So how's Bitwig 6 going?

[BobDog]

Mad isn't it!

They've had about eight months to do it from the first beta. Absolutely baffling.

Instructions, who needs instructions

I like to press every button and change every setting so I can work it out for myself and see what happens.

"Click, did that change anything? Presses play... Does that sound different? Hits a random key on the midi controller... Sounds the same... Does anything look different? Hmmm ok... Guess I'll come back to that... Clicks on main timeline and "...

I hired a car the other week and couldn't work out how the hell anything worked. I went on the internet to download the pdf manual, over 800 pages of nonsense covering every model of the car which were all different!

So the random pressing of buttons did come into play.

[pekbro]

I wonder if they will ever fix the bug, where you cannot load a vstpreset, if loading a plugin from the favorites menu.

[MegaPixel]

I hired a car the other week and couldn't work out how the hell anything worked. I went on the internet to download the pdf manual, over 800 pages of nonsense covering every model of the car which were all different!

So the random pressing of buttons did come into play.

I hear you there...

I've not had a car in many years, I was sat in the middle of a car convo a few years back, happily staying out of it. Talk about an automatic hand break and various automatic other stuff. I just thought to myself, oh great that don't sound good.

[MegaPixel]

I wonder if they will ever fix the bug, where you cannot load a vstpreset, if loading a plugin from the favorites menu.

I wonder if they will ever realise that the new plugin / preset browser is absolute ..........

I built a very rough application which would just scan for dll (vst2) and vst3 and clap file extensions (so would probably only work on windows) and got it dragging and dropping plugins and samples into Bitwig and Studio One. Even in its god awful concept state it was better. Shame I lost the drive just before xmas. I may finish that some day, I should be able to get it to work for PC and Linux but I aint paying apple for anything just to use shaitcode, cough xcode.

[Tomtommn]

The flow is a little weird, there are things I liked that they took away. Regardless it's a great daw and I'm sure I'll get used to it. My biggest issue at the moment is the waves vocal Rider plug-in its making the screen flash and it's basically unusable if I want to use that plug in which I would generally use on anything with vocals. So that's a real big problem.

[MegaPixel]

The flow is a little weird, there are things I liked that they took away. Regardless it's a great daw and I'm sure I'll get used to it. My biggest issue at the moment is the waves vocal Rider plug-in its making the screen flash and it's basically unusable if I want to use that plug in which I would generally use on anything with vocals. So that's a real big problem.

Hmmm that I would have thought that to be a plugin issue as a programmer, but if it works in other DAWs, I have it also and on bitwig 5.3.13 its fine, so this either means that both are using the GPU to render and are clashing at some point in the render pipeline or maybe a memory isolation issue, not sure, but I really don't like the sound of that.

Especially when I got near 2000 plugins...

You might have bumped my upgrade time from version 6.1.x to 6.3.x or 7.1.x

Thanks for the info

[pseudonym_303]

Rider plug-in its making the screen flash

There was topic with flickering screen, GPU driver update helped. You can check also, what mode is used in Bitwig: OpenGL (default if I remember correctly) or Vulcan, and play with that.

[Milkman]

The flickering screen or individual windows issue is one that affects more than Bitwig, and for me mostly happens in cubase (13-15).

Ive spent a bit of time researching why this happens, as I saw it happen in games as well, and it is almost always related to G-sync/free sync or variable refresh technologies. Disabling or tweaking that often helps. I have mine set to "full screeen applications only" so it doesnt usually make stuff in BWS or Cubase flicker and only happens in games from time to time.

[SonikHorizon]

I have annoying bugs with automation lanes. I can't type exact values for points. It doesn't register.
Also often when I drag points I don't see the value change, not in the arranger or in the inspector although I can see the effect on the parameter in plugins.
I also hate the fact that when I'm zoomed in on all tracks/automation lanes and I add new lanes they are not automatically zoomed in.
I like automation clips and alias clips but they are not crucial for me, the more I work with Bitwig 6 the more I miss Bitwig 5 honestly.

[stamp]

I also hate the fact that when I'm zoomed in on all tracks/automation lanes and I add new lanes they are not automatically zoomed in.
I like automation clips and alias clips but they are not crucial for me, the more I work with Bitwig 6 the more I miss Bitwig 5 honestly.

Same here. I would also add hold points that appear when not requested (even if there already is a tool and a shortcut to create them) to the list. I redeemed a code I had lying around and updated to 6 but once I'm done with the project I'm working on in 6 I will switch back to 5. It's nice to have cool features like automation clips and alias clips when you need them but I value speed and well executed basic features more then fancy stuff. And 5 gives me exactly that. Heck... I've done music for the past 20+years without aliases and automation clips ...

[MegaPixel]

I also hate the fact that when I'm zoomed in on all tracks/automation lanes and I add new lanes they are not automatically zoomed in.
I like automation clips and alias clips but they are not crucial for me, the more I work with Bitwig 6 the more I miss Bitwig 5 honestly.

Same here. I would also add hold points that appear when not requested (even if there already is a tool and a shortcut to create them) to the list. I redeemed a code I had lying around and updated to 6 but once I'm done with the project I'm working on in 6 I will switch back to 5. It's nice to have cool features like automation clips and alias clips when you need them but I value speed and well executed basic features more then fancy stuff. And 5 gives me exactly that. Heck... I've done music for the past 20+years without aliases and automation clips ...

I don't think they should have released v6 for another 6 to 12 months, and they should have opened the beta to all with time date expiry not registered active sub users only.

I was going to upgrade at 6.1.x but now I'm thinking 7.1.x, there seems to be many little but important things just not implemented yet, or not implemented correctly or never going to be implemented which exist in 5.x.x (reading here on kvr, redit etc).

While they have done a great job on a re-skin, and nice to see they worked out vector splines to a better degree and integrated them into many areas also, but that re-skin needed a lot more work than they expected I suspect, and many of the core features of bitwig still needs a lot of work, now with additional v6.0.x missing features and issues...

Mind u if they don't pull their finger out of their a**'s fake AI will be vibe coding this s***t by 2030 and all those little requests will get done by some new daw on the block... or that company with enough money throw enough tokens/compute at user requests and issues...

[jarnold]

May 3rd and still no v6 manual. Seriously, what is going on Bitwig?

[Tracewidth]

The fecklessness around providing a manual for a released is really quite insulting and angering. Making matters worse, prior extant versions of the manual were worst-in-class among prominently successful DAWs.

I just took a survey for Ableton about their new integrated video lessons in 12.4 , and then realized that 12.4 was fully documented via the online manual *and* downloadable PDF version, including the dumb video lessons, and I wanted to go back and re-do the survey: let me praise you to the sky, Ableton, for your classy, excellent documentation standards!

[tompisa]

It seems to me that Bitwig is going through a bit of a creative slump. I totally get it, given all the innovations the team has delivered in recent years. And basically, DAWs—including Bitwig—have reached a point of saturation. What more can you possibly add in terms of functions and features? What Bitwig offers in version 6 is more than enough for me. It’s all top-notch, and I’m able to produce music with complete peace of mind. Thanks to Bitwig !

[SLiC]

I just took a survey for Ableton about their new integrated video lessons in 12.4 , and then realized that 12.4 was fully documented via the online manual *and* downloadable PDF version, including the dumb video lessons, and I wanted to go back and re-do the survey: let me praise you to the sky, Ableton, for your classy, excellent documentation standards!

I have been so impressed with the V12 release and all of the almost continuous free updates that I am pretty much full time back with Live now. Also the PUSH 3, Move and even Note integration and MAX stuff has gone next level as an eco system. I think around the time Bitwig was at V3 they were winning the better DAW IMO, but after they started messing with the browser and then Live added probably the best browser of any DAW, I just found myself using Live more. I will still probably update Bitwig at some time in some sale (I am on V5) but I think Bitwig slowed down (automation clips are cool though!) and Ableton have definitely get a hell of a lot better in the last few years!