4.3.8 is up

[] Peter:H []

I'm not sure the niche is that small, Bitwig can cover most of what Ableton Live can do (and obviously add some unique tricks on top) and Live seems rather popular...

Live was going 20 years before it added Ghost clips and still has nothing like the unified mod system (and don't even mention in clip editing) so for me (and I still use Live) Bitwig is ahead in the game in most respects other than hardware integration and having a massive user base!

Niche is not defined by what BW can do in terms of features, but I think a.) the target group of the company and b.) the peer group where it is recognized as a thing and where it motivates users to switch from their DAW to BW or stay on BW even if other DAWS provide xyz... anyway, lot's of speculation on my side and a little frustration that there's many of the later features that were not relevant to me ... but hey, I'm just doing music for a hobby.

[SLiC]

I'm not sure the niche is that small, Bitwig can cover most of what Ableton Live can do (and obviously add some unique tricks on top) and Live seems rather popular...

Live was going 20 years before it added Ghost clips and still has nothing like the unified mod system (and don't even mention in clip editing) so for me (and I still use Live) Bitwig is ahead in the game in most respects other than hardware integration and having a massive user base!

Niche is not defined by what BW can do in terms of features, but I think a.) the target group of the company and b.) the peer group where it is recognized as a thing and where it motivates users to switch from their DAW to BW or stay on BW even if other DAWS provide xyz... anyway, lot's of speculation on my side and a little frustration that there's many of the later features that were not relevant to me ... but hey, I'm just doing music for a hobby.

I am also just a hobbyist but my studio has a lot of hardware/modular etc and maybe I am the target audience for Bitwig! I think a lot of people making music on KVR are making electronic/synth music ITB, and Bitwig seem ideal for that to me. Now they have comping I would also maybe drop in a guitar track, but its audio editing is very limited (no pitch correction) so it wouldn't be my first choice for real instruments (guitar/vocal etc)

Adding the MESG or Ghost clips will be great but won't change the target audience. Adding more piano role, midi/audio editing may attract more mainstream composters, but they would have to add a lot to get half as good as Studio One or Cubase, so they may be better staying in their niche!

[pdxindy]

Live was going 20 years before it added Ghost clips

When did Live add Ghost clips? I never heard about that being added.

[pdxindy]

First one is I think the biggest problem.

You are projecting your own version of an imaginary perfection onto the world and then describing it as a problem when existence doesn't fit your projection.

From my point of view, there is no problem and Bitwig is developing nicely.

[pdxindy]

Will there ever be more midi/note editor tools? Will there ever be a MSEG, will there ever be Gost Clips? Is catching up with other DAWs in some areas a goal or a none-goal? Will the focus be completely on live (see EQ+ design decision for the delay compensation)? I really don't know the answer to any of these ...

Yes, there will be more midi/note editor tools
Yes, there will be an MSEG
Ghost Clips is uncertain
Yes, catching up to other DAW's in certain areas is a goal.
No, the focus is not completely on live.

There ya go

[pdxindy]

Now they have comping I would also maybe drop in a guitar track, but its audio editing is very limited (no pitch correction) so it wouldn't be my first choice for real instruments (guitar/vocal etc)

Adding the MESG or Ghost clips will be great but won't change the target audience. Adding more piano role, midi/audio editing may attract more mainstream composters, but they would have to add a lot to get half as good as Studio One or Cubase, so they may be better staying in their niche!

I like Bitwig's clip based approach to comping. It is also what allows Bitwig to do comping in the Clip Launcher.

With track based comping, if I'm recording to a vocal track and in one section and I record 8 takes before I feel satisfied, then every clip on the track has 8 lanes. In Bitwig with clip based comping, I can record 8 takes on one clip and the clip next to it can have just 3. I find it visually clean and conceptually clear for moving/saving clips.

Hopefully the Bitwig devs don't spend as much time analyzing stuff from a marketing perspective as users do. IMO, the more effective outcomes arrive from focusing on Bitwig (and not so much on other DAWs) and what interests them and how to make Bitwig work well inside itself... like the comping.

[trollology]

First one is I think the biggest problem.

You are projecting your own version of an imaginary perfection onto the world and then describing it as a problem when existence doesn't fit your projection.

From my point of view, there is no problem and Bitwig is developing nicely.

Could be. My projection feels real though: my project files have multiple problems all over the place because they were saved with with the newest version always.

[jarenas]

So I would separate these two things. Just because it feels "niche" (I don't agree with this, I think every modern DAW supporting VST is equally capable), it doesn't follow that it should release updates so quickly and untested. Imagine having your project destroyed after a big update, not very fun...

Creating for a niche can be a succesfull marketing strategy. I don't know then whether I am in that niche group. May be I missed that, but theres neither a release plan, nor a "vision statement" from which I can read where the journey is heading too like "Bitwig is the leading DAW for Live Artists that want to use their analog Hardware". Will there ever be more midi/note editor tools? Will there ever be a MSEG, will there ever be Gost Clips? Is catching up with other DAWs in some areas a goal or a none-goal? Will the focus be completely on live (see EQ+ design decision for the delay compensation)? I really don't know the answer to any of these ...
And then I tried to achive simple things with Grid and failed: Can you decompose a 4 note chord into it's notes? I failed. I was only able to get "lowest" and "highest". I wasn't able to do it, because though we are in digital area, grid tries to be so close to analogue modular as possible. That can be a marketing strategy as well if your primary use case is "live shows with bitwig and analog hardware"... but then I'm definitely not in the niche target group... Questions over questions.

I feel you... the Grid was my main motivation for trying to switch from Live + Max, I was hoping to replace both most of the time with a unique focused and very well integrated environment as The Grid looked on first look (specifically on those previews some years ago)...and to my surprise, I always feel boxed and crashing against walls and strange limitations by design like the one you expose, which are completely trivial to approach in Max... and don't get me started on recording and re-playing audio on The Grid vs Max... hell, you can even create custom vectorial UIs on Max for your devices... I would really enjoy a roadmap for the Grid, and sadly (because I love the product and effort Bitwig is putting on it) won't commit more time to Bitwig until I get a roadmap, or the product is exactly where I want...

I understand the decision of not putting out more information on future features, etc.. but in the current DAW market environment, not being open about future features and plans looks to me like a luxury and disadvantage when you are a new company with a new product on the market, I don't think the quality of the product is enough to sell it.

[trollology]

- Plenty of active customers who proactively report all problems they find.
- Bitwig quickly fixes all reported problems ASAP.

First one is I think the biggest problem. Not many customers are there for the amount of bugs needed to be found and reported, so it is natural to never find and fix some things, and wait a long time for some bugs to be fixed.
Second one is where I think the team is strong, because they have a well designed system under the hood. The moment they know about problems, they are very competent in fixing those.

hm, that's quite a bold claim. What is your source here?

My premise: Ableton Live has a very large piece of the DAW market, because it suppors live improvisation and arrangement at the same time, has own hardware, first mover advantage in non-linear workflow design, tremendous amount of tutorials both free and non-free, marketing for newbies (Got two Ableton Intros that I didn't ask for while buying MIDI controllers, none from Bitwig).

Bitwig must be compared to Live for obvious reasons (main vision is the same, employees come from Ableton, product wants to steal Ableton market share by "doing things the right way").
With this comparison, we can check public information like youtube, KVR, reddit, basically scraping the web. I didn't do this, but throughout the years, I've been following forums, youtube for Ableton and Bitwig as well. Based on this, the market for Bitwig is much less than for Ableton. So naturally, Ableton live, even though it is a legacy code base, has more information about their software's stability. One can only prioritize the bug fixes that are known.
So let's be very generous, imagine Bitwig has half the size of market share as Ableton's. Let us agree though that this claim is ridiculous, if this were true, BItwig as a company could hire more devs and marketing specialists and just suck away the talent from Ableton. But we know that they are the size of a startup, maybe 20-30 employees.

Based on this ridiculous, very generous assumption, Bitwig would have only half of Ableton's userbase to report problems. To compensate for this, the software needs to have 50% less amount of bugs to compete in the stability department.

Hope I could answer where I'm coming from.

[pdxindy]

I understand the decision of not putting out more information on future features, etc.. but in the current DAW market environment, not being open about future features and plans looks to me like a luxury and disadvantage when you are a new company with a new product on the market, I don't think the quality of the product is enough to sell it.

Of course you can think as you wish. However:

There's a steady stream of new Bitwig users showing up in forums.
A few months ago, there was a poll thread here on KVR for which DAW has the best GUI. Bitwig had the most votes. 3 years ago it might not even have made it into the poll as an option.
There are more and more Bitwig tutorials showing up on youtube. A few years ago that were not many.
There are an increasing number of youtube reviews/tutorials for various plugins where Bitwig is the DAW used to host them.

So I'd say the evidence indicates Bitwig is doing fairly well.

[pdxindy]

So naturally, Ableton live, even though it is a legacy code base, has more information about their software's stability.

I can only speak as one user, but before I fully switched from Live, it still crashed regularly and the threat of a crash was constantly in my mind.

My experience with Bitwig is that it is the most stable DAW I have ever used. I regularly start a new project as an idea which working on another project (because it's easy to have multiple projects open). Then I may work on that new project on and off for a week or more and never even think about saving it because I've forgotten that a full crash is even possible.

Stability is one of the most important features for me.

[Tj Shredder]

And then I tried to achive simple things with Grid and failed: Can you decompose a 4 note chord into it's notes? I failed. I was only able to get "lowest" and "highest". I wasn't able to do it, because though we are in digital area, grid tries to be so close to analogue modular as possible. That can be a marketing strategy as well if your primary use case is "live shows with bitwig and analog hardware"... but then I'm definitely not in the niche target group... Questions over questions.

I agree, there are a lot of basics missing in the Grid compared to Max or Pd (Plug Data might help out there). But I could fairy easy get a chord split:

Split Chord.bwpreset.zip

I bet its easier for you in LUA...

[Tj Shredder]

Based on this ridiculous, very generous assumption, Bitwig would have only half of Ableton's userbase to report problems. To compensate for this, the software needs to have 50% less amount of bugs to compete in the stability department.

There are some wrong assumptions. The size of the user base isn't at all proportional to the amount of useful bug reports. To the contrary. Have you ever tried to report a bug to really huge companies like Korg??? Its a nightmare. They simply assume the problem is the user and not in the product. And statistically they are correct. The bigger the user base the bigger the amount of newbies who have zero experience and no idea about the product... Too big companies need several levels of support to get the useful reports to the places where they can be fixed. And the first level support often doesn't know much either, it has to be cheap...
The solution is a hand picked beta crowd, which is likely smaller than the one for Bitwig... (And its your own free choice if you want to participate or not...)
And as had been pointed out already, Bitwig has 50% less amount of bugs... Though not all bugs are the same. One crucial (design) bug of Live is, that a crashing plugin crashes also Live... The support usually assumes the problem is the plugin, the user assumes the problem is Live... I would call those scenarios loose/loose...

I should start to port my M4L devices to PlugData in case the Grid isn't ideal. If Plug Data would support CLAP, the world would be even more perfect.
My main reason though, why I prefer Bitwig by magnitudes, is its simply inspiring. Live never got me hooked, not even before Bitwig arrived...

[Tj Shredder]

double...

[SLiC]

Live was going 20 years before it added Ghost clips

When did Live add Ghost clips? I never heard about that being added.

Your right, I was thinking of Scene Follow Actions which was also always requested, never really understood the need for 'Ghost Clips' (I probably have it wrong again) but it seems from the descriptions I have read it's something you can easily do with copy and paste?

For what it's worth I think the update from Live 10 to Live 11 was one of the best (biggest) updates I have experienced, they threw the kitchen sink at that one and I have not had a single crash (or in Studio One for that matter) ....all DAWS seem pretty stable now.