Why you left Bitwig?

[SLiC]

Does Bitwig not have comping for MIDI? Only audio?

Only Audio, and that's still in Beta for the new version 4 (which will probably be released in July)

[SLiC]

The glaring small aliased white fonts on the black pane backgrounds. ( even at standard 1080P ). Lack of functions relating to GUI colours. No thumbnail images. No scaling functions of GUI elements. No video support features.

[_leras]

There is a misunderstanding here:
- The normal Bounce method creates a new track and bounces the selected clip on there.
- Then there is "Bounce in place" which replaces the MIDI clip with its audio version. This is handy if you e.g. have a MIDI drum groove with several copies and now want to create a break in the n-th clip. Simply bounce it in place and edit the audio, which can happen on the same track.

I don't think you read my original post. Adding a new track = adding unnecessary clutter.

I think this totally depends on your workflow. I'm more than happy to bounce to a new audio track. I would normally then group it in with the midi part. then I'll start to mute audio parts I don't need.

I personally don't even mind that if I have a few different parts in one midi channel that I get multiple audio channels. It's very easy to move them all to one channel and remove the empty channels, but equally sometimes I may want different processing for each part so the extra channels can be useful.

So... yes... if you bounce a part from a VSTi midi to audio, you get a new track initially - but - it's very easy to delete a track in bitwig...

[antic604]

There is a misunderstanding here:
- The normal Bounce method creates a new track and bounces the selected clip on there.
- Then there is "Bounce in place" which replaces the MIDI clip with its audio version. This is handy if you e.g. have a MIDI drum groove with several copies and now want to create a break in the n-th clip. Simply bounce it in place and edit the audio, which can happen on the same track.

I don't think you read my original post. Adding a new track = adding unnecessary clutter.

I think this totally depends on your workflow. I'm more than happy to bounce to a new audio track. I would normally then group it in with the midi part. then I'll start to mute audio parts I don't need.

I personally don't even mind that if I have a few different parts in one midi channel that I get multiple audio channels. It's very easy to move them all to one channel and remove the empty channels, but equally sometimes I may want different processing for each part so the extra channels can be useful.

So... yes... if you bounce a part from a VSTi midi to audio, you get a new track initially - but - it's very easy to delete a track in bitwig...

The bigger question is how would someone completely new to music feel about those workflows, i.e. how much you were conditioned by previous DAWs that bounce goes to separate track or that multiple MIDI channels do? Maybe then you'd mind that?

I'm obviously not trying to say one workflow is good & the other is bad, because it's clearly very subjective. With my "OCD" I prefer to have as few tracks as possible so I'll go out of my way to 'compact' everything in layers, selectors & parallel chains, whereas some projects I've seen go >100 tracks and there's many tracks that have like a one-shot sample for the whole 8-minutes song, which I wouldn't be able to stand

The point I guess is that Bitwig gives you the tools for both workflows, but many - most? - DAWs don't, so doing simple mid/side or multi-band processing might require several tracks. My favourite example is how playing chords generated by Cthulhu with Serum and processed by Stutter Edit requires at least 4 tracks in most DAWs, e.g. in Live:
- (1) MIDI track for Cthulhu, sending chords to
- (2) Serum, sending audio to
- (3) Stutter Edit that's fed with MIDI control data from
- (4) separate MIDI track

That's just one track in Bitwig, because it doesn't care about number and order of note FX, instruments and audio FX, can contain 16 MIDI channels in single clip and process that data in separate, parallel 'streams' on a single track.

[xbitz]

^^^ FLS has the same issue even with Patcher, I'm using its racks similar fashion way as the racks work in Bitwig so in modulator(env controller)/MIDI generators(Nora)/MUX (instead of Patcher)/mixer separation otherways would be heavily PITA to manage it (after Bitwig )



so I've stolen the workflow of BWS

[Ranoka]

The thing that puts me off about Bitwig right now is the copy-protection that kicks you out of your current session to Demo mode - where you can't save. If their registration service goes down on their end/in the cloud.

That's one hidden feature I'm unhappy about!

[antic604]

The thing that puts me off about Bitwig right now is the copy-protection that kicks you out of your current session to Demo mode - where you can't save. If their registration service goes down on their end/in the cloud.

That's one hidden feature I'm unhappy about!

Yes, and it happened for the 1st time last night since Bitwig was released 6+ years ago.

Way to overreact

Also - and I'm not looking for an excuse for Bitwig, they should fix it! - why don't you save your project along the way? I've a habit of Ctrl+S every time I do some meaningful change. Bitwig keeps 10 last versions automatically, so you can always go back if the save wasn't necessary, e.g. you deleted something important and can't undo for some reason.

[Trancit]

The thing that puts me off about Bitwig right now is the copy-protection that kicks you out of your current session to Demo mode - where you can't save. If their registration service goes down on their end/in the cloud.

That's one hidden feature I'm unhappy about!

Really...?

That´s ridiculous honestely... copy protection is one thing but deleting your work with it is a super no-go!

[Ranoka]

The thing that puts me off about Bitwig right now is the copy-protection that kicks you out of your current session to Demo mode - where you can't save. If their registration service goes down on their end/in the cloud.

That's one hidden feature I'm unhappy about!

Really...?

That´s ridiculous honestely... copy protection is one thing but deleting your work with it is a super no-go!

It doesn't delete your work pre-se, but it does switch to Demo mode mid-session. And you can't save in Demo mode, so it means you can't save your current session if this happens. I'm hoping when I try Bitwig again later that I can either recover the session or my save/auto-save hasn't lost too much.

It's easy to victim blame and tell people it's their fault for not saving every 5 minutes - when you're in the flow it's easy to forget to save!

It's hard to defend how they've currently designed their licensing/copy-protection. I'm hoping they reflect on what's happened and make some changes to how Bitwig handles server outages. In the user's favour rather than treating everyone like they didn't pay for their licenses.

[antic604]

It's easy to victim blame and tell people it's their fault for not saving every 5 minutes - when you're in the flow it's easy to forget to save!

It's hard to defend how they've currently designed their licensing/copy-protection. I'm hoping they reflect on what's happened and make some changes to how Bitwig handles server outages. In the user's favour rather than treating everyone like they didn't pay for their licenses.

As I said, I'm not trying to defend Bitwig - this is an obvious design flaw and requires a fix ASAP.

But you also shouldn't rely on your software - any software, not just Bitwig - to hold your hand, save stuff and make backups. Making a habit of Ctrl+S everytime you do something meaningful is easy.

[PieBerger]

Making a habit of Ctrl+S everytime you do something meaningful is easy.

Easy to say when the main reason you use a DAW is to be able to write feature requests to the devs

[antic604]

Making a habit of Ctrl+S everytime you do something meaningful is easy.

Easy to say when the main reason you use a DAW is to be able to write feature requests to the devs

No. I built that habit long before I started using any DAWs. It just carried over. And actually many FRs or bug reports come with example projects, so I need to save them, too

[PieBerger]

Making a habit of Ctrl+S everytime you do something meaningful is easy.

Easy to say when the main reason you use a DAW is to be able to write feature requests to the devs

No. I built that habit long before I started using any DAWs. It just carried over. And actually many FRs or bug reports come with example projects, so I need to save them, too

I have good saving habits, but I'd be miffed if I lost even 5 minutes work after being kicked out of an active session, using software that I'm supposed to own and have unlimited access to. No amount of best practice at the user's end gets around this.

[antic604]

I have good saving habits, but I'd be miffed if I lost even 5 minutes work after being kicked out of an active session, using software that I'm supposed to own and have unlimited access to. No amount of best practice at the user's end gets around this.

As I said, I hope they'll fix it.

Meanwhile perhaps "off-line activation" (that's at the bottom of your account) can prevent this? Also, I really have to test this, because I've worked in Bitwig many times without internet access (business trips, holidays, etc.) and this never happened to me.

[PieBerger]

I have good saving habits, but I'd be miffed if I lost even 5 minutes work after being kicked out of an active session, using software that I'm supposed to own and have unlimited access to. No amount of best practice at the user's end gets around this.

As I said, I hope they'll fix it.

Meanwhile perhaps "off-line activation" (that's at the bottom of your account) can prevent this? Also, I really have to test this, because I've worked in Bitwig many times without internet access (business trips, holidays, etc.) and this never happened to me.

I'd have to double check the thread/s again to be sure, but I'm fairly certain some users in the FB group were still affected, even though they authorised Bitwig offline (but had an active internet connection at the time of the outage).