Which DAW would you recommend coming from FL Studio? Bitwig, Ableton, Cubase etc.

[apoclypse]

AL and Bitwig come with a lot more than Logic - it's not even a fair comparison really.

IMO it's a draw. Logic has AI drums, Alchemy and Sculpture, plus a slew of great FX plugins. The step sequencer in Logic is great etc.

Logic's drummers are cool.

Bitwig has tons of bundled instruments and effects though, plus of course The Grid. Polymer, Phase-4, PolySynth, Sampler, etc.

It has a fantastic arp but ironically no step sequencer (though you can make one in the grid).

Logic's has 3 samplers, 10 synths, 3 Drum modules, Vintage Organ, Clav, Mellotron, Electric Piano. Studio Horn, Strings, Bass, and Piano and pretty much every major effect is represented from Audiotune like pitch shifting, to multi effects like CamelPhat. Apple just added QRS (for free!). Sorry but Bitwig is not even in the same ballpark imo.

Don't get me wrong Bitwig has some nice sounding synths and they are more modern than what Logic has, the same with their effects, but what Logic has sounds really good. Even the dated stuff sounds good and nearly much all major synth types are represented in Logic. Though Apple could stand to add a more robust Wavetable synth in there at some point (retro synth has some wavetable capability).

[apoclypse]

^^^ What's wrong with the browser? I added the favorites, and with a right-click, they come up contextually. It's working fine.

Owning both Live and Bitwig I can say without pretense Bitwig dropped the ball compared.

I'm not alone in preferring the old one, even when I first saw the new browser I cringed, icons only, great..

Yeah the new browser really is not great. I still think the old one was superior in every way. That being said even at its most jankiest I find the browser in Bitwig to still be superior to Live's. Just search alone is way less annoying than Live's imo. I find Live's browser to be extremely annoying.

Bitwig's browser is context sensitive. So it knows that if I added an instrument on a track and bring up the browser again it will automatically only show effects, or if I click before the instrument it will only show midi effects. It knows that if I bring up the browser while on an Audio track to only show effects etc. If I add a new instrument track it only shows me instruments when bringing up the browser.

It can browse VST3 plugins with presets directly in the browser. You can live preview synth patches, easily rate and add them to your collection. Even see who made the patch and what pack its from. You can't do that in Ableton.

What annoys me about Bitwig's new browser is the layout. I had a whole bunch of smart collections that are a little harder to get to now, than before.

However nearly all the good things are still there, fuzzy search, smart collections, context sensitivity, etc. Live has a very long way to go imo before they are even in the same ballpark as Bitwig's browser imo. Right now I use Live's browser as a glorified search engine because it's too annoying to use otherwise and its search is just okay.

[xbitz]

dunno, it has its good points; for ex just this week I noticed that it also has the grid modules included

[machinesworking]

Yeah the new browser really is not great. I still think the old one was superior in every way. That being said even at its most jankiest I find the browser in Bitwig to still be superior to Live's.

I'm a total caveman about it, I want to call up the browser and type in the name of a plugin and have it show up. I sometimes hate how this works out with Bitwigs new browser, and it's roughly the same as it was in Lives new one. I've had take me on a journey to the plugin through all sorts of things when it first came out, it's better now.

It's a similar problem to DP's plugin browser, it doesn't default to all, and if you selected something more specific it defaults to that. sometimes I want to change the instrument, not add an fx, it seems the only place this doesn't involve multiple steps is in the Mixer. I'm being overtly picky here, they're all pretty great compared, but that's kinda what we're doing here, splitting hairs. It's still debatable here how much use I can get out of Lives AI similarity search feature, but it's a good start.

[apoclypse]

Yeah the new browser really is not great. I still think the old one was superior in every way. That being said even at its most jankiest I find the browser in Bitwig to still be superior to Live's.

I'm a total caveman about it, I want to call up the browser and type in the name of a plugin and have it show up. I sometimes hate how this works out with Bitwigs new browser, and it's roughly the same as it was in Lives new one. I've had take me on a journey to the plugin through all sorts of things when it first came out, it's better now.

It's a similar problem to DP's plugin browser, it doesn't default to all, and if you selected something more specific it defaults to that. sometimes I want to change the instrument, not add an fx, it seems the only place this doesn't involve multiple steps is in the Mixer. I'm being overtly picky here, they're all pretty great compared, but that's kinda what we're doing here, splitting hairs. It's still debatable here how much use I can get out of Lives AI similarity search feature, but it's a good start.

Bitwig's browser does work that way. When you add an instrument in Bitwig, it will show you all instrument plugins, including VSTs. When you want to replace it, click on the instrument press B on your keyboard and Bitwig will smartly show you all the presets for that instrument. If you don't want presets, click on All Devices and it will show you all Instruments, including plugins again.

If you want an experience pretty much the same as Live's, press Alt+B and will focus on the right browser window on the search bar. Start typing what you need and drag it in just like Live. It searches everything by default. I can use the arrow keys to choose the device, press enter to load it up.

My gripe with the new browser is that it hides my smart collections and it's hard to get to them. That being said a lot of my smart collections are not necessary anymore as Bitwig smartly already categorizes my samples and instruments into their relevant category. It's just the UX is not as good, but all the capability is still there. Live's browser is only catching up and not doing a great job at it imo.

[EnGee]

Live's browser is only catching up and not doing a great job at it imo.

I find myself absolutely in the opposite side! I find Live's 12 browser the best browser out there! So easy to find what I want while Bitwig's one is unnecessary complicated and not intuitive at all! It is a big mess for me, so I always ended up writing in the search instead of browsing and choose.

[Trancit]

Bitwig's browser does work that way. When you add an instrument in Bitwig, it will show you all instrument plugins, including VSTs. ...

My problem is more that there are too many situations where this "guessing what I probably want to do" fails and forces me to either doing lots of work to create my own system and having to change all defaults for all loading situations... or dealing with the "Everything" tab which shows me a lot of nonsense I never want to use and forces me to change the defaults nonetheless... to avoid these situations...

I.e. I load an instrument... now I click the plus before to load a Midi VSTi... but Bitwig thinks I want to load a native Note FX ... fail... manual interaction...
...
Same otherway round:
I load a Midi VSTi and want to load an Instrument behind... but Bitwig shows me just FX now... fail... manual interaction...

etc... etc... pp!

For me such a system can only work if you work in a kind of splitted system = first section for loading instruments, Midi FX and Note FX... second section: loading FX

- clicking "+" in the first section shows you all plugin types relevant... Note FX, Instruments, VSTI in general
- clicking the "+" in the latter section just shows you FX

Developers of traditional DAWs have understood this already long time that there must be a place for loading sound/note generation and there must be a different place for loading FX...

But as it is now in Ableton and Bitwig this necessary boundary doesn´t exist and this leads to nothing else than additional clicking/user interaction in general...
Don´t get me wrong... the only thing which needs to change would be some kind of "Seperator" in the plugin lane with 2 seperate "+" buttons... no need to change the system in general...

[xbitz]

^^^ right-clicking the + button brings up the favorites(within the given context); my ratio is good for me, without favorites, yepp, it's never what I need; confirmed.