Let‘s speculate about 6.0

[don_looney]

If they ever release a dedicated controller for Bitwig it needs to have motorized knobs like the Roto-Control.

I would prefer rotaries 10000 times over motorized pots. You get the same control for 10% of the price (and size)…
But you need to do it right, which isn‘t the case for many rotary based controllers…

I meant rotary controls, like the Roto-Control. Check out the video from polarity with the Roto-Control. It's really a game changer for controlling Bitwig.

[don_looney]

I think they should definitely focus on the core features. Piano roll, Sampler+, ...

I totally agree. The problem is everyone here (and elsewhere) have completely different ideas about what the 'core' features are. For instance I don't have any need for a chord track and do not consider this as core, but the piano roll and arranger could really do with some attention and better groove tools would be a big bonus. I also am not a big user of samples so not too fused about that but can understand some others find this really important.

That is always a big problem for new features. As example, I don't need video support and everybody I know does not need too. If you take a look at the forum, you could argue that there is a huge group of people waiting for it, but it could also be that this group is just small and very loud about it.

[tumface]

When I use Logic, I am ambivalent about clip aliases. I'm undecided whether they are a net benefit. There are some plus sides and down sides to using them. Most of the time I end up not using them cause enough times I edit a clip and forget I am editing some other location on the timeline.

I also tend to have small variations and not that many identical clips.

Those are good points. They are definitely something you have to keep in mind. But I still find them to be a net benefit, when they're available. The benefit decreases or vanishes completely depending on the genre. For example, score-to-picture doesn't need it at all. (Example: Digital Performer doesn't even have normal MIDI clips.)

On the other hand, they can be super useful in repetitive genres.

I also think there are other ways you could implement a similar feature without needing actual clip aliases. For example, a feature that lets you select a clip and then enable "edit all identical clips simultaneously" and any edits to the clip now also edit any other clips in the project that were identical to it. (Or perhaps it first highlights/selects all matching clips, then lets you deselect some if you want to exclude them. You get the idea.)

That still doesn't get you the full power of Logic's clip folders, where you can nest arbitrary portions of arrangement material without worrying about track layout or track hierarchy. But it's pretty easy to make a mess out of that, even though it's powerful. (Also, you have to use Logic, so you have bigger things to worry about. Like your project becoming corrupted.)

[SamDi]

At the moment I am completely out of Bitwig, although it is actually my favorite DAW. It has so many improved things above Ableton, but on the other side Ableton still has the edge with:

-Literally everybody uses it in the EDM scene resp. in my bubble - it‘s like an industry standard

-My HW much better supports Ableton. My Roland Fantom, the Komplete Kontrol, not to speak about Push, which is hilariously integrated, especially the combo, Push, drum rack and Simpler

-Although Bitwig has reduced he distance to AL Fx, it‘s still not there. OK, it has to compete with Cytomic filters ans compressor , the O.T.T. original, the Drum Buss and with latest iteration all the new amazing Fx in AL

-It’s much easier to work with audio in Ableton. Setting hit points there and move them is way easier and elegant, as the strange onset system and then moving them in another mode. Also the complete workflow there is a mess.

So what would I need or expect from next BW version?

-More interoperability with Ableton. You can even load the projects. But saving them as AL format would be a game changer

-They‘d needt to take much more care, that BW will get better supported from 3rd party manufacturers

-If they would take care of native Push integration, this would be heaven.
-They need urgent improvement of core DAW features. Especially audio editing is pretty inelegant and could be dramatically improved IMHO

-I would pretty appreciate if they would implement some more „pro DAW features“: Saving track scenarios, where you can hide different tracks and save this as a scenario for example. Or saving mix presets as in Cubase would be nice.

I fear that they go rather the more the tinker DAW way to support all that modular stuff and creating HW interfaces for them. But as one already stated, then they will lose many users on the other side, who won‘t pay for that.

[tumface]

-If they would take care of native Push integration, this would be heaven.

Ableton Push is made by Ableton. It's a proprietary system that Ableton designs, manufactures, and integrates with the rest of its own software as a competitive edge. I seriously doubt they would be willing to go through all of the development effort to integrate it with Bitwig, a competitor. And Bitwig would need Ableton to do this, because Ableton controls Push.

I mean, it would be cool, but I have no idea why they would do it, and it's out of Bitwig's control.

-It’s much easier to work with audio in Ableton. Setting hit points there and move them is way easier and elegant, as the strange onset system and then moving them in another mode. Also the complete workflow there is a mess.

Opposite for me. Bitwig's audio clip/event support is much better than Live's. Especially the onset system in Bitwig is a lot smarter than Live's. I wonder if maybe you are trying to edit the audio clips in the arrangement view, like in Live, instead of the detail editor? That would certainly make it harder on yourself.

-Literally everybody uses it in the EDM scene resp. in my bubble - it‘s like an industry standard

This is out of Bitwig's control and not something that you will gain anything from worrying about. Don't worry about what other people use, unless you are collaborating — and if you are collaborating, just use what they are using, instead of dealing with project conversion/compatibility headaches. Bitwig will never be fully interoperable with Live's project files, because Live users will use Live devices (Autofilter, Amp, Erosion, etc.) which Bitwig won't have. Native project file format compatibility (not .dawproject, which is different) is useful as a one-time conversion to move a project to another DAW, once, with effort. But it will never be a transparent thing that lets multiple people open and re-save the same file from different DAWs.

[Tj Shredder]

If they ever release a dedicated controller for Bitwig it needs to have motorized knobs like the Roto-Control.

I would prefer rotaries 10000 times over motorized pots. You get the same control for 10% of the price (and size)…
But you need to do it right, which isn‘t the case for many rotary based controllers…

I meant rotary controls, like the Roto-Control. Check out the video from polarity with the Roto-Control. It's really a game changer for controlling Bitwig.

I know, Roto-Control has motorized pots. Rotaries have no motor as they don't need it. They jump to any position you like by simply showing the actual position with leds. For me it simply doesn't make sense if there is a century old technology which is way better...
Rotaries allow value ranges beyond the Midi range... Move them fast, and they move far, move them slow and you get fine tuning...
Too many vendors of control surfaces simply never got the principle...

[SamDi]

Ableton Push is made by Ableton. It's a proprietary system that Ableton designs, manufactures, and integrates with the rest of its own software as a competitive edge. I seriously doubt they would be willing to go through all of the development effort to integrate it with Bitwig, a competitor. And Bitwig would need Ableton to do this, because Ableton controls Push.

I mean, it would be cool, but I have no idea why they would do it, and it's out of Bitwig's control.

I don‘t know, how it is with Push 3, but the interface of Push 2 seemed to be very open and well documented, otherwise DrivenByMoss wouldn‘t have been possible.

Opposite for me. Bitwig's audio clip/event support is much better than Live's. Especially the onset system in Bitwig is a lot smarter than Live's. I wonder if maybe you are trying to edit the audio clips in the arrangement view, like in Live, instead of the detail editor? That would certainly make it harder on yourself.

Interesting, how people are different. No I tried it in the detail editor. I don‘t like these 2 modes and don‘t see the advantage of them. I want to set a point and then move it immediately without the need to go to another mode. What do you exactly mean with smarter? What can you do quicker or more elegant, what doesn‘t work in AL?

This is out of Bitwig's control and not something that you will gain anything from worrying about. Don't worry about what other people use, unless you are collaborating — and if you are collaborating, just use what they are using, instead of dealing with project conversion/compatibility headaches. Bitwig will never be fully interoperable with Live's project files, because Live users will use Live devices (Autofilter, Amp, Erosion, etc.) which Bitwig won't have. Native project file format compatibility (not .dawproject, which is different) is useful as a one-time conversion to move a project to another DAW, once, with effort. But it will never be a transparent thing that lets multiple people open and re-save the same file from different DAWs.

Yeah, of course you are right. I added this point for the sake of completeness. It‘s one of the main reasons I go more with AL at the moment. As soon as you are looking for collaborations, you have to take care on that. But having all the Fx stuff isn‘t what would be a problem for me personally. Most annoying thing, when switching DAWs is to rebuild track structure and load audio and midi clips and VST plugins with right presets or settings. That would be enough for me.

[tumface]

I don‘t know, how it is with Push 3, but the interface of Push 2 seemed to be very open and well documented, otherwise DrivenByMoss wouldn‘t have been possible.

Can the DrivenByMoss scripts do things like draw waveforms, session arrangement overviews, etc., in the Push 3 display? I know you can get the output of the buttons and draw basic text labels and change the button colors, but I thought the true integration features were off-limits on the Push 3, and would require more hardcore reverse engineering which would be liable to break with Push 3 updates. (I thought that's what you were talking about, not the existing stuff like the DrivenByMoss scripts, which are indeed cool.)

What do you exactly mean with smarter? What can you do quicker or more elegant, what doesn‘t work in AL?

For example, you can draw a pitch envelope directly onto the audio events, change the stretch mode per event, quantize audio events w/ swing (!), etc., and bundle all of that inside of a single clip and copy/loop it in the arrangement, without having to repeatedly duplicate large numbers of micro-edits directly in the arrangement view. You can also edit audio events across multiple disparate tracks side-by-side in the detail editor, without having to move tracks around in the arrangement view.

The onset system is fast once you get used to it. The tools let you add and remove the markers easily and quickly, much faster than Live, once you spend a few minutes to figure it out. In Live, once you add stretch markers, they are always on and engaged, and manipulating them affects the rest of the clip. So, you have to keep slicing the clip up into more and more pieces when you need unstretched areas or to change the stretch mode in certain parts. Bitwig lets you have onset markers and not do anything with them until they're needed. Also, in Bitwig, the onset markers can snap to events and stuff in tracks, can be quantized/grooved, and probably more stuff I can't think of. And as I mentioned before, you can bundle all of this inside of clips that go in the arrangement view and are easier to arrange, instead of tons of micro-edits that sit directly in the arrangement and are difficult to move around, loop, and that sort of thing. You can also crossfade the audio events within a clip without fading the clip itself, you can have crossfades extend outside of an audio event, nondestructive audio reversing, snapping anchors on both sides of events and clips... tons of useful stuff. It's so, so much better to work with, in my opinion.

[SamDi]

Can the DrivenByMoss scripts do things like draw waveforms, session arrangement overviews, etc., in the Push 3 display? I know you can get the output of the buttons and draw basic text labels and change the button colors, but I thought the true integration features were off-limits on the Push 3, and would require more hardcore reverse engineering which would be liable to break with Push 3 updates. (I thought that's what you were talking about, not the existing stuff like the DrivenByMoss scripts, which are indeed cool.)

The DrivenByMossScripts implement an own GUI in Push, with almost all you asked, so freely drawing is possible. What it doesn‘t do is drawing waveforms (if I remember correctly) or implementing nice GUIs of the instruments or effects, which would need, that you could access's this information from BW via the Java interface. Furthermore I guess that his capacity is limited to go as deep as Push integration is in AL.

He mentioned somewhere, that the Push 2 was relatively well and open documented. I don‘t know if it is the same with Push 3 though.

For the other topic I am going to answer when I have some more time.

[tumface]

The DrivenByMossScripts implement an own GUI in Push, with almost all you asked, so freely drawing is possible. What it doesn‘t do is drawing waveforms (if I remember correctly) or implementing nice GUIs of the instruments or effects, which would need, that you could access's this information from BW via the Java interface. Furthermore I guess that his capacity is limited to go as deep as Push integration is in AL.

OK. That's good to know. Thanks.

Spending effort on that is not something I personally want Bitwig to do. But good to know what's technically possible.

[pdxindy]

So what would I need or expect from next BW version?

-More interoperability with Ableton. You can even load the projects. But saving them as AL format would be a game changer

-They‘d needt to take much more care, that BW will get better supported from 3rd party manufacturers

-If they would take care of native Push integration, this would be heaven.
-They need urgent improvement of core DAW features. Especially audio editing is pretty inelegant and could be dramatically improved IMHO

More interoperability with Ableton is not possible except as a collaboration between companies. That is not something Bitwig can do by itself. Ableton would have to want to do it too. I would rather Bitwig not spend time catering to Live users and would rather Bitwig focus on improving Bitwig.

Bitwig cannot work as well with Push as Ableton can. Moss has done about as good a job as possible and Bitwig isn't going to be doing significantly better than Moss did. Ableton has shaped their software to fit the Push hardware.

It is also not in Bitwig's control how well Bitwig is supported by 3rd party manufacturers. Those companies automatically support Live because it is by far the most used DAW. Bitwig can put effort in that direction, which they do, but again, that is a decision that is up to the manufacturers, not Bitwig.

Ableton Live has advantages simply because it is the industry standard.

One of those advantages is that lots of users have developed expectations/workflows of how things are done based on Live. IMO, Bitwig should not spend time trying to be more like Live because Live will always be better at being Live than another DAW can be.

When it comes to audio editing, Ableton and Bitwig have a fundamental difference. Bitwig audio clips are containers which can contain multiple audio events. This has some advantages and some disadvantages compared to Live. For me, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Personally, I think audio editing in Bitwig is much better than Live. In Live it is not even possible to edit an audio clip in Session view. You have to drag a copy of the clip to arrange, make some edits, consolidate that into a single clip (losing your edits) and drag it back into Session view. In Bitwig, I can edit the audio clip right in the Clip Launcher and my edits can still be changed anytime.

[justin3am]

Personally, I think audio editing in Bitwig is much better than Live. In Live it is not even possible to edit an audio clip in Session view. You have to drag a copy of the clip to arrange, make some edits, consolidate that into a single clip (losing your edits) and drag it back into Session view. In Bitwig, I can edit the audio clip right in the Clip Launcher and my edits can still be changed anytime.

Audio editing is great in Bitwig! That's why I use it. I spend more time editing than doing just about any other task. I left Pro Tools behind because I had gotten just as fast Bitwig's audio editing features, which is about 10x faster than I was ever able to edit in Live (which is why I was still using Pro Tools alongside Live for so many years).

The ability to edit clips in the clip launcher and to have clips which contain all my edits, without having to consolidate has become a huge part of the way I work.

I don't tend to participate in these conversations because I mainly use Bitwig as a fancy tape recorder/MIDI sequencer. I don't really need it to do much more than it does right now. Recently I started using the Grid a lot more, as a means to control modular systems and for note processing... but I'm still probably behind the cutting edge in that regard. I tend have a passive perspective on new features at this point, as long as they don't get in my way. I've had a bunch of fun with Stepwise so I hope they keep doing stuff like that but I feel like they have already implemented all of my big requests.

[coroknight]

I simultaneously hope bitwig is successful with their hardware, and wish they'd move on to 6.0.

[pdxindy]

I simultaneously hope bitwig is successful with their hardware, and wish they'd move on to 6.0.

Unlike a complex controller like Push which requires a lot of development time for integration with their DAW, Bitwig Connect is simple. I doubt it is taking up developer time or influencing the release date of 6.0

[xbitz]

By the way, I would officially support the Piano Roll scripting features pioneered by Polarity. In FL Studio, it's brilliant that any feature I come up with can be coded using ChatGPT—for example, selecting a group of notes in the Piano Roll by splitting the entire content into defined intervals and picking every nth note within each interval.

May-31-2025 12-39-47.gif

Screenshot 2025-05-31 at 12.45.10.png

done in 30sec, and this is already available in AL12 as well, so go for it! (I've learnt Python from here, Learn Python through Music with Ableton Live
https://www.udemy.com/course/learning-p ... leton-live )