Upgrade to Live 9 (10) Suite for £191 OR get Bitwig for £265 (on sale)?

[Kinh]

I think people make the mistake of overlooking what M4l can do. It's often been perceived as a separate thing. But with the integration Ableton is now superior at a modular level imo, the faster workflow in arrangement and audio editing is the other reason.
Given m4l was unstable in 9 and thus unexplored I would probably have agreed with you. But making this a part of Live pretty much changes everything. The possibilities are endless now.
a lot of what bitwig offers that Live doesn't are really of no great benefit like vst3 for example. Think about it, if they were then Ableton (and others) would've spent the time incorporating them. Ableton know what their users want and they just simply have no use for those things.

So yeah, when I say 'features' I mean things that actually matter.

M4L is still a separate program in Live 10... it's a bit more automated, but still separate. They may well have made it more stable, but given the years of instability, I would certainly want to test it well, before declaring it stable just because of some market-speak. Likewise, I want to hear more feedback on if and how much the excessive cpu has been reduced.

But even if M4L is truly stable and finally uses significantly less CPU, it cannot account for various annoying limitations in the core Live application.

For example, take a midi clip with a bunch of notes. How would you add some random variation to velocity in Live? If you want it in the clip that means moving the velocity note by note... ugh! In Bitwig it is easy to tweak velocity including adding randomization, spreading out the range and moving all up or down via the histogram... no need to even open the clip editor.

Individual devices in Live do not have macro knobs. If you want to add some macros, you have to wrap the device in a rack. If you have a rack inside a rack, the macros of the parent rack, cannot control parameters of devices in the sub-rack. You gotta map the parameters to macros in the sub rack, then map the sub rack to the parent rack macros. Then if you want to see what is mapped to what, you have to select the individual rack and then click the map button. You cannot just see all those mappings at once (forget about also seeing all modulations).

This is all absurdly easier in Bitwig. Any device can have macros, and those macros can control anything nested... so you can have a rack inside a rack and the top level macros (as many as you want) can control any devices even inside the sub rack. And to see all the macros assignments just select the top level device and all the macros and modulations will show in the inspector... and you can add and delete assignments and range right there.

Get used to working with this stuff (macros, modulation, device control) in Bitwig and it's 10x better for workflow. Then start using the Remote Controls in Bitwig... so sweet! Plus when working with Bitwig instruments, modulators can be per voice (try doing that in M4L)

And then you have Hybrid Tracks. Useful to have both midi and audio on the same track. That allows Bounce in Place which is great. You have a midi track with a bunch of clips. With Bounce in Place you can convert a single clip to audio right on the track.

Then there is ability to see both Clip Launcher and Arrange at the same time... ability to edit audio within a clip, better clip follow actions, multiple projects open at once, custom key commands, being able to nest devices like putting a reverb inside the feedback path of the delay (try doing that in Live) and much more.

And of course, for me, the big one... MPE support. Even if you are not using an MPE controller, it is still useful. You can open a midi clip in the editor and draw modulation per note. So you have a note, and you want the filter cutoff to open a bit during that note it is part of the note... move that note and the modulation moves with it. Have fun doing that in Live. Plus you can also edit notes and controller info at the same time. You don't have to switch back and forth.

There is also now a multi-touch virtual MPE keyboard built-in so even people without an MPE controller can make some use of that functionality.

So yeah, I agree that VST3 is not all that useful at this point in time... but there is a whole lot that is!

I understand these differences are important to you because you're accustomed to a particulay way but to most producers these things aren't really much use. ...Macros, mpr, Multi edit (though live now does multi note, not sure about bitwig) and hybrid note ( whats the point of this when you can render in 2 clicks?) These things arent ground breaking and i doubt people really use them on a regular basis. Bitwig had to implement them so they could market their product a certain way to give it an edge over competitors but that doesnt mean anything other than they're smart.

[pdxindy]

I understand these differences are important to you because you're accustomed to a particulay way but to most producers these things aren't really much use. ...Macros, mpr, Multi edit (though live now does multi note, not sure about bitwig) and hybrid note ( whats the point of this when you can render in 2 clicks?) These things arent ground breaking and i doubt people really use them on a regular basis. Bitwig had to implement them so they could market their product a certain way to give it an edge over competitors but that doesnt mean anything other than they're smart.

Actually, I was accustomed to a different way, then I tried some of these tools and they were distinctly better.

No, you cannot do the same as Bounce in Place with 2 clicks in Live.

And with the lack of MPE support in Live, well that is a showstopper. Using the Linnstrument is the best experience I have ever had playing synths. It is so expressive and organic sounding. And Live does not support it. And yes, MPE is groundbreaking.