stuff, for CPU saving reasons. But it's cool to bounce stuff to audio for cutting snippets here and there to reverse, or cross-fade with an extremely time-stretched copy of itself... or pitch shifted two octaves down. Or whatever you can trash. I guess all these fun techniques will be easier to use in BWS 2.0 (thnx to x-fading).

[larsomat]

found that Live isn't really as CPU efficient as Bitwig.

I love Bitwig. It's my main DAW. But for me Logic and Live are more CPU efficient than Bitwig...

[humanbeingbeing]

Live is far more CPU efficient than Bitwig for me... Bitwig usually craps out after 6 or so big synth VSTs. Cumulatively bad, Live handles scale better for me on my i7... I've seen similar performance on several studio machines. Kontakt performance is dependent on disk streaming, so drop outs don't manifest the same, you can't judge the CPU utilization with your ears.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Live does have one of the better sample rate conversion algos, maybe thats why it uses more CPU

http://src.infinitewave.ca/

[Regnas]

For the people saying that Live is CPU efficient, just fire up Live and Bitwig (or any other DAW) at same time, both with empty project, and then open the task manager and check the CPU usage of both....

Cheers...

[humanbeingbeing]

For the people saying that Live is CPU efficient, just fire up Live and Bitwig (or any other DAW) at same time, both with empty project, and then open the task manager and check the CPU usage of both....

Cheers...

Not a valid experiment. The initial overhead is not an indicator of cpu efficiency. I will try some experiments on the latest Bitwig this wkd if I get some free time, ill post the results here.. curious about the newer versions myself.

There will be different results in different contexts, under load and whilst idling, cpu monitors on the apps online tell part of the story, there will be different results for low latency and high audio quality. You have to do things that would tax the cpu like a bunch of processor intensive vsts at low latency.

[pekbro]

Bitwig also has two seperate processes.
A fair comparison would need to be worked out no?