Ableton Suite or Bitwig (advice for someone coming from Renoise)?

[SLiC]

The problem with comparing Live and Bitwig is that it is a moving target! Bitwig has developed (and is developing) faster than Live, but who knows what Live may have just around the corner! Live updates (the beta process) is seriously slow though...11.2 is taking forever...

[Echoes in the Attic]

For me the biggest advantage of Live right now is the Mx for Live Tools and CLyphX scripting that lets you do project wide macro mapping, snapshots etc. Bitwig currently doesn't have very good ways of doing this and has no snapshot capability at all. It's actually a huge thing and something Live could do about a decade ago with those Richie Hawtin M4L scripts.

[pierb]

I've used Live for many years and Bitwig for about 2 years. It really depends on what you want to do. Both have pros and cons.

Bitwig is superior in terms of sound design features and generative music.

Live is generally more polished and has some workflow features which you might value more (midi comp, scales, etc). It also includes M4L.

Both are great for workflows based on loops, simple midi and audio clips, drum samples, etc, or genres where you spend most of your time doing sound design.

Both are bad for projects with long audio recordings of multiple instruments (eg: a band) and media composing stuff (eg: tv, film, orchestral, etc). They lack support for multitrack audio editing, surround/Atmos, articulation manager, video support (Live has basic video support), track filtering for complex projects, etc.

In general I'd say you get a lot more bang for your buck with Bitwig, if you do enjoy its workflow.

[Trensharo]

My biggest gripe with Ableton is the lack of latency compensation in the gui. If you have any plugins inserted that add latency (or latency from your soundcard) the playhead doesn't line up with the audio. It's the only DAW that does this, and it's fundamentally broken. Something to be aware of before you drop $750 on it.

Live Suite is a $420 upgrade off Live Lite.

[Trensharo]

I tried Bitwig and hated the colors. Also the plug-in scanner kept crashing and freezing. I prefer a cleaner UI with a more I here try organized User Experience.

Otherwise, I'd rather use Cubase and not wait for features to be implemented as I go along.

[ItsPhil]

I have used many daws and finally settled with Ableton it’s what I feel most comfortable with. Ableton I think offers 30 or 90 days trial not sure. Ableton is good for building complex racks and manipulating audio. Never used BitWig but I have noticed in YouTube videos that sound designers prefer this. The short Answer is to think about your work flow and see what DAW suits your needs

[BazJacuzzi]

My biggest gripe with Ableton is the lack of latency compensation in the gui. If you have any plugins inserted that add latency (or latency from your soundcard) the playhead doesn't line up with the audio. It's the only DAW that does this, and it's fundamentally broken. Something to be aware of before you drop $750 on it.

Live Suite is a $420 upgrade off Live Lite.

As above but before you drop $420 on it

[Trensharo]

My biggest gripe with Ableton is the lack of latency compensation in the gui. If you have any plugins inserted that add latency (or latency from your soundcard) the playhead doesn't line up with the audio. It's the only DAW that does this, and it's fundamentally broken. Something to be aware of before you drop $750 on it.

Live Suite is a $420 upgrade off Live Lite.

As above but before you drop $420 on it

Ran a trial of both and dropped the $420.

[BazJacuzzi]

My biggest gripe with Ableton is the lack of latency compensation in the gui. If you have any plugins inserted that add latency (or latency from your soundcard) the playhead doesn't line up with the audio. It's the only DAW that does this, and it's fundamentally broken. Something to be aware of before you drop $750 on it.

Live Suite is a $420 upgrade off Live Lite.

As above but before you drop $420 on it

Ran a trial of both and dropped the $420.

Congrats, it's a great DAW, and you can run redux in it for a portion of renoise greatness too, if you miss some of the renoise flow.

Edit: just realized I was posting this as though you were asking the original question. Anyway, we're spoiled when it comes to music production software. Almost no bad choices really.

[VSKZ]

I tested bitwig and liked Ableton more because the whole interface is just cleaner and not so gimmicky.

[Scoox]

Bitwig is plagued with countless small, but niggling, workflow issues. The last update took care of some of those but many remain unaddressed, and every update seems to be more new modulators while old problems are not fixed.

Ableton is more mature and polished. One really nice thing about Ableton is that it's very keyboard friendly i.e. you can do a lot of editing without touching the mouse.

Ableton's development pace, however, appears much slower than Bitwig's, though to their credit they seem to make sure new features are ready for prime time before releasing them to the masses. For example, Bitwig added comping but it only works for audio, not MIDI, a big WTF in my book.

Ableton also has its share of annoying niggling issues, just fewer than Bitwig.

Overall Bitwig seems to have more potential than Ableton. Modulators and CLAP support IMO are the most innovative features of any DAW in a long time. Repro-5 only has two modulators but Bitwig can modulate everything, so things like that are not a problem in Bitwig. In Ableton you can use M4L to do many things that, really, should be core functionality of the DAW. Seems like a bloated piece of software though, just opening the M4L editor to an empty patch takes takes 35 seconds on my computer (it's quick once it's open though).

[fireapplered]

I've gone Ableton to Bitwig. Back to Ableton. And now I have both. All bases covered with both. It's the ultimate pairing. Highly recomm!

[Scoox]

I've gone Ableton to Bitwig. Back to Ableton. And now I have both. All bases covered with both. It's the ultimate pairing. Highly recomm!

Using two DAWs to cover all bases is like kids going back and forth between divorced parents houses—all bases are indeed covered, but it's not ideal.

[Fornicras]

I've gone Ableton to Bitwig. Back to Ableton. And now I have both. All bases covered with both. It's the ultimate pairing. Highly recomm!

Using two DAWs to cover all bases is like kids going back and forth between divorced parents houses—all bases are indeed covered, but it's not ideal.

I think the same. I tried using FL and S1 together, making the instrumentals on FL and then recording/mixing on S1 but after a few weeks, I saw that keeping backups for both and maintaining files for both DAWs are a pain in the ass. Also bad if you have to go back to production to change a little something when you are in mix/recording phase.

[xbitz]

^^^ Khs Snap Heap, Multipass can be enough if you don't want to build synths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdCytW_u-mI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2yS1llr6ZQ

so depending on your chosen genre, Cubase/S1 so hybrid(composing/post-processing related) DAWs can be enough