Bitwig 6.1 beta available: Sampler, redefined

[ebloo]

Bitwig Studio 6.1 is coming, bringing you a radically updated Sampler.

The new Sampler features advanced slicing and powerful new modes for time-stretching and granular playback. It also offers intelligent pitch detection, hardware emulation, and many more updates across the device.

Sampler now offers versatile slicing in all play modes. Quickly set and adjust slices with five modes, choose how to trigger them, and explore unique features like per-slice modulation and looping.

The new Spectral play mode brings you transparent time-stretching with vast sonic potential. Sync to the project tempo and preserve transients while you stretch. Or transform a sample with wild harmonic bending.

Fragments is a mighty new granular play mode. Generate up to 256 grains per voice with their own playback rate, position, and size. Sync them to the beat for hypnotic rhythms, or add up to 16 repeats for massive density.

Emulate hardware flavors – or crunch sounds into oblivion – with analog saturation, tape character, and ‘90s-style downsampling. Apply our custom algorithms differently per-voice, to access zones your gear can’t reach.

Automatic pitch analysis revolutionizes old workflows and opens up new ones. Once analyzed, an entire sample will dynamically match whatever pitch you play. A new take on auto-tune, or an endless supply of pad sounds.

Bitwig Studio 6.1 features many more updates to Sampler, including a new Bell filter, expanded multisample functionality, and extra options in The Grid. It also brings you Tuner, a handy analyzer device and Grid module.

[SLiC]

Looks interesting

[jules99]

Holy f**k, they went ahead and created the ultimate sampler. This thing does EVERYTHING and might be a reason to draw users from other DAWs. Insanely powerful. Let's see how stable it is.

[PsYAuM]

Looks awesome.
In a perfect world ARA would have been released with it but none the less this looks pretty amazing.
As usual Bitwig looks like they've waved there wand upon the sampler.

[JHernandez]

About time. Bitwig's sampler is integral to my project. I'm very pleased with what I'm seeing so far.

[SLiC]

-deleted- was beaten to it

[foosnark]

Holy f**k, they went ahead and created the ultimate sampler. This thing does EVERYTHING

It's still a sample player that doesn't record, right? I don't think it counts as "everything" or "ultimate" without that. Preferably with the ability to separately control the playback and record heads in the Grid, for all kinds of buffer manipulation possibilities.

That said, this is definitely a lot of nice improvements, and a solid upgrade for a minor release. The extra outputs in the Grid will be useful for me. Looks like I'll be getting back on the upgrade plan.

[EuroHobbes]

Especially interested in the Grid integration, this looks awesome.

I bought an upgrade plan planning to wait till 6.1. Pleasant surprise that the wait is this short.

[Echoes in the Attic]

This is what I always wanted in Bitwig's sampler plus a lot more. The slicing with all the other modes looks amazing.

This will finally be enough to make me update my Bitwig, which I haven't done in a few years. I was already thinking about it after the recent automation improvements actually, plus I heard they improved window touch and pen functionality to be able to use the selected tools, so I'd love to try it on a surface pro again. If it all works properly now and with these sampler improvements, I think this would be the best mobile, pen based package.

All I would want now to make me fully switch back from Ableton is a snapshot system like Ableton's performance pack.

[Dionysos]

Love it, this looks super powerful while still simple to use. I like the way the modulators are integrated for per-slice settings (will 3 be enough though? ). I don't think I'll have much need for Serato Sample after this.

[pdxindy]

Barely scratched the surface with all the new possibilities in Sampler, but my first impression is positive as it is easy to get a variety of musically useful results. The dynamic pitch option is very interesting. So is the spectral mode.

[pdxindy]

Love it, this looks super powerful while still simple to use. I like the way the modulators are integrated for per-slice settings (will 3 be enough though? ).

In the practical sense, 3 is likely enough... in the mad scientist approach, no way!

[pboy]

Wow, this opens up a lot of new sound design visions! Imagine grabbing a physical/mechanical instrument to record a series of the same note, throw your recorded file into the sampler and you have an instant round-robin sampler program I happen to be a sucker for "reveresed guitar tracks", and now you can simply play along and make every on-set reversed. No more need to play along to a reversed main mix to achive musical "reversed axes".

[Echoes in the Attic]

Love it, this looks super powerful while still simple to use. I like the way the modulators are integrated for per-slice settings (will 3 be enough though? ).

In the practical sense, 3 is likely enough... in the mad scientist approach, no way!

I'm still a bit confused about how these P modulators work. So for slices, when you select one of them, it looks like you can offset each slice and different knob values. So how do you define when something is using P1 offsets vs P2 or how do the different P modulations work together? I don't even know if my question even makes sense.

[pdxindy]

Love it, this looks super powerful while still simple to use. I like the way the modulators are integrated for per-slice settings (will 3 be enough though? ).

In the practical sense, 3 is likely enough... in the mad scientist approach, no way!

I'm still a bit confused about how these P modulators work. So for slices, when you select one of them, it looks like you can offset each slice and different knob values. So how do you define when something is using P1 offsets vs P2 or how do the different P modulations work together? I don't even know if my question even makes sense.

As an experiment, you can select P1 and offset Slice 1 +100.

Now, if you modulate say Pitch +12 semitones via P1, then Slice 1 will play 1 octave up and the other slices will still be at default.
If you want a slice to play at half speed, or have a short loop point or a long loop point, different granular settings, etc., that's what P1, P2 and P3 are for.