Bitwig 6

[Muziksculp]

Is BW-Studio 6 in beta due to a healthy number of bug reports ?

if that's not the case, what's keeping it in beta for so long ?

[Yorrrrrr]

It seems there are plenty of bugs to squash still. Waiting for beta 13 at the moment.

[tumface]

Is BW-Studio 6 in beta due to a healthy number of bug reports ?

if that's not the case, what's keeping it in beta for so long ?

It feels like beta 1 was an early pre-alpha. They hadn't even put in all of the features and changes they wanted. They're still doing big changes even in the most recent beta 12. Beta usually means feature complete or nearly feature complete, while fixing bugs and regressions. Your guess is as good as mine why they started the 'beta' so early.

Personally, one of the big design changes in Bitwig 6 has made multi-track piano roll editing much worse than v5 for me and others (and we have given them plenty of feedback on it) so I hope that Bitwig co. isn't going switch to only bug fixes just yet.

[Greenstorm33]

Your guess is as good as mine why they started the 'beta' so early.

They had to release something so their users didn't riot? Overall I'm very happy with the changes from this release, but I can't help but wonder if I'm only going to get a single .X version from my current update plan

[Muziksculp]

Hopefully BW-Studio 6 will be officially released in Feb. That's 6 months of beta testing.

[tumface]

They had to release something so their users didn't riot?

Yeah, maybe.

Hopefully BW-Studio 6 will be officially released in Feb. That's 6 months of beta testing.

I really hope not. It needs months of fixes. If they release a "stable" version next 30 days without something radically changing about how the beta is being developed, it will be a disaster. I'm fine with waiting.

[Cyoon]

yea, better they take their time. It was big changes and this shall be stable. It's an awesome update I think.

[Muziksculp]

yea, better they take their time. It was big changes and this shall be stable. It's an awesome update I think.

Sure, they can take their time, no problem. But why bother announcing a product so early, maybe in alpha phase of development. Makes me wonder. So... do they need another year or two to release ver 6 ?

[Dionysos]

Makes me wonder. So... do they need another year or two to release ver 6 ?

Lots of hyperbole going around here. The beta is pretty usable depending on which features you rely on, and I think there'll be a stable release in the next few weeks.

They hadn't even put in all of the features and changes they wanted. They're still doing big changes even in the most recent beta 12. Beta usually means feature complete or nearly feature complete, while fixing bugs and regressions. Your guess is as good as mine why they started the 'beta' so early.

There were no "big" changes in beta 12. The large changes they made throughout the beta phase were in response to people's reaction to the initial release. (Surely they didn't plan for the flying automation lane and other automation tweaks to be added post-announcement, even a lot of their feature introduction videos about automation are out of date now. I think they were happy with it and thought it just needed bug fixing.)

Personally, one of the big design changes in Bitwig 6 has made multi-track piano roll editing much worse than v5 for me and others (and we have given them plenty of feedback on it) so I hope that Bitwig co. isn't going switch to only bug fixes just yet.

That's a shame it messed with your workflow. For me, multi-track editing has finally become usable in v6. It was a clunky pain before, now it's actually viable for "casual" on-the-fly multi-track editing.

[tumface]

There were no "big" changes in beta 12.

Beta 12 redid how automation for Bitwig devices is smoothed/interpolation. It's a big change that people have been requesting for years. (The old way was excessively smoothed, with weird timing, no ability to turn it off, and didn't even effectively eliminate clicks.) It's a great change, but, it also added a bunch of new bugs with automation data for Bitwig devices.

That's a shame it messed with your workflow. For me, multi-track editing has finally become usable in v6. It was a clunky pain before, now it's actually viable for "casual" on-the-fly multi-track editing.

Yes, I like most of the new changes with the arrangement and piano roll.

But the new problem is that the dedicated, arrangement-selection-agnostic ordered list of tracks on the side of the detail editor is gone. So, doing multi-track piano roll editing requires continuous moving between interacting with the arrangement view and piano roll view, and changing selections and adjusting the filter settings. It's fine to have that as an option, since sometimes it's useful to be able to create multi-track filtered views using the selection in the arrangement as a starting point, but if you're doing heavy editing across lots of tracks, it's a mess.

On top of that, changing the selection of tracks and clips will cause the piano roll view to reset every time, making it difficult for me (and others) to keep track of what's going on, because the piano roll will constantly be resetting its zoom (horizontal and vertical), scroll, and grid and snap settings.

(I've reported all of these, with videos and explanations... I hope they are remedied in some way.)

[OdoSendaidokai]

Changes in Bitwig Studio 6.0, Beta 13 [released 30 January 2026]

- New Features
- Global Automation Behavior
- Free Time toggle
- Improvements
- Fixes
- Crashes Fixed

[pdxindy]

That's a shame it messed with your workflow. For me, multi-track editing has finally become usable in v6. It was a clunky pain before, now it's actually viable for "casual" on-the-fly multi-track editing.

I also find the multi-track editing improved in V6. IMO, it's much improved.

[monolithx]

Will it possible one day to know what's new/improved in Bitwig 6 without going through 10's of beta release notes?

[tumface]

I also find the multi-track editing improved in V6. IMO, it's much improved.

It is improved in almost all ways, except that one way, which was really important to me. Especially in how it differentiated Bitwig's piano roll from Ableton Live.

Live's multi-track editing is notoriously bad, I think, in large part because you have to keep switching back and forth between interacting with the arrangement view and the piano roll, and because there's no way to have a stable view in the piano roll (zoom etc. keeps resetting.) The changes in Bitwig 6 make it nearly the same as Live in those regards, and it's just objectively worse for me, even though so many other things have improved.

The piano roll tools, data selection handling, mouse hitboxes etc. are all much better in 6, but the multi-track editing is kind of ruined for me in its current state, which is a really weird spot for me to be in.

[Ou_Tis]

Beta 12 redid how automation for Bitwig devices is smoothed/interpolation. It's a big change that people have been requesting for years. (The old way was excessively smoothed, with weird timing, no ability to turn it off, and didn't even effectively eliminate clicks.) It's a great change, but, it also added a bunch of new bugs with automation data for Bitwig devices.

From the release notes: "Automation smoothing has been improved. It is now time-symmetrical, affects a smaller time range, and offers improved anti-click performance."

Still no option to turn it off or adjust it apparently.

But this is the feature I care about the most. Not being able to accurately record automation from my hardware controllers---or from Waves Vocal Rider or Bass Rider---was my biggest issue with Bitwig, and the main reason why I switched to Ableton for playing MPE instruments and recording automation. (Cubase is even better for recording automation accurately, since smoothing can effectively be set to zero, but its MPE editing is terrible. And while I can't import MPE data from Ableton to Bitwig, importing Ableton projects to Bitwig is still very convenient.)