Muting a track does not mute its MIDI output

[Coockie1176ln]

About mute or solo does not mute midi on muted tracks, i understand why it behaves like that. If you have note mod on any track it would then stop using notes from that track also i believe. however we live in a digital era and everything is 1 or 0 in codes. i believe it would not be to hard to code what is on note mod or sent to other tracks that still plays and are under solo or not muted still would get midi and midi would be muted on its track that it will play from only. A bit extra coding prehaps. but that would be ultimate to have like that.

[klavierr]

It's probably been said multiple times already, but this looks like a deliberate choice. Not all DAWs do that though, IIRC Reaper's mute buttons also mute midi output, which can get annoying when working with sidechained audio. Or not. It depends on what you need to do while the track is muted.

I personally don't mind, but thats also because I haven't yet run into an issue with that. If i need the midi output gone as well as the audio, I either deactivate the vst producing the midi, or I deactivate the compressor if it's sidechained. Might seem too "workflow breaking" for some.

Having that as an option to enable/disable wouldn't hurt.

[effluxion]

This is useless. If I run hardware synths with lots of channels or separate synths, It's essential to have muting and solo function in the sequencer. This also effects multi MIDI channel VSTs like samplers. No other DAW that I ever used works like this. The only DAW that is usable in a professional MIDI studio is still Logic. This is ridiculous.

[kukident-youth]

@ effluxion :
I agree (mostly) - But have a look here: viewtopic.php?f=259&t=561076

[antic604]

This is useless. If I run hardware synths with lots of channels or separate synths, It's essential to have muting and solo function in the sequencer. This also effects multi MIDI channel VSTs like samplers. No other DAW that I ever used works like this. The only DAW that is usable in a professional MIDI studio is still Logic. This is ridiculous.

It's not "useless".

Bitwig expects you - and gives you tools - to return the audio of the hardware back to the same track where MIDI is, so muting the track mutes the sound.

If you're keen on outputting the audio through other track, you can always select that MIDI track's header and Alt+A it to disable it. If you think that's too much work, then you can always put a Note Filter device on the track, set its range to not pass any notes through and map its on/off state to a keyboard key or MIDI button. If hardware synths is big part of your workflow, you can set it up in a template, so that it's always there, under the same controls.

It might not be perfect, but there are acceptable ways around the "problem".

[bronswerk]

Well, it shouldn't be that way. This is a big miss in my book. Give at least an option to treat a midi track only as midi (as in hardware synth with mixer) or midi with audio return (as in audio back with audio interface) with respect to the correct mute/solo behaviour. This way everybody is happy.

[effluxion]

This is useless. If I run hardware synths with lots of channels or separate synths, It's essential to have muting and solo function in the sequencer. This also effects multi MIDI channel VSTs like samplers. No other DAW that I ever used works like this. The only DAW that is usable in a professional MIDI studio is still Logic. This is ridiculous.

It's not "useless".

Bitwig expects you - and gives you tools - to return the audio of the hardware back to the same track where MIDI is, so muting the track mutes the sound.

If you're keen on outputting the audio through other track, you can always select that MIDI track's header and Alt+A it to disable it. If you think that's too much work, then you can always put a Note Filter device on the track, set its range to not pass any notes through and map its on/off state to a keyboard key or MIDI button. If hardware synths is big part of your workflow, you can set it up in a template, so that it's always there, under the same controls.

It might not be perfect, but there are acceptable ways around the "problem".

This is not acceptable compared to other DAWs. All these methods means that you can't simply click on a button in the arrange window to mute or solo a track. You can't feasibly solo by disabling all the other tracks in the way you suggest. That would be ludicrous. You would also have to have a mixer open to mute or solo channels if you route it in such a way so you can do that and what if you are running many channels on a hardware synth where each channel is not coming in as separate audio which is a likely scenario. It effects multi channel VSTs. People suggest running separate instances so that you mute or solo the audio on each track but this is insane. You might have 16 instruments running and the whole point of the multi channel instrument is that you can open a single instance and see all your instruments. Muting and Soloing is a constant thing you do if you are composing in MIDI. When I tested the Bitwig demo I never even thought to test this because I assumed mute and solo would mute and solo MIDI. It doesn't matter what the concept of the audio or MIDI signal chain is. Other DAWs allow this because it's a common sense workflow.

If there are problems with the mute and solo button muting the MIDI in some cicumstances then we need an option to allow it to do this.

[effluxion]

Do any of the people on this forum actually use Bitwig? I've been using it for a few weeks and found several major issues. The destructive shuffle in quantise is broken. Certain shuffle settings cause a stacatto type truncated effect on the shuffled notes. You have to close and reopen the project to fix it.

Is Bitwig the new Reaper where they keep adding new features wiithout fixing the problems? Reaper has always been useless for hardware MIDI because of stuck notes. They never fixed it.

[Tj Shredder]

Most use it but most likely completely different than you do. Did you report your findings to support? Thats the only way to get it fixed...

[effluxion]

Most use it but most likely completely different than you do. Did you report your findings to support? Thats the only way to get it fixed...

Yes. I am communicating with them and quantise also a serious problem. The problem also effects make legato. This is what I'm talking about. How can you be seriously using the app and not come across these problems? However, I get that if you never use MIDI and are using the app for just audio you will not come across these issues. This is why I ditched using Reaper. Major issues and hardly anything on the forums about it and developers just ignore. However, Bitwig has got back to me so that's a bonus but I tend to be pretty negative about DAWs in general. They are the most big ridden programs out of any of the areas I work. If just one DAW became much more bug free that alone would be a selling point.

[effluxion]

The work around for mult channel VSTs in connection with the thread topic is to not send the tracks to the plugin as channels but just send to the track then have the clips on each track set to the correct MIDI channel. Solo and mute then both work. It just means that if you want to move clips to different tracks you need to reset their channel. This does not solve the problem with hardware instruments though.

[Tj Shredder]

Most use it but most likely completely different than you do. Did you report your findings to support? Thats the only way to get it fixed...

How can you be seriously using the app and not come across these problems?

Maybe I have a different mind set. If I come across a problem I usually find a workaround. I produced with 8-track tape machines which I had to synchronize to my Max patch (Midi only) in the last millennium...
If I want to mute Midi I just do it. I am all and 100% for the proposed enhancements of Bitwig. When coming from a different tool you expect a workflow you know. With Bitwig often enough I found that I had to learn a different workflow, and mostly it was more efficient than the old one.
There are a few things I can’t work around. The missing vertical zoom or logarithmic waveform for example. For complex patching I have Max/MSP, for audio editing I can switch to Reaper (to avoid ProTools)... Sometimes different tasks need different tools...

[ReleaseCandidate]

Most use it but most likely completely different than you do. Did you report your findings to support? Thats the only way to get it fixed...

How can you be seriously using the app and not come across these problems?

Maybe I have a different mind set. If I come across a problem I usually find a workaround.

The problem is the time spent finding workarounds vs. doing something productive. But of course finding workaround can be both fun and a creative challenge.
But as a software engineer my tolerance for software (and hardware) causing problems certainly is lower than people that don't háve to deal with them regularly.

[Tj Shredder]

The time I “waste” here at KVR outweighs the time I need to find workarounds by magnitudes. In the end its not waisted time, its time you switch into a different mind set, which helps to reflect on the essence of your work. You tend to focus more on what is important and not what is easy to achieve...

[pdxindy]

The problem is the time spent finding workarounds vs. doing something productive.

I used to run an organic farm and we had dozens of volunteers coming out to learn and contribute. If I had a delivery of 20 cubic yards of compost, the dump truck would drop it at an open spot by the street. Then there was the work of manually distributing it to all the beds. That is done with shovels and wheelbarrows and buckets.

If there were some volunteers, some would inevitably be standing around discussing how the task could be sped up, be more 'efficient' (less labor) and so on. If I didn't step in and say something, they would end up spending more time discussion how to make it 'easier' than just doing it.

I've seen this in many different venues... people spending more time trying to get out of doing work, than the time it takes to do the work.

One result when someone is trying to avoid work... is that it is less likely to simply enjoy being alive and doing things. The problem, if there is one, is this oppositional mindset that imagines perfect scenarios where a goal is accomplished without work and then which resents having to work (so called 'workarounds') to accomplish a goal.