What is the future of Bitwig?

[j wazza]

BTW, I mentioned Polarity because if Bitwig did in fact intend for their DAW to be used a certain way he would be someone I'd say is using as intended, if that were true. Just saying, people can learn a lot from him in that regard and beyond. I personally don't work that way.

polarity is great, makes loads of good free presets to take advantage of the complex bits of the grid without having to get too technical

I didn't bring him up as some means to put aside anyone's personal subjective concerns.

yeah i havent been trying to put aside anyones concerns either, think some people are taking people's points that way when its not intended but i think a few people from both sides of the debate have been doing that, some people explicitly while assuming that other people are implicitly dismissing concerns

whatever bitwig does in the future im excited to see it, its a great daw, easy to use and with tons of stuff you dont get in any other daw that i know of, its great already and its easy to forget its only a few years old, as it gets older theres a lot more potential for development both for composition and experimental stuff

im sure that theyll add granular at some point and an additive oscillator in the grid, i see those as a given at some point, and given bitwigs nature i wouldnt be surprised to see some physical modelling stuff (like a modal filter similar to prism) and resynthesis, all of that would be great

but they seem to be focusing on midi based stuff at the moment so i could see them adding to the piano roll etc very soon and that would be great too

and with the new fx they seem to be switching their focus from quantity of features to quality, which im also glad to see

as long as they keep adding significant improvements ill keep paying to upgrade, when bitwig 4 first came out i was disappointed as it didnt really add anything exciting or that i thought id use, i got it when they added the new note fx like strum and humanise which i use all the time now

[Dionysos]

Re one-click track freezing:

Good point, thanks. Regarding devices that modulate another, I guess the same thing issue arises when you deactivate that device, right? It breaks whatever scenario you've set up, of course,

Sure, but there's a difference between allowing a user to perform a destructive action via a series of deliberate steps (responsibility is on the user), vs. offering a one-click function that people would expect to be non-destructive, which then turns out to break things. Here responsibility is perceived to be on Bitwig's side.

So the whole thing may be a case of "we can't implement it right, so we won't do it at all". I don't know if that's the case, I'm just speculating, of course there'd always be the option to pop up an alert warning the user that what they're about to do will break existing routing if it exists. It's just not very elegant.

I was also wondering if the existing in-place bounce doesn't already break inter-track note routing. It probably does. In which case, just ignore everything I said about the matter.

[j wazza]

I was also wondering if the existing in-place bounce doesn't already break inter-track note routing. It probably does. In which case, just ignore everything I said about the matter.

if it deactivates the existing track then id assume it would stop any routings coming from there, but maybe bounce in place means staying on the same track? i dont use it just bounce

maybe they could add an option to automatically reroute the bounced/frozen audio to where you had the track routed, or even automatically take bounces from the different points in the chain that you were routing your audio from, route it to the same places, and let you undo it later if you want

whats the difference between bounce in place and freeze?

[duanosforde]

A similar issue is something that MuLab seem to have sorted, and Reaper as well, I think, and that's to provide the means to preview MIDI files with a sound device of one's choice. It's so useless having a preview that auditions a drum MIDI in GM Piano.

With all the 4.0+ focus on MIDI I was hoping they would address this ^^^ and MIDI comping as well. Glad I am not the only one.

[foosnark]

Another piece of anecdata:

I moved from FL Studio to Maschine 2.0 to Bitwig. I cannot even contemplate switching to any other existing DAW at this point, Bitwig is the one for me.

(I thought FL Studio was bloated and awkward, though it does have some good tools that... are mostly not relevant to me anymore anyway. I thought Maschine was lean and mean, though it certainly suits a particular type of composition and control that, again, is not particularly relevant to the music I'm making now.)

All of the frustrations I have with Bitwig are minor ones and have some kind of workaround.

To me it seems like most complaints about Bitwig fall under these categories:

- Why doesn't it work like [other DAW]?
- Piano roll (usually an example of the above)
- MSEG? (that might be just another example of the first thing, I don't know)

Well... I don't want it to work like other DAWs. I don't use the piano roll ever anymore -- I improvise, and use hardware sequencers for simple loops as well as a little modular generative/algorithmic sequencing. And I don't care about MSEG.


My ideal "future Bitwig" would host devices (including VST plugins) inside Grid. That way I could work like I do now, or each channel would consist of just one Grid, or I'd simply have one channel with a Grid in it and do everything right there. But not having this is not much of an obstacle, to be honest.

Don't get me wrong, I am not at all opposed to a feature update that enhances the piano roll tools or adds an MSEG modulator or whatever else. I recognize that not every update is for me, and in fact, more than half the updates since I've bought Bitwig have had either zero features and fixes that I care about or just some minimal updates I've used rarely -- and I don't complain about that because I feel like things are already in great shape.

I used to work for a game studio that had an online fantasy MMORPG. EVERY TIME we announced an update to one class's spells/abilities, inevitably there was a set of posts from people who played other classes complaining that we were ignoring them and we'd soon go under because we didn't know what our customers wanted. 26 years later, that game is still running.

[duanosforde]

what do you mean editing the piano roll takes forever? laying out notes in bitwig is easy, i found ableton quite clunky and unintuitive but bitwig i dont see a problem with, i came from fl studio and find bitwig equally easy to use

I used FL Studio since version 4 and Bitwig's piano roll is worse than that. Problem comes when projects get bigger and when editing hundreds of notes.

Here's the list of problems only in piano roll
- Unable to adjust tiny notes
- Time range handle clashes with resize handle
- Sometimes clicking on a clip jumps to place where there is no notes.
- Unable to distinguish bar lines and beat lines
- Unable to set default note length
- Lack of tools: strum, groove, wrap (oh, and did you know Legato is affected by unselected notes)
- Unable to slice multiple notes
- Difficult to distinguish clip borders in piano roll. Markers are not enough.
- Unable to adjust velocities maintaining relative ratios.
- Unable to zoom out vertically further than current limit
- Unable to lay notes that spans two different clips in track mode. (No auto merging)
- Multitrack editing is unintuitive and buggy.
list goes on ...

"Takes forever" is kind of exaggerated, but you get what I mean.

I just tried to slice multiple notes (never needed to yet) and you're right. I can't find a way to do it. If I'm using such a function to double notes, for example, I'd set length, copy/paste right quick but I'm sure I'm missing other reasons to slice midi notes. Just hasn't come up. Slicing multiple midi notes should be possible, agreed.

There is a way, I use it all the time. You need the time selection tool, and instead of selecting a range in the piano roll, where you see the blue highlight (i.e., between 1.1.3 and 1.1.4) just select/mouse over the area you want to split (so the line looks solid white) and hit ctrl-e on PC (not sure about mac). Should work.

[duanosforde]

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[duanosforde]

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[lokanchung]

There is a way, I use it all the time. You need the time selection tool, and instead of selecting a range in the piano roll, where you see the blue highlight (i.e., between 1.1.3 and 1.1.4) just select/mouse over the area you want to split (so the line looks solid white) and hit ctrl-e on PC (not sure about mac). Should work.

What about if I want to slice them except one bass note? Here we have another missing feature:
gluing notes. Well, at this point I don't want to talk more of missing this or missing that.

Bitwig has the most number of bug reports I wrote in my entire life, and most of them was about editing things: piano roll, automation, clip editing...

I never had this amount of bug in basic things while using other DAWs.

[pierb]

My ideal "future Bitwig" would host devices (including VST plugins) inside Grid. That way I could work like I do now, or each channel would consist of just one Grid, or I'd simply have one channel with a Grid in it and do everything right there. But not having this is not much of an obstacle, to be honest.

Bitwig excels as a modular / sound design playground, so to speak. There is really no better tool out there for this kind of stuff.

If I could load Bitwig's bottom device chain inside any other DAW, something like Bitwig Rack, I'd be happy. Like some sort of Reaktor or VCV Rack with midi effects, plugin host, etc.

People that are happy with the current state of the Bitwig DAW (everything outside the device chain) could keep using that. But others would still be able to use the best aspect (IMO) of Bitwig in other DAWs that are objectively superior in many other areas.

And it would open up Bitwig to a huge market of users. The devs could keep improving the Bitwig DAW while having an extra revenue stream. Bitwig Rack could really become a Trojan horse and bring users into the Bitwig DAW a couple of years later.

I know this is most likely not going to happen. I'm also sure the hardcore Bitwig fans are probably getting their pitchforks at hearing of this heresy. But one can dream

[j wazza]

My ideal "future Bitwig" would host devices (including VST plugins) inside Grid. That way I could work like I do now, or each channel would consist of just one Grid, or I'd simply have one channel with a Grid in it and do everything right there. But not having this is not much of an obstacle, to be honest.

Bitwig excels as a modular / sound design playground, so to speak. There is really no better tool out there for this kind of stuff.

If I could load Bitwig's bottom device chain inside any other DAW, something like Bitwig Rack, I'd be happy. Like some sort of Reaktor or VCV Rack with midi effects, plugin host, etc.

I know this is most likely not going to happen. I'm also sure the hardcore Bitwig fans are probably getting their pitchforks at hearing of this heresy. But one can dream

i could see it happening at some point, and it would be cool, maybe a grid vst or just the whole of bitwig as a vst would be even better like fl studio, bitwig would definitely sell way more doing it this way

aside from loading vsts in the grid like vcv or vm, i think its more likely to get specific modules you can buy for the grid, both made by bitwig and by third parties, more like rack extensions or max for live stuff, it could take advantage of the grid more and would also mean bitwig gain financially more from selling modules

[pierb]

and would mean bitwig gain financially more from selling modules

Exactly. Like KiloHearts does with PhasePlant.

[j wazza]

A similar issue is something that MuLab seem to have sorted, and Reaper as well, I think, and that's to provide the means to preview MIDI files with a sound device of one's choice. It's so useless having a preview that auditions a drum MIDI in GM Piano.

With all the 4.0+ focus on MIDI I was hoping they would address this ^^^ and MIDI comping as well. Glad I am not the only one.

is mulab the closet thing to bitwig in that its a modular daw? i know live is similar too, but having a quick look at mulab i saw that it does audio rate modulation of anything which i dont think live does, i dont really know mulab though

[foosnark]

But others would still be able to use the best aspect (IMO) of Bitwig in other DAWs that are objectively superior in many other areas.

I don't think this is the sort of thing where one can claim "objective superiority" tbh. More of... a general but not universal consensus of subjective preference.

Anyway, I'm completely neutral on that idea. The device strip and grid are basically where I live anyway. The entire top chunk of the screen, I really only use to add more channels or begin audio recording. (Except when mastering, then I load an audio file up there and might navigate around it checking on things, and sometimes will add automation... which generally works fine IMHO.)

[pierb]

I don't think this is the sort of thing where one can claim "objective superiority" tbh. More of... a general but not universal consensus of subjective preference.

It's objective in the fact that there's stuff you can do in other DAWs that are not possible in Bitwig.

From features like multitrack elastic audio editing, managing articulations, Atmos, etc, to seemingly small workflow things like having configurable defaults in the piano roll that can have a big impact.