Bitwig VS Ableton

[elnn]

I wonder if there's anything about Bitwig that is not its sound devices that doesn't suck. Its editing, its exporting, its automation, gosh..
The only thing I can think of is that multiple audio snippets can be used in the same audio clip.

If it does not start to prioritize actual workflow improvements and innovations, it's going to become worse than Reason.
(Reason's export is great though. it even exports automation data.)

Bitwig has by far the most logical key shortcuts. I can't express enough how much this is a plus.
i- information panel
b- popup browser
o- overview or linear sequencer
l- launcher
m- mixer
a- automation
d- device panel
etc. It actually pisses me off when I'm using other DAWs that randomly assign nonsense to various shortcuts.

If you don't think plug in sandboxing and the fact it prevents 99% of the crashes you normally get in any other DAW is great, then there's something wrong with you.

The modulation of any part of a signal is definitely part of the automation in Bitwig, and it's miles above almost any other DAW, better than Lives for sure.

The most logical shortcuts are those you can bind yourself.
I, for example, like to have all tools mapped to letters like z, x, c, a, s: this way access is instantaneous and they're not scattered around. As a matter of fact, to me it makes more sense to map keys to buttons in similar places as they appear on the screen. You always have the best cheat-sheet you can have – the UI itself.
It's good that Bitwig allows it. It's just completely silly that Ableton doesn't. Reason is OK about this, because it's structure is simple enough that it doesn't get in the way. Ableton lacks that cohesion. Bitwig is kind of ok, but it's not far from Ableton.

I wonder if there's anything about Bitwig that is not its sound devices that doesn't suck. Its editing, its exporting, its automation, gosh..
The only thing I can think of is that multiple audio snippets can be used in the same audio clip.

In many cases, what someone considers as 'sucks' is subjective... though I think everyone agrees that the transient detection does indeed suck

Some things I like about Bitwig that aren't its sound devices:

It's the most stable DAW I have ever used.
It has my favorite browser of any of the DAW's I've used.
Bounce in Place is fantastic!
Hybrid Tracks
Comping in the Clip Launcher
The preset system
Device Nesting
The ease of working with multiple projects
Remote Controls

Obviously it's not for everyone. And it depends on what someone's priorities are. MPE is very important to me and Bitwig is hands down the best DAW for MPE.

Then of course there are the functions that are important to the individual. I'm fine with the export options cause I start and complete projects entirely in Bitwig. Someone else may be trying to integrate it with other DAW's and then for them the export options could be a critical limitation.

Indeed, I agree with both of you about stability. Definitely top notch. Not that I've ever experienced too many problems with others, bar Digital Performer. But it's nice to be sure. Nevertheless, I'd choose a good backup system with good editing and generation features any time over stability.

Bounce in places destroys your clip. So imo it defeats the purpose. Better than Ableton's though, sure. But it seems to me to be an alternative to track freezing. It could be great if it didn't destroy the instrument clip. They should go together. They do not, so I myself don't find the use for it.
Hybrid tracks – never used it once. Same comment as above pertains.
Comping in the clip launcher – nice. Except for MIDI, this is completely beyond me. Device nesting I assign to sound devices – no other daw can touch on that, that's definite. (until some daw comes that's inspired by Gig Performer and preset morphing, rather than a reworking of Ableton and MaxForLive.) Instrument selector is really awesome, though clunky. don't ever use it if you want to try out variants of some complex automation though. it doesn't tell which instrument you're automating. better abstain than fall into that same hell you'd fall in Ableton.

As a device nest, it's quite spectacular. Whoa, the places it gets you to.
As an editor and composition tool, it's bad. You get to these awesome places but can't wiggle your way out of them into a venture.

I like to compare it to Digital Performer and Reason.
With Digital Performer, if you want to do something, you probably can. It might need a manual, but you can usually have confidence you will be able to do it. (unless it's sound design, of course).
With Reason, it's so basic that you don't expect anything more than WYSIWYG. You don't expect anything more complicated than the most basic. So you just don't go there, you're all set. (Not that I condone its lack of features, but sometimes it can feel like a relief).

With both Bitwig and Ableton, you learn the hard way. They parade as capable DAWs, but then – usually in the heat of the moment – they lack such basic functionality that you NEVER know beforehand, never even expect something that acts like a DAW to not have. And to me, it kind of kills the app. This illusion of depth that's the result of tacking on features that were not within the core design.
Let's call it workflow or process stability. They sometimes crash the process with little to help you recover from it. It's precisely the things you don't use often but need once in a while that they lack that I find disheartening. Just when I feel like I'm on the cusp of adapting to its feature-set to make it do what I want it to do, it just very consistently does not do something that I learnt that most other DAWs do.
It's just awful to spend hours searching for that routine that will bring about the process you want, and though you see all the ingredients right in front of you, every alley you take is just a dead f**king end.

I'm sorry for the rant. I'm saddened and I tend to react to it with irritation.
I'm glad it caters to some. I just wish I was included.. : )

[moss]

Bounce in places destroys your clip. So imo it defeats the purpose. Better than Ableton's though, sure. But it seems to me to be an alternative to track freezing. It could be great if it didn't destroy the instrument clip. They should go together. They do not, so I myself don't find the use for it.
Hybrid tracks – never used it once. Same comment as above pertains.

I also do not use it but the workflow makes a lot of sense if you get used to it. The idea is as follows:

1) You create your MIDI clips in the Clip Launcher.
2) When you got your song parts you drag them over to the arranger
3) Then you can do the Bounce replace thing which gives you a hybrid track
4) If you need to change something MIDI wise you have the backup in the Clip Launcher
5) Also if you modify a MIDI clip in the arranger you can drag it back to the Clip Launcher as well

I would love to see a more intelligent way which actually combines two real tracks into one where you can always edit MIDI and Audio where Audio has priority.

[elnn]

Bounce in places destroys your clip. So imo it defeats the purpose. Better than Ableton's though, sure. But it seems to me to be an alternative to track freezing. It could be great if it didn't destroy the instrument clip. They should go together. They do not, so I myself don't find the use for it.
Hybrid tracks – never used it once. Same comment as above pertains.

I also do not use it but the workflow makes a lot of sense if you get used to it. The idea is as follows:

1) You create your MIDI clips in the Clip Launcher.
2) When you got your song parts you drag them over to the arranger
3) Then you can do the Bounce replace thing which gives you a hybrid track
4) If you need to change something MIDI wise you have the backup in the Clip Launcher
5) Also if you modify a MIDI clip in the arranger you can drag it back to the Clip Launcher as well

I would love to see a more intelligent way which actually combines two real tracks into one where you can always edit MIDI and Audio where Audio has priority.

For example: have clip variations. Same object, multiple variants. When you open edit view, layered editing mode, it gives you a choice of concurrent layers. An additional view could give exclusive layers (variants of the same time segment). Or right click on a clip gives you a bunch of colours. These could have been variants.
Each variant could have two sides – event-side and audio-side (= freeze = bounced clip). let's say alt-press on a variation to bounce it in place, alt-press it again to revert to the original.

There's really a lot of space for creativity regarding editing. It's a very underdeveloped and underexplored area in all DAWs.

[pdxindy]

With both Bitwig and Ableton, you learn the hard way. They parade as capable DAWs, but then – usually in the heat of the moment – they lack such basic functionality that you NEVER know beforehand, never even expect something that acts like a DAW to not have. And to me, it kind of kills the app. This illusion of depth that's the result of tacking on features that were not within the core design.
Let's call it workflow or process stability. They sometimes crash the process with little to help you recover from it. It's precisely the things you don't use often but need once in a while that they lack that I find disheartening. Just when I feel like I'm on the cusp of adapting to its feature-set to make it do what I want it to do, it just very consistently does not do something that I learnt that most other DAWs do.
It's just awful to spend hours searching for that routine that will bring about the process you want, and though you see all the ingredients right in front of you, every alley you take is just a dead f**king end.

I'm sorry for the rant. I'm saddened and I tend to react to it with irritation.
I'm glad it caters to some. I just wish I was included.. : )

We have different experiences. I liked Live fine when I used to use it. It crashed too much, but then I stopped using M4L and it was stable enough. I would not have switched to Bitwig except I bought a Linnstrument and needed the MPE support. Now I'm very happy with Bitwig.

I'm sure I could be satisfied with most DAW's... I enjoy playing music, recording it (midi or audio), doing some editing and crafting compositions. I don't find the DAW an impediment to enjoying what I use it for. I happen to really like Bitwig, but that would be the case with most DAW's.

[machinesworking]

Bounce in places destroys your clip. So imo it defeats the purpose. Better than Ableton's though, sure. But it seems to me to be an alternative to track freezing. It could be great if it didn't destroy the instrument clip. They should go together. They do not, so I myself don't find the use for it.
Hybrid tracks – never used it once. Same comment as above pertains.

I also do not use it but the workflow makes a lot of sense if you get used to it. The idea is as follows:

1) You create your MIDI clips in the Clip Launcher.
2) When you got your song parts you drag them over to the arranger
3) Then you can do the Bounce replace thing which gives you a hybrid track
4) If you need to change something MIDI wise you have the backup in the Clip Launcher
5) Also if you modify a MIDI clip in the arranger you can drag it back to the Clip Launcher as well

I would love to see a more intelligent way which actually combines two real tracks into one where you can always edit MIDI and Audio where Audio has priority.

For example: have clip variations. Same object, multiple variants. When you open edit view, layered editing mode, it gives you a choice of concurrent layers. An additional view could give exclusive layers (variants of the same time segment). Or right click on a clip gives you a bunch of colours. These could have been variants.
Each variant could have two sides – event-side and audio-side (= freeze = bounced clip). let's say alt-press on a variation to bounce it in place, alt-press it again to revert to the original.

There's really a lot of space for creativity regarding editing. It's a very underdeveloped and underexplored area in all DAWs.

Even something as simple as a hybrid track where the bounced audio "hides" and disables the MIDI and instrument/FX on that track. Then you could build up orchestral template levels of tracks in Bitwig etc. without anything more than some RAM and swap memory. Anytime you want to work on a part you simply switch to the MIDI, instrument/FX version. It might even be possible to do this on a per measure track take etc. basis like you're talking about here, but that would probably require pre-generation or an additional buffer.

[pdxindy]

I would love to see a more intelligent way which actually combines two real tracks into one where you can always edit MIDI and Audio where Audio has priority.

I think it would be elegant to use the comping (when midi comping gets added) so that when you bounce in place, the original midi is made a take in the clip.

[machinesworking]

We have different experiences. I liked Live fine when I used to use it. It crashed too much, but then I stopped using M4L and it was stable enough. I would not have switched to Bitwig except I bought a Linnstrument and needed the MPE support. Now I'm very happy with Bitwig.

Same trajectory here. Both Live and DP did not support MPE without that ugly workaround.

I'm sure I could be satisfied with most DAW's... I enjoy playing music, recording it (midi or audio), doing some editing and crafting compositions. I don't find the DAW an impediment to enjoying what I use it for. I happen to really like Bitwig, but that would be the case with most DAW's.

Yeah, that's a problem. I ended up getting Logic, Bitwig and Reaper to test which I liked MPE in the best. Bitwig wins the MPE battle, but if you without prejudice look into probably any of the top 12 or so DAWs they all have amazing features that the others do poorly. I end up having to force myself to concentrate on two: a traditional DAW like DP and a performance DAW like Bitwig. In no way does it make Live, Logic or Reaper bad choices though. I mean forgoing the launcher/Session clip thing, and taking the time to customize it, Reaper is fantastic. Logic you could use without any third party plug ins at all, and barring crashing issues Max4Live is a world in itself, plus retrospective record is pretty much a no brainer, Biwig just need to buckle soon on that one.

Full disclosure, I know my personality enough to know I'm also always about the underdog, it's just convenient that in this case Bitwig and DP both have features that justify me using them over the "mainstream" DAWs.

[Trancit]

nevermind... enough said and this leads to nothing anyway...

[wilkins_micawber]

My only complaint about Ableton after coming from Bitwig is that it's not as easy to automate something with, say, an LFO and have it center around the original frequency. The exact original frequency is impossible to select as the center due to the amount that the smallest twist of an Ableton knob moving it past the target in most cases. You can get close easily and quickly, but for super sensitive parameters, it's annoying to not be able to get exact.

I don't see bitwig edging out Ableton anywhere else for my purposes (don't care about grid) If you can think of a feature that Bitwig has (such as adding signals together easily for automation/modulation), there is a more feature-rich version available or soon to be available as a Max for live plugin.

I haven't been using Ableton that long, but Max for live is giving me options that will likely make me switch. Also, I think Live's interface is easier to look at for long period than Bitwig's at default zoom on high-res screens.

[machinesworking]

My only complaint about Ableton after coming from Bitwig is that it's not as easy to automate something with, say, an LFO and have it center around the original frequency. The exact original frequency is impossible to select as the center due to the amount that the smallest twist of an Ableton knob moving it past the target in most cases. You can get close easily and quickly, but for super sensitive parameters, it's annoying to not be able to get exact.

So in Live Shift allows smaller increments to be used, and this is one area I like Live in, when you select a Live knob, it gets a square outline that indicates it can be adjusted via the Left, right in some cases, but more importantly in your case, the Up and Down arrows adjust the knob by the tiniest increment when you tap them.

I don't see bitwig edging out Ableton anywhere else for my purposes (don't care about grid) If you can think of a feature that Bitwig has (such as adding signals together easily for automation/modulation), there is a more feature-rich version available or soon to be available as a Max for live plugin.

I haven't been using Ableton that long, but Max for live is giving me options that will likely make me switch. Also, I think Live's interface is easier to look at for long period than Bitwig's at default zoom on high-res screens.

IMO some of this is the "grass is greener" phenomena. I tried Bitwig after years of thinking it was messier to deal with and more CPU intensive than Live, then about the time that I started looking for an MPE solution, CPU tests proved that wrong.

Personally the Grid and Max4Live are only passingly interesting to me. I've collected something like 400 VSTs in my time messing with DAWs, I'm overwhelmed with choice when it comes to plug ins, and neither of these playgrounds offer me DAW features I want. I've gotten far more use out of products like Metagrid for the iPad and Keyboard Maestro than I ever have out of M4L or the Grid. I'm not building Falcon, Diva, Kontakt, Plasmonic, Pigments, Hive or any of those levels of synths in either the Grid or M4L, you build use specific devices in those environments, and like any object oriented environment they cost more CPU, something both Live and Bitwig IMO can't afford to spare.

[pdxindy]

Personally the Grid and Max4Live are only passingly interesting to me.

I find regular use for Note Grid. It's an excellent midi utility. Want to remap one CC number to another, or block a specific CC#, or add an expression curve for AT, or change the midi channel of certain notes it is easy to do. Bitwig has a simple Latch Note FX, but sometimes I want more flexible rules when it latches or doesn't and Note Grid makes it easy enough that I can make a custom latch... and so on.

[pdxindy]

If you can think of a feature that Bitwig has (such as adding signals together easily for automation/modulation), there is a more feature-rich version available or soon to be available as a Max for live plugin.

Bitwig supports CLAP and I can do per voice modulations with Diva, ACE, Bazille and soon RePro.

[wilkins_micawber]

I know about slow parameter incrementing in Logic using shift. Bitwig's the same way. The problem is that the modulation range mapping percentages are whole numbers instead of decimals. Luckily, all the modulation plugs I want to be more fine-grained are Max4Live plugs, and you can pretty easily swap out the integer code for decimal code. Probably doesn't matter for most use cases that an automation starts exactly from a parameters initial value, but I'm OCD.

[pdxindy]

If you can think of a feature that Bitwig has (such as adding signals together easily for automation/modulation), there is a more feature-rich version available or soon to be available as a Max for live plugin.

I can open multiple projects at once in Bitwig (I doubt there is a M4L device for that)

I can add an arpeggiator on the same track as my synth in Bitwig. (Is there a M4L device for that?)

Bitwig modulators can be per voice (polyphonic). Neither Live nor M4L can do that.

[Stan Navi]

If you can think of a feature that Bitwig has (such as adding signals together easily for automation/modulation), there is a more feature-rich version available or soon to be available as a Max for live plugin.

I can open multiple projects at once in Bitwig (I doubt there is a M4L device for that)

I can add an arpeggiator on the same track as my synth in Bitwig. (Is there a M4L device for that?)

Bitwig modulators can be per voice (polyphonic). Neither Live nor M4L can do that.

About arpeggiator there are several arp devices in M4L that can be used on the same track, I don't see the point. But if you are talking about third party arpeggiators or ability to send arp midi messages from one synth to another on one track, then Bitwig is the choice.