Bitwig VS Ableton

[jonljacobi]

I have an extremely hard time going back to Live after using Bitwig for over a year. All of the little qol benefits and features of Bitwig make it feel like going back in time to use Live.

It’s the QOL features Bitwig has never had that keep me using Live.

[Trancit]

I have an extremely hard time going back to Live after using Bitwig for over a year. All of the little qol benefits and features of Bitwig make it feel like going back in time to use Live.

It’s the QOL features Bitwig has never had that keep me using Live.

Like...?
Just curious which Live features are the most important to you...

[VariKusBrainZ]

Live literally feels like it was designed for the old and infirm

[kmonkey]

I have an extremely hard time going back to Live after using Bitwig for over a year. All of the little qol benefits and features of Bitwig make it feel like going back in time to use Live.

It’s the QOL features Bitwig has never had that keep me using Live.

Like...?
Just curious which Live features are the most important to you...

I can name a few. Bitwig to this date does NOT have a dedicated step sequencer. Yes, you can make your own in Bitwig modular environment but it's more than cumbersome. Or use Arp and MultiNote but this is all crap. You have some abstract tools and little units that could mimic a sort of step sequencer but literally simple step sequencer unit does not exist.

Then there's their take on Velocity. There's no Velocity value like range from ' unit 127 just like in 99.99.99.99 other DAW apps out there. Instead, you have 0-100%. I am not here to argue which one is better. I want to point out that I wasn't aware that these things are going to be missed or that I will need them but it turned out that in my specific silly mind these tools or differenced are important or they turned out to be important. For me.

Then there's copy-paste. I needed to create a thread just in order to understand copy-paste (viewtopic.php?t=585391) because there's no visual indicator and it's jerky (again to me).

I own Bitwig but I will put it in the second-hand Marketplace at KVR with an upgrade plan active until Feb, 29th, 2024. Selling it because there are tiny really tiny things that simply block my mind.

Let me be clear there are things Bitwig does vastly better than Live such as hardware midi clock and sync. Touch screen support. Grouping and remote controls are done way better. Saving clips with previews. Better browser. I also love that whatever I record in from my hardware is always perfectly synced and tied in session view. And so on and so forth.

A week ago I returned to Live and in four days I made more music than in the last two months in Bitwig. Bitwig is a truly marvelous piece of software but sometimes for someone coming from Live it might not work despite the fact user is trying hard.

I really tried to work with it but it didn't work for me. I only realized it after months of use. I redeemed the ask.video Bitwig tutorials and studied it but simply couldn't click with it in the long run. Someone else will find a better use for it because clearly, people love this software - for a reason.

[pdxindy]

I can name a few. Bitwig to this date does NOT have a dedicated step sequencer. Yes, you can make your own in Bitwig modular environment but it's more than cumbersome. Or use Arp and MultiNote but this is all crap. You have some abstract tools and little units that could mimic a sort of step sequencer but literally simple step sequencer unit does not exist.

There are plenty of sequencer plugins... one can get 1 or 2 and use them.

[Trancit]

Thx for the insight!

I am asking because I feel a bit like you (not with Live as an alternative, but...)...

I really want to like Bitwig and I try over and over again but I always struggle with the little details...
For me the most nasty ones are:
- disabling time stretch on an audio clip doesn´t put the clip to it´s original length... you have to do everything manually...
- no ARA2... (same with Live)
- very very very click intense with bringing in the inspector in focus when wanting to use features only available there...
- no scale highlighting/snap to scale
- no rex support
- no time stretch in sampler
- no groove quantize
- zooming in on the keyboard in the PR editor is ugly and confusing as hell with these huge key labeling
- with a bit bigger sample library I cannot work with the side browser for the first few minutes after opening Bitwig because of endless reindexing and Bitwigs behaviour to always jump back to the last selected sample...
- not a biggie but at least what I don´t like at all... Bitwig clutters my disks with hundred thousands of tiny little files
- a new 1 bar midi clip gets always shown with 1/32nd resolution means I constantly have to hit the shortcut after opening a new clip to bring it to 16ths
- super incorrect onset recognition... this is mostly so far off that I don´t get it what this algo is actually thinking... means spending endless time to manually correct everything... kudos to Steinberg! They nailed it with transient recognition in Cubase and Groove Agent... the best I´ve seen so far...
- no retrospective record
- no plugin management...
- too much being forced into the modular approach... 99% of native devices are so underpowered on their own that you have to go into combining/grouping/etc... to get a good tone out of them... Live´s devices are mostly legend directly out of the box!
- too much: no we don´t offer this but you can build your own workaround with the Grid...
Not my cup of tea...
...

Just a short list but mostly it drives me really crazy...
There are some very very good bits... i.e. their collection of note devices which are imho really outstanding... their way of doing bounce in place, of course their modulation, i.e. the Instrument/FX Selectors, additive automation and their one track can do multiple things...
but when it comes to use Bitwig outside of their highlights it´s getting very cumbersome and workaround intense...
This is that always makes me waver back and forth...
Bitwigs strength are so exclusive to it that it constantly calls my attention while the all day situation always puts me off...

[kmonkey]

There are plenty of sequencer plugins... one can get 1 or 2 and use them.

Bravo Genius. Have you read to what I was replying

A person asked what a user can find missing in Bitwig when compared to Ableton Live. He didn't ask can we find available 3rd party sequencer plugins.

[Trancit]

There he got a point...

[Trancit]

Live literally feels like it was designed for the old and infirm

I am old... but not infirm... does this matter??

[Bartone]

- no ARA2... (same with Live)
- no retrospective record

Agree… Especially retrospective record would be so good… and ARA2!

[xbitz]

Yeh, I have been back to using Live quite a bit for the midi comping

I could not give up Bitwig's modulation system... and especially now with CLAP and PolyMod on the u-he synths. That has become the indispensable feature for me!

Me neither, just use both depending what I am doing...

Both for me is Bitwig and Logic... Logic does a lot of stuff that neither Bitwig or Live can do.

just an fyi, Logic has started to support Ableton Link from 10.7.5 https://support.apple.com/hu-hu/guide/l ... roup%20jam.

so their clip launcher can be used synced


even supports start/stop synchronization which is still missing from Bitwig

[EnGee]

I have just upgraded from Live Standard to Suite and day after day it is becoming clear that Live is my main DAW (Logic comes second).

It is just easy to use with more than enough tools. It also runs great on both Windows and Mac (better on Mac OS actually). The updates are great and I'm happy overall with what I get

[apoclypse]

You can definitely tell Bitwig was built by tech minded developers who maybe didn't take into account more non-techie users. Just the way they designed some of their devices for example versus other DAWs out there sometimes comes off as overly complex and technical. I do agree that they require way too much tinkering to get good results. Live's devices don't require much they just sound great out of the box imo. If tinkering is your thing Bitwig is great otherwise, I mostly avoid Bitwig's effects and instruments.

That being said there are things I don't necessarily agree with. The browser imo is just great. My biggest issue with is that for some reason if you have more than 99 items it just shows 99+ versus the actual item count.

I don't feel like you need a plugin manager in Bitwig. I just create smart collections. I have one for each developer, and then I also have categories. Most developers categories their plugins already so all of my 3rd party compressors already show up in that smart collection. It's just too slick imo and wish my other DAWs did that.

[Trancit]

...
I don't feel like you need a plugin manager in Bitwig. I just create smart collections. I have one for each developer, and then I also have categories. Most developers categories their plugins already so all of my 3rd party compressors already show up in that smart collection. It's just too slick imo and wish my other DAWs did that.

That´s different for me...too much clicking around...
Clicking here for selecting the smart collection move completely over clicking there perhaps some filters and clicking there... clicking clicking clicking inbetween the millions of kilometers you have to move your mouse from one place to the other...
It´s doable... but enjoyable is something else...

I rather like a good sorted list inside user creatable folders with minimum mouse movement...
Many plugins (hello Waves, Hornet and many others) are so silly named that you get eye cancer from looking at the plugin list...so some option for renaming is a must even if I have to edit some xml files like in Cubase or Studio One...
In Bitwig you can just create presets for them with your own name but then you have to do it for all ...even for the stock plugins to be able to work properly with them...

[pdxindy]

That´s different for me...too much clicking around...
Clicking here for selecting the smart collection move completely over clicking there perhaps some filters and clicking there... clicking clicking clicking inbetween the millions of kilometers you have to move your mouse from one place to the other...
It´s doable... but enjoyable is something else...

The pop-up browser is awesome... I hardly do any clicking at all and frequently don't even touch the mouse to add devices. You can save which collection opens when it pops up and there are different saved defaults for when it is for FX, or Note FX or Instruments. I put any one of my most used plugins on a track with a few key strokes on the keyboard in like 3 seconds. I don't even need to see the screen at all. It's the fastest, most efficient system I have used in any DAW for adding devices to a track.