Bitwig Thoughts & Issues After Two Years (Long Post)

[Randall P. McMurphy]

I’ve been a happy user of Bitwig for about two years now - and have seen the program grow enormously since I started to use it. I love the sound design capabilities. However, there are a ton of issues that still persist that haven’t been resolved yet. I tried Ableton again recently, and realized that not all daws have these issues... they are specific to Bitwig.

I’ve summarized them here in the hope that it will lead to some changes. I’ll forward a copy to the developers too. I’m on a mac, so I can’t speak for how pc users are affected by these. Most of them boil down to an unnecessary amount of key presses for simple tasks, that are expedited when working in Ableton. For me, the less I need to use the mouse and can rely on the keyboard / shortcuts, the happier I am (and faster I can work).


Loop Brace Use:

- When you consolidate a looping clip it does not automatically loop on the brace you had it set to before consolidating. The new clip loses the loop information entirely, so you need to activate the loop again, and specify how long you want the loop to be. This doesn’t seem logical, if you didn’t want the clip to loop you wouldn’t have looped it before the consolidation, and vice versa. Loads of extra keypress and mousing here, while Ableton works as expected (loop is off after consolidating, however loop length is preserved so you just need to activate it).

- Clicking on the actual loop brace does not select everything inside of it. The annoying use case here is the inability to quickly copy / duplicate entire sections of the arrangement. You are forced into dragging (the mouse again) over each track you want to include in the selection. Not only does this use the mouse when it shouldn’t, but it’s really tedious on a massive project.

- Similar issues within clips themselves. Its really fast to double the content of a clip in Ableton by clicking on the loop brace then duplicating. You can do this in Bitwig with the double content shortcut, but you need to mouse (again) all the way over to the actual clip itself in the track section, then click it, then use the shortcut, then mouse back to the notes you are working on. Because the loop brace is right above the notes its way faster to do this in Ableton.

- When using the pointer tool it can be a bit touchy trying to drag to select for a loop, I wish the snapping was more obvious. Often I think I’ve made a two bar loop and then notice its drifting out of time because its .2 off. The time selection tool works the way I’d like it to, but now you’ve introduced another extra keypress into your workflow. Selection in Ableton works as I would expect, its very fluid and clear what is going on, and I don’t make the same mistakes with looping sections.


Keyboard Use:

- Once you have selected a note to duplicate, you cannot duplicate multiple times by just holding down cmd + d, you need to push the key for each duplication. Ableton you can just hold the keys down and duplicate multiple times.

- Same issues with cmd + z and undo.

- When working in a clip in Ableton, without using the mouse, its pretty logical to move the cursor around, make a selection, hit enter to grab the notes in the selection, and then move them where you want them. Bitwig forces you into a paging system where you need to hold alt down and then use the arrow keys to scroll through until you find the note you want. This is really awkward if you have many notes in a clip.

- Similar behaviour in the arranger, its really simple in Ableton to move clips around using the arrow keys. In Bitwig you are forced to use the mouse to drag clips to where you want them in the timeline. This is a huge buzzkill for me.

- Lack of increment / decrement of values using the up and down arrow keys. Another instance where you are forced into using the mouse to change a value. Its much more direct and accurate to just press a key. I really miss this behaviour in Bitwig compared to Ableton. Inexplicably it does work with automation point values but not across the whole program where it counts.

- There are simple dialogs that should be able to be executed with the keyboard alone, but need mousing in Bitwig. A great example is closing a project, I need to physically move over and click yes or no, instead of just using the arrow keys + enter. Another would be the recent projects / my projects / my templates section. Or saving presets when hit with the yes / no screen. I know you can assign shortcuts to ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and I have, but you should be able to do this with the arrow keys.


Warping / Recording Issues

- The auto fade behaviour is really odd. You are able to have auto fades created in the settings dialog for any edits you make, but all new recordings you need to go and add this manually. I don’t know why the option to make all new clips have a fade is not available in the settings menu. Ableton’s ‘create fades on clip edges’ solves this perfectly.

- You are unable to select ‘Raw’ as a default stretch mode on record/bounce in the settings. I brought this up with the developers before and the answer was that repitch was neutral at its original tempo. The problem is, it's not. If you take the same clip and duplicate it and set one to raw and one to repitch, they do not null. What is this about? If it was truly neutral it would null properly. In Ableton you can take the same clip, one warped to repitch and one unwarped and they null. It’s concerning, and makes me think that all my recorded audio isn’t truly neutral but is being processed in some way.

Shortcut Issues

- Finally the shortcut page is a mess. In its default state there are keypresses that show up on many shortcuts, the obvious ones being the arrow keys. However, if you change the shortcut to add your own, you are stuck if you don’t like what you’ve chosen because there is now no way to get back to the original setting, since you can’t assign a key to more than one shortcut. And since there is no undo function here you need to enter all of your shortcuts from scratch (I had to do this last night because I was experimenting with the browser shortcuts). Additionally many of the shortcuts seem to have no effect (remove/restore stop button, follow playhead) and some either have no effect or are totally unclear (duplicate time / alternate duplicate).

- You are still unable to assign a shortcut to the global quantize settings (you can do this in Ableton). Thus necessitating more mousing to accomplish a task.

I appreciate the work the developers are doing to add new features but I really think this stuff needs to be cleaned up. The basic workflow matters much more than the addition of one or two modulators. I hit a bit of a wall of frustration and actually seriously considered moving back to Ableton. I doubt I will though, since I really like what Bitwig has let me create in terms of sound design. I’d love to know your thoughts on these issues.

[antic604]

- Clicking on the actual loop brace does not select everything inside of it. The annoying use case here is the inability to quickly copy / duplicate entire sections of the arrangement. You are forced into dragging (the mouse again) over each track you want to include in the selection. Not only does this use the mouse when it shouldn’t, but it’s really tedious on a massive project.

Select time on the beat ruler with Time Selection tool (key '2' by default).

[antic604]

- When using the pointer tool it can be a bit touchy trying to drag to select for a loop, I wish the snapping was more obvious. Often I think I’ve made a two bar loop and then notice its drifting out of time because its .2 off.

Are you sure your snap settings are correct? If they're resulting in .2 of whatever off, then it's pretty suspicious. I have it set to dynamic + events, but adjust + or - when I need to.

[Randall P. McMurphy]

- Clicking on the actual loop brace does not select everything inside of it. The annoying use case here is the inability to quickly copy / duplicate entire sections of the arrangement. You are forced into dragging (the mouse again) over each track you want to include in the selection. Not only does this use the mouse when it shouldn’t, but it’s really tedious on a massive project.

Select time on the beat ruler with Time Selection tool (key '2' by default).

Nice, thanks!! One problem solved. Arguably not as elegant as just doubling the loop brace since you need to navigate to the beat ruler before making the selection but still, better than dragging down through all clips.

Also the behaviour when duplicating is different depending on whether you use the pointer or the time selection - pointer will duplicate but leave other notes intact while time selection duplicates the negative space and notes. Maybe obvious to some but I didn't realize this. Glad I made this post, I've already learned something useful.

And yeah, snap settings are all set to on. I think the issue is that with the time selection tool it visibly snaps over once its within a certain distance and you get that tall white line. With the pointer tool you get the white line if you are have notes within the selection but if you don't its just an empty box that doesn't snap as obviously. It still snaps though, thats the thing, just not always consistently.

[antic604]

Also the behaviour when duplicating is different depending on whether you use the pointer or the time selection - pointer will duplicate but leave other notes intact while time selection duplicates the negative space and notes. Maybe obvious to some but I didn't realize this. Glad I made this post, I've already learned something useful.

Yes. Pointer Tool is for selecting events, i.e. clips, Time Selection Tool is for selecting ...time, which includes space between clips:

[Tj Shredder]

Interesting post! Now I understand why most (not at all all) music produced in Live sounds so much the same. (Which I find a bit boring tbh.) If you speed up a workflow for repetitive music that much, there is a danger to get lazy in composing. In general I would welcome workflow enhancements and probably would do so in this case as well, but I would not give it a high priority.
You can still create what you have in mind. I miss much more thinks like a MSEG (there is no usable workaround) or either a vertical zoom or a logarithmic view for waveforms (essential for exact editing of dynamic material). And there are some obvious objects missing in the Grid (if you don‘t create your own sounds its not important for you of course...)
Personal priorities are personal, and as long we communicate them to the devs, things will get better, we just don‘t know when, or what the priorities of the devs are...

[antic604]

- The auto fade behaviour is really odd. You are able to have auto fades created in the settings dialog for any edits you make, but all new recordings you need to go and add this manually. I don’t know why the option to make all new clips have a fade is not available in the settings menu. Ableton’s ‘create fades on clip edges’ solves this perfectly.

As I started to force myself to work more with audio recently, I was wondering about this. Isn't the logic behind this such that:

• when you record from somewhere, you want to preserve what you've actually recorded? In most cases when you record something it starts either from silence (that you'd then edit out) or the source has immediate transient, that you want to keep because that is how the instrument sounds, right?
• with edits, the risk of cutting something not at zero or at its natural phase is much greater, hence the automatic fades are only applied there?

But sure, there should be a choice for the user.

- You are unable to select ‘Raw’ as a default stretch mode on record/bounce in the settings. I brought this up with the developers before and the answer was that repitch was neutral at its original tempo. The problem is, it's not. If you take the same clip and duplicate it and set one to raw and one to repitch, they do not null. What is this about? If it was truly neutral it would null properly. In Ableton you can take the same clip, one warped to repitch and one unwarped and they null. It’s concerning, and makes me think that all my recorded audio isn’t truly neutral but is being processed in some way.

The real issue should be can you hear - or feel - the difference? What if the difference is between say a 16bit / 44.1kHz source and 32 bit floating point / 48kHz internal representation of the sample? What if the sample in Stretch / Stretch HD sounds different, but better?

[ollie.rollover]

Great post.

[pdxindy]

Interesting post! Now I understand why most (not at all all) music produced in Live sounds so much the same. (Which I find a bit boring tbh.) If you speed up a workflow for repetitive music that much, there is a danger to get lazy in composing. In general I would welcome workflow enhancements and probably would do so in this case as well, but I would not give it a high priority.
You can still create what you have in mind. I miss much more thinks like a MSEG (there is no usable workaround) or either a vertical zoom or a logarithmic view for waveforms (essential for exact editing of dynamic material). And there are some obvious objects missing in the Grid (if you don‘t create your own sounds its not important for you of course...)
Personal priorities are personal, and as long we communicate them to the devs, things will get better, we just don‘t know when, or what the priorities of the devs are...

For sure I also welcome workflow enhancements... but at least as much I want new features that allow me to do stuff previous not practical or even possible. The MPE capable Bitwig Arp opened new doors for example. An MSEG as you mention.

Some people want more workflow stuff, but I'm excited by the improvements to the Grid and the new Wavetable module. I would love to see a Modal Resonator in the Grid.

It'll all get there eventually... in the meanwhile I get to practice patience

[wavedigit]

You can do this in Bitwig with the double content shortcut, but you need to mouse (again) all the way over to the actual clip itself in the track section, then click it, then use the shortcut, then mouse back to the notes you are working on.

Can't you assign "Duplicate content" to a keybinding? I don't use a mouse at all when duplicating (clip) content.

[KTlin]

When you consolidate a looping clip it does not automatically loop on the brace you had it set to before consolidating. The new clip loses the loop information entirely, so you need to activate the loop again, and specify how long you want the loop to be. This doesn’t seem logical, if you didn’t want the clip to loop you wouldn’t have looped it before the consolidation, and vice versa. Loads of extra keypress and mousing here, while Ableton works as expected (loop is off after consolidating, however loop length is preserved so you just need to activate it).

YES! This is extremely irritating! And one year later, and now at v.4, this is still not fixed. I really can't understand why they've chosen to implement the consolidate function in such a way. It doesn't make any sense.

[antic604]

YES! This is extremely irritating! And one year later, and now at v.4, this is still not fixed. I really can't understand why they've chosen to implement the consolidate function in such a way. It doesn't make any sense.

That's because it is not a bug, but design decision. If you've already looped a clip and consolidated it and want to loop it again, why would you want to loop it the same way it was looped before?

[dupont]

When I compare Bitwig vs Ableton :

Bitwig :
pros :
linux
audio container, very handy when I prepare a live gig with lot of stems
hybrid tracks
drag&drop midi clip to audio track render that ​clip
hybrid tracks
split view arrange/session
cons : (reported to bitwig support one week ago, no reply ...) in a live gig situation, what I see on bitwig screen don't scroll what I see on the APC 40 mkII when I use the APC arrow key, I must use the mouse or laptop arrows

Ableton :
pros :
follow action clips
native plugins
cons :
expensive
no linux
too much marketing, everytime i see a vids about live, there is a cute girl, this make me feel live is for pussies or retarded teenager who have a boost of testosterone

But I'm currently working on my next techno minimal live set up, in Bitwig...

[KTlin]

If you've already looped a clip and consolidated it and want to loop it again, why would you want to loop it the same way it was looped before?

Why? Here's why, I'll give you just an example: a lot of the times I would record a very long piano improvisation (on the midi keyboard) and after listening to it I decide I want to keep only the section from, let's say, bar 17.2 to bar 25.2 as a loop and get rid of everything else so I have a "clean" 8 bars loop. But because Bitwig doesn't have a simple crop function like Ableton does (I really don't understand why they omitted such a simple and useful feature) I have to consolidate that clip and, as OP said, after consolidating the clip it loses all the loop information, so I have to re-activate the loop and drag the loop handles for its entire duration (8 bars).

[KTlin]

Ableton :
pros :
follow action clips

Bitwig also has follow actions for clips and although I never use them I heard they are even better than Ableton's.