Bitwig 6 Beta coming soon

[akeia]

My plan will expire on December 9th. Will I get an update?

On https://www.bitwig.com/whats-new/ it says:
"As always, this upgrade is free to all customers with an active Upgrade Plan (as of August 27, 2025)."

You can see in your Bitwig user profile when your plan did expire. I do understand this in the sense that everyone with a plan up to August 27th gets version 6.0 and up to 6.0xxx (bug fixes for 6.0) but not the following point updates 6.1 etc.

[muzicxs]

My plan will expire on December 9th. Will I get an update?

Yes, anyone with an active update plan at the release of the first beta will have a free upgrade to Bitwig 6.

[muzicxs]

I do understand this in the sense that everyone with a plan up to August 27th gets version 6.0 and up to 6.0xxx (bug fixes for 6.0) but not the following point updates 6.1 etc.

Yes, you understood correctly.

[mumpcake]

So I'm working on a project right now. I write out a simple chord prog. I name this pattern Piano: A Then I create a 2nd pattern duplicated from Piano: A to create more of a rhythm. I name this Piano: B.

So here in this scenario we have two patterns.

Now if I'm starting this track in my song and I have these two patterns I want to audition them and see what sounds better at what part. So I swap Piano: A Pattern out for Piano: B. If I swap this clips pattern out now if I right click my patterns - Piano: A is gone because it was my only copy.

I feel like in the era of making this pattern system I shouldn't have to drag and drop a copy of this pattern to the loop system on the left - its so much easier to hot swap out the regions with a right click then dragging everything into place remembering what you deleted or didn't delete etc.

I was really curious what your thoughts are on this as other users?

Project 5 used to have this really cool feature where you could audition a midi clip and the sound would be routed to whichever track you had highlighted. Is that what you are looking for?

[Tj Shredder]

We just wait for Midi comping… It the second highest wish on Bitwish.top…

[jules99]

From their latest email.

[kvotchin]

Hope this is the right thread for this.

Anyway, what are the overall advantages and disadvantages going from Live 12 Suite to whatever the current version of Bitwig Studio is (6?) .. ?

Oh, and what’s the precise ongoing cost of license ownership, assuming I want to be up to date at all times?

Thanks.

[Trancit]

Hope this is the right thread for this.

Anyway, what are the overall advantages and disadvantages going from Live 12 Suite to whatever the current version of Bitwig Studio is (6?) .. ?

Oh, and what’s the precise ongoing cost of license ownership, assuming I want to be up to date at all times?

Thanks.

It´s probably not the right thread for this but anyway... it´s kvr, isn´t it...

I am not the typical fanboy raving Bitwig as the best DAW out there ... so these are my thoughts:

Bitwig is a great DAW with many unique approaches and solves as well many issues people would like to see on Ableton like the side by side Laucher/Arranger, proper PDC, user defineable keyboard shortcuts and better crash protection through plugin sandboxing... just to name a few...
Worth to mention might be too that Bitwig in the latest updates introduced major changes to the graphics and Audio system
V6, which is currently in beta has brought a ton of great workflow improvements to the whole DAW... especially to the Midi editor and Automation.

Nonetheless do those 2 DAWs have a bit of a different focus...

Ableton is still the more mature product for pure production with tons of quality devices (which I like better than Bitwigs), imho much better presets, still more intuitive workflow and all of the latest additions of the V12 cycle like Midi tools... etc..
Ableton is still king amongst electronic music producers, has much more support from Hardware manufacturers, more community, tutorials, etc...
In this regard one must consider Bitwig still as absolute niche... not at least due to the people, let´s call them influencers, in first place demonstrating Bitwig´s "wild" side ... means all of the modular stuff, generative music with the grid etc...
Ableton will be still the better product for all "Push- Lovers"...

Bitwig in the past were very busy to make their product a sound designers dream with their Modulator system and tons of devices most of their updates had focus on...
But this means too (apart now from V6) that the production part came (for my taste) much to short and therefore they are lagging behind Ableton in this regard
Nonetheless everybody changing from Ableton to Bitwig will immediately feel at home as they operate very similar and will miss just little...
As with every DAW change you gain something... you miss out something...

I am really once the fence which one to use... in principle I like Ableton better... the GUI is less busy, many things I like are more streamlined, as said I think the plugins and instruments are better (and less CPU hungry than Bitwig´s especially later additions which seem to be at least 4 times oversampled by default)...
But Ableton has technical depth (like their broken PDC) which makes Bitwig very attractive again...

Form the costs if you really want to stay up to date all the time I rate Bitwig as far more expensive over time than Ableton...
Every 12 month Bitwig costs you in best case at least a hundred and something (when you buy the sale at 3rd party sellers) to have an valid upgrade plan running while Ableton sometimes has many years inbetween without any costs at all...
Many people argue against that by recommending "smart" pauses which often means doing without updates for some time...

Anyway... it´s really a very personal decision...
Both products are great...
Both products let you produce music perfectly... with Pro´s and Con´s equally on both sides...
Now "3rd party" recommendation will help you to decide...
It´s really up to you to try out and find which annoys you least!

[PieBerger]

Hope this is the right thread for this.

Anyway, what are the overall advantages and disadvantages going from Live 12 Suite to whatever the current version of Bitwig Studio is (6?) .. ?

Oh, and what’s the precise ongoing cost of license ownership, assuming I want to be up to date at all times?

Thanks.

I'll help you out with the costs, because it's quick one. If you want to be fully up to date you will need to renew your update plan annually. The list price is €169 but they have regular 25% off sales and since you don't have to activate them immediately, you can buy in advance at the lower price. The effective annual cost is therefore €129.

You can save 11% at JRR Shop with coupon code 'forum' (you need to be logged in), possibly more if the USD exchange rate works in your favour. 129*0.89=114.81 USD is currently 89 GBP for example, which is super reasonable!

[xbitz]

The mainly wiring-type,AI under Bitwig is actually pretty solid in my opinion — I’ve already done some real work with it. ( ok. sure, I also implemented writing to and reading notes from clips, because I couldn’t help myself — but at least I’m not proud of it. )



Meanwhile, a kind fellow human went ahead and indexed an effectively infinite amount of U-He presets — modulation included — so those are searchable as well. That’s a different MCP though; see the end of my video. The two combined are actually quite fun.

ps. sure I’d also checked arrangment creating, the temptation was there — but Bitwig doesn’t really support arranger hacking to that extent. You can create cue markers, but you can’t even rename them, so you can’t really build something like a proper trance track structure with the current API: you end up with unnamed cues and named scenes

luckily ( https://github.com/csabacsaba/WigAI A forked but heavily extended project — I’m definitely not the original sinner.)

[stamp]

Hope this is the right thread for this.

Anyway, what are the overall advantages and disadvantages going from Live 12 Suite to whatever the current version of Bitwig Studio is (6?) .. ?

Oh, and what’s the precise ongoing cost of license ownership, assuming I want to be up to date at all times?

Thanks.

I'll help you out with the costs, because it's quick one. If you want to be fully up to date you will need to renew your update plan annually. The list price is €169 but they have regular 25% off sales and since you don't have to activate them immediately, you can buy in advance at the lower price. The effective annual cost is therefore €129.

You can save 11% at JRR Shop with coupon code 'forum' (you need to be logged in), possibly more if the USD exchange rate works in your favour. 129*0.89=114.81 USD is currently 89 GBP for example, which is super reasonable!

Just to add to this. If you time your upgrade plans wisely you will spend less then that.
Since the upgrade plan includes all the 0.0.x updates if you upgrade plan expires let's say when v7.1 gets released you don't have to renew until 7.2 gets released to be up to date since all updates to 7.1 will be included even if update plan has expired. Also when a new beta gets released you will get final stable version (and all 0.0.x updates) even if your update plan has expired during the beta period.

[Yorrrrrr]

I'm so impressed with Bitwig in version 6. For the first time I'm considering switching from Ableton.

[coroknight]

The DAW itself is getting better and better. Love it.

If they upgraded the grid with max4live type features then it’d seriously threaten ableton.

[kvotchin]

The DAW itself is getting better and better. Love it.

If they upgraded the grid with max4live type features then it’d seriously threaten ableton.

So I take it Bitwig doesn’t have a scripting language (one that’s open to users, I mean). Because, as it happens, some DAWs other than Ableton Live do.

[xbitz]

btw
&
take a look at the stackability of devices (from the Modular Concepts series of the official channel) — this is where Bitwig’s technology really shows its next-level superiority. (esp. the piano one from 18mins)
or