Live 12 or Bitwig 5.1

[Trancit]

... For Bitwig I can very recommend the Polarity Music YouTube channel to see how easy modular electronic music creation can be.

While I appreciate what he does and his huge knowledge, channels like his are imho a huge problem of Bitwig...

Let´s face it: What the majority of Bitwig Youtubers demonstrate is mostly the nerd stuff and newcomers must get immediately the impression that Bitwig is mainly designed for such kind of nerds...
There are some like Protoculture or some others demonstrating Bitwig as a normal DAW the vast majority is probably more looking for...
But these are just a few exceptions...

How many people create music without using actual clips and just create everything "randomly" by using modular stuff?? 1% or less??

What Bitwig lacks of are more people showing "normal" use cases of Bitwig than this deep nerd and niche stuff...
Just showing the weird stuff is harming Bitwig and pushes it into the weird and nerdy niche territory... which it can be used for but not just as this.
Bitwig is very capable to be used as a "normal" DAW as well without all these modular bells and whistles but 99% of what you see of Bitwig online are some nerds finally being able and proud of what they can abuse all kind of stuff for to come up with a "different" way of music making...

There is actually nothing wrong with people having fun with it but this is for sure not the average muscian (which makes the vast vast vast majority) working on some kind of music...

And this is the huge advantage of Ableton´s community...
Even if Max for Live is a big topic the vast majority is showing how to use Ableton as an actual Sequencer and showing more all-day use cases... the more weird M4L stuff comes second...or perhaps even third...
This attracts far more users than just people looking for a modular playground...

[SLiC]

I have to agree with Trancit, if you were not already a Bitwig user and watched some of YT videos you would probably thing its a modular synth with a built in sequencer...hard pushed to find people doing live performances with it or recording live guitars or just strait midi/audio ending of a 'song' (of which it is all perfectly capable). Bitwig probably does attract a certain sort of users, more left-field and experimental perhaps? When I think Bitwig I think 'modulation' and modular' - same as I think when I use my hardware Eurorack..that 'to me' its is niche (I know it has a ton of other stuff, but even voice stacking and MPE are niche to most music makers)

Live seems to have a more varied userbase/content creation.

[Funk Dracula]

Let´s face it: What the majority of Bitwig Youtubers demonstrate is mostly the nerd stuff

mainly designed for such kind of nerds...

What Bitwig lacks of are more people showing "normal" use cases of Bitwig than this deep nerd and niche stuff...

Just showing the weird stuff is harming Bitwig and pushes it into the weird and nerdy niche territory...

99% of what you see of Bitwig online are some nerds...

And this is the huge advantage of Ableton´s community... they smell their own farts!

Sorry, I couldn't resist lol.



Cheers

[ckoe]

Ok, that's a good point I did not thinking of. Yes, there not many tuts out which shows Bitwig as simple DAW.

[pdxindy]

How many people create music without using actual clips and just create everything "randomly" by using modular stuff?? 1% or less??

What Bitwig lacks of are more people showing "normal" use cases of Bitwig than this deep nerd and niche stuff...

For sure there is some tendency in the direction you talk about, but I think you are overstating it.

Polarity alone has maybe a dozen videos of making tracks using clips and recording notes and automation just like any DAW. A YouTube search for "Make a song in Bitwig" will return more than enough to get anyone going. How much of that stuff do you need? After someone watches half a dozen such videos, it just becomes repetitive and can easily become procrastination.

And then there is the question of what is nerdy?

Putting notes in a piano roll is nerdy. Drawing in automation is nerdy. I would say that you accept certain nerdy actions as normal and so don't see them as nerdy, while others you declare nerdy and niche simply because they are different ways to do the same nerdy things. All of electronic music is nerdy.

[apoclypse]

How many people create music without using actual clips and just create everything "randomly" by using modular stuff?? 1% or less??

What Bitwig lacks of are more people showing "normal" use cases of Bitwig than this deep nerd and niche stuff...

For sure there is some tendency in the direction you talk about, but I think you are overstating it.

Polarity alone has maybe a dozen videos of making tracks using clips and recording notes and automation just like any DAW. A YouTube search for "Make a song in Bitwig" will return more than enough to get anyone going. How much of that stuff do you need? After someone watches half a dozen such videos, it just becomes repetitive and can easily become procrastination.

And then there is the question of what is nerdy?

Putting notes in a piano roll is nerdy. Drawing in automation is nerdy. I would say that you accept certain nerdy actions as normal and so don't see them as nerdy, while others you declare nerdy and niche simply because they are different ways to do the same nerdy things. All of electronic music is nerdy.

While nerdy is not the term I would use. Saying automation lanes, piano rolls are "nerdy" is weird to say the least. If people are making music in a DAW, that's like basic level stuff, most people would know how to automate and use the Piano Roll. However not a lot of people are going to want to know how to build a Grid or M4L device.

Bitwig can be a bit "nerd-y" even in just how they've created their devices. The Reverb device isn't just a simple reverb like Live's Reverb device. It has a Tank and Wet section where you can insert more devices to make the Reverb sound halfway decent. Instead of having a simple Multiband compressor, you have a Multiband FX container that you need to setup to do something Ableton does in one device. You want to side chain, there isn't a simple compressor you setup (you can use the Dynamic device though), you have multiple ways of doing it but the most common is to setup a Tool device and use a modulator to automate the gain. It's a little more involved than just dropping a Compressor in Ableton, going to the Sidechain section and picking your drum/kick.

Then there is the way macros work in Bitwig. Ableton doesn't really have Device Pages, so setting up a macro is pretty simple. Anything within a chain/rack can be mapped to a macro. In Bitwig this is more complex. You have Device Pages and then you have Preset Pages. Preset pages can be mapped to any parameter within a chain, but if you want to create a Device Page, you need to add the macro modulator to every device inside the chain and then map that to the main chain.

I like Bitwig a lot. I like a lot of the "nerd-y" aspects of it, but it can be needlessly complex sometimes. I understand that's a design choice and things like modulators etc and the large number of effect devices that do cool things is great, but the added complexity may drive people who don't need or want to do all that stuff away. It can be pretty intimidating.

[pizzatime1]

I dislike Push 3 more than anything I have ever touched in 25 years of buying gear.. a big, heavy, ugly, plastic lump of landfill.. it seems to me it is for preset tweakers that like making simple loops. MPE is totally overrated and I say that as owning a Linnstrument which I quite like.

[pdxindy]

While nerdy is not the term I would use. Saying automation lanes, piano rolls are "nerdy" is weird to say the least. If people are making music in a DAW, that's like basic level stuff, most people would know how to automate and use the Piano Roll.

The musicians I know who are not nerdy?... they play instruments and never touch a DAW.

DAW's are nerdy. Just look at any full project expanded on the screen and it's like the definition of nerdy.

[_leras]

Bitwig can be a bit "nerd-y" even in just how they've created their devices. The Reverb device isn't just a simple reverb like Live's Reverb device. It has a Tank and Wet section where you can insert more devices to make the Reverb sound halfway decent. Instead of having a simple Multiband compressor, you have a Multiband FX container that you need to setup to do something Ableton does in one device.

I think Bitwig as a DAW is actually very intuitive and very simple for almost all basic things. It's workflow is really good.

I do agree though, that some of their FX although flexible, can be a bit complicated to achieve certain things. They're working through the FX with new versions though. It doesn't matter hugely to me as I almost exclusively use third party plug ins, but Ableton do seem to have a better suite of FX.

[apoclypse]

While nerdy is not the term I would use. Saying automation lanes, piano rolls are "nerdy" is weird to say the least. If people are making music in a DAW, that's like basic level stuff, most people would know how to automate and use the Piano Roll.

The musicians I know who are not nerdy?... they play instruments and never touch a DAW.

DAW's are nerdy. Just look at any full project expanded on the screen and it's like the definition of nerdy.

I mean sure if this were before DAWs became the way most young kids nowadays make music. Most kids making hip hop etc are never even touching a keyboard and they are never using anything but a DAW to make music. They are drawing the notes right into the Piano Roll.

DAWs aren't "nerd-y" and they haven't been for a very long time imo. Even so someone who plays guitar isn't necessarily less nerd-y. They are just a different kind of nerd. I'm sure they'd talk your ear off about guitar pedals, strings, types of woods that sound best (if this ever comes up they are definitely a nerd), chords, the way the different types of fingering. Playing instruments is as nerdy as it gets imo. Somebody playing an MPC vs making their beats in FLStudio doesn't make them less nerdy-y. The DAW is basically an instrument to a lot of people at this point.

[SLiC]

All electronic music is nerdy, period!

[pdxindy]

Then there is the way macros work in Bitwig. Ableton doesn't really have Device Pages, so setting up a macro is pretty simple.

In Bitwig, add a Macro modulator, activate it and modulate as many parameters as you want. Couldn't be easier...

[a9k1tp]

For sound design and mixing, Bitwig excels. For production, Ableton takes the lead. Bitwig should consider implementing sample search, as well as MIDI comping, generation, and manipulation.

[fedexnman]

Waveform 13 has NOW entered the building lol .

[pdxindy]

You want to side chain, there isn't a simple compressor you setup (you can use the Dynamic device though), you have multiple ways of doing it but the most common is to setup a Tool device and use a modulator to automate the gain. It's a little more involved than just dropping a Compressor in Ableton, going to the Sidechain section and picking your drum/kick.

Side-chaining in Bitwig is so easy it feels like cheating.

There are multiple approaches, but I mainly use a project level env modulator to side-chain multiple tracks levels at once. It is fast, doesn't require adding any devices at all, and can be very precisely edited without having to find a device on a track.

IMO, dropping a compressor device onto each track you want to side-chain is outdated.