Bitwig VS Ableton

[moss]

Am sure ableton is more reliable !

Absolutely not. Never had any serious crash with Bitwig, quite the opposite with Ableton.

[Phil B]

Am sure ableton is more reliable !

Absolutely not. Never had any serious crash with Bitwig, quite the opposite with Ableton.

Same here, unfortunately

[pdxindy]

Am sure ableton is more reliable !

Absolutely not. Never had any serious crash with Bitwig, quite the opposite with Ableton.

Same here... Bitwig is far more stable than Live was. Bitwig is the most stable DAW I have ever used.

[apoclypse]

Am sure ableton is more reliable !

Absolutely not. Never had any serious crash with Bitwig, quite the opposite with Ableton.

Same here... Bitwig is far more stable than Live was. Bitwig is the most stable DAW I have ever used.

Just because the whole application doesn't crash doesn't mean it's stable in my book. I've had issues where the audio engine crashes and refuses to reload no matter what I do. So it's a pick your poison thing for me. Either the whole app crashes and you have to restart the thing, or parts of the app crashes and you still have to restart the thing. I appreciate that Bitwig at least lets me save before I have to restart the app, but most apps have autosave/backup anyway. That's not to say Ableton is more stable than Bitwig. It's pretty crashy for me especially in Rosetta mode on my Mac.

[pdxindy]

Am sure ableton is more reliable !

Absolutely not. Never had any serious crash with Bitwig, quite the opposite with Ableton.

Same here... Bitwig is far more stable than Live was. Bitwig is the most stable DAW I have ever used.

Just because the whole application doesn't crash doesn't mean it's stable in my book. I've had issues where the audio engine crashes and refuses to reload no matter what I do. So it's a pick your poison thing for me. Either the whole app crashes and you have to restart the thing, or parts of the app crashes and you still have to restart the thing. I appreciate that Bitwig at least lets me save before I have to restart the app, but most apps have autosave/backup anyway. That's not to say Ableton is more stable than Bitwig. It's pretty crashy for me especially in Rosetta mode on my Mac.

Seems different people have different experiences. For me, the audio engine rarely ever crashes. And maybe twice in 3 years I have had to restart the app. Bitwig has been by far the most stable DAW I've ever used. Sometimes I go a week or more before even saving a new project cause I forget a crash is even possible. Still not a good practice, but I have never lost work even once. The stability of Bitwig is one of my favorite features!

[EnGee]

Live 11, latest, seems stable for me on both Windows 11 and Ventura 13.1.
But I use a limited number of plugins and devices, so no heavy use.
I had crashes before though! For differentsoftware amd hardwareproblems. But it seems they are becoming less and less with every update and with me limiting myself more

[kmonkey]

In my case, Live is perfectly always stable as long as I don't use M4L coming from 3rd parties.

Bitwig was always super reliable for me but they don't have M4L to worry about and I jumped on Bitwig only a few months ago. However, I am returning to Live. There was nothing wrong with Bitwig, a unique music-making platform but some design choices I couldn't get around with (just my hard personality - the app is amazing).

I'll keep Bitwig and be subscribed anyway.

[PieBerger]

Am sure ableton is more reliable !

Absolutely not. Never had any serious crash with Bitwig, quite the opposite with Ableton.

I lost more work in the first few weeks of Live 11's initial release than the nearly two nears I've been using Bitwig. More specifically, I haven't lost any work at all in Bitwig, not a scrap. Plugins crash occasionally and I've had a few other audio engine crashes, but only a handful of full program crashes and never any loss as a result. Most of the more serious crashes occurred when using Beta releases, stable releases are just that in my experience.

[Tj Shredder]

That's not to say Ableton is more stable than Bitwig. It's pretty crashy for me especially in Rosetta mode on my Mac.

Why on hell would you open Bitwig in Rosetta mode? Bitwig native opens any intel plugin without problem. It doesn‘t make sense at all… plugins can crash but that isn‘t Bitwig…

[machinesworking]

Am sure ableton is more reliable !

Absolutely not. Never had any serious crash with Bitwig, quite the opposite with Ableton.

I lost more work in the first few weeks of Live 11's initial release than the nearly two nears I've been using Bitwig. More specifically, I haven't lost any work at all in Bitwig, not a scrap. Plugins crash occasionally and I've had a few other audio engine crashes, but only a handful of full program crashes and never any loss as a result. Most of the more serious crashes occurred when using Beta releases, stable releases are just that in my experience.

I'm always shocked by this, Live has always been good about asking if I want to recover my work, DP11 even more so. Bitwig as far as crashes and bugs is definitely the most stable. The only hard restart I've had to do was a hanging plug in with a frozen pop up window. Mostly plug ins have crashed, with a few crashed projects, but the DAW itself has never crashed barring that hang.

But yeah, Live is the most likely to have issues with unsaved work, DP, Reaper etc. all have auto saves, and Bitwig is fairly bullet proof.

[PieBerger]

Am sure ableton is more reliable !

Absolutely not. Never had any serious crash with Bitwig, quite the opposite with Ableton.

I lost more work in the first few weeks of Live 11's initial release than the nearly two nears I've been using Bitwig. More specifically, I haven't lost any work at all in Bitwig, not a scrap. Plugins crash occasionally and I've had a few other audio engine crashes, but only a handful of full program crashes and never any loss as a result. Most of the more serious crashes occurred when using Beta releases, stable releases are just that in my experience.

I'm always shocked by this, Live has always been good about asking if I want to recover my work, DP11 even more so. Bitwig as far as crashes and bugs is definitely the most stable. The only hard restart I've had to do was a hanging plug in with a frozen pop up window. Mostly plug ins have crashed, with a few crashed projects, but the DAW itself has never crashed barring that hang.

But yeah, Live is the most likely to have issues with unsaved work, DP, Reaper etc. all have auto saves, and Bitwig is fairly bullet proof.

I was shocked too. I used beta versions of Live 10 for its entire 3/4 year life cycle and didn't lose a single thing, but for whatever reason the crash recovery protocol of earlier releases of the "stable" versions of Live 11 just didn't kick in for me multiple times over and I lost work as a result. There were other things upsetting me about Live as well, but losing work was the final straw that finally pushed me over to Bitwig. It worked out well in the end, because I prefer Bitwig, but I'm keeping my Live license for collab and legacy work and so that I have a backup; being reliant on a single DAW/company is never a good thing!

[jonljacobi]

I prefer Live, but I must say that Bitwig hasn't crashed on me since it was in beta. There were some massive performance issues at the start, but most of these have been alleviated. And on macOS, you can always close all the animated stuff and get much better performance. I always felt there should be a "no animations" option.

[xbitz]

dunno why I get such videos from y2 but share it because of his stability problem of AL

[liquidsound]

dunno why I get such videos from y2 but share it because of his stability problem of AL

The crucial point with any DAW is to have “user stability” which is obviously an Ableton established factor.
Of course, the “exceptions” are there for the established “to the rule” law.

I’m one of those lately.
I don’t have any stability issues but some BW strengths are becoming a main issue when using Ableton!

[no_barcode]

I really like Bitwig's grid and the way its built-in effects and instruments have the same underlying base features and UI. Like I can set any Bitwig instrument to whatever polyphony I want even if it blows up my CPU, and the settings are always in the same place. What I don't like about Bitwig is the stuff I do like about Live. Things like: in Live I can undo/redo without stopping playback and/or record, and the implementation of how actions are recorded into the undo buffer are perfect for me. I like the way Live records and plays back realtime automation without messing with it and how it records/stops recording MIDI CC data while in cycle/loop recording. Bitwig applies way too much smoothing to recorded MIDI CC data. It was so bad, I thought it was a bug and sent an e-mail saying that the timing was off on recorded MIDI CC data and they replied telling me to watch to see if it's actually the smoothing algorithm. When I watched the data being recorded, I could clearly see that everything was fine until it looped around at which point it automatically applies smoothing that cannot be shutoff or adjusted in Bitwig's settings. (in my case it sometimes shifts the peak values of my played filter sweeps back in time by around 1/32 notes just by "rounding" the peaks so much)

Live's issues for me are that all their devices are completely different. Like some of them are literally from other companies and have completely different behaviors within the synthesis engines, etc. Why does Wavetable only have 8 voices of polyphony? Is it 1988? Don't even get me started on the hot mess that is Max4Live. I wish I could remove that piece of garbage and everything that comes with it. I also don't like how uncustomizable the left panel has become. What the hell is that Collections thing with the colored blocks? Does anyone actually use that? Why does it not hide itself when I hide all the blocks? Ugh. That whole area is just a mess and it's mostly Push's fault. I wish Push would push itself off a cliff.

But I still love Ableton and I use Live on a daily basis. I've purchased a couple of upgrades to Bitwig, but stopped once I encountered the MIDI CC smoothing issue. That was a dealbreaker for me. (loved it otherwise, though!)