Let‘s speculate about 6.0

[Fannon]

And let me add this ... I have bought update plans and immediately activated them out of urge to support them ... I'm locked in until october 2026. I activated the plans to support them before I have learned that the dev capa and money is going into hardware developement.

I feel the same. My last plan activation was really low value to me, it feels like they spent much time into hardware things that I don't really care about. But well, if it works out for them as a company and makes Bitwig stronger, be it so. I'm just a bit afraid that Bitwig is doing itself not a favor with their current course of mostly focusing on nerd stuff - and that's bad for everyone.

But like you, I can appreciate the nerd stuff. It just shouldn't come on cost of fundamental feature requests.

[slackhead]

My last plan activation was really low value to me ...

I'm the same. I activated my last plan in April last year and there has been very little since to warrant the term 'upgrade'. Sure there has been some under the hood changes which may do some good in the long term, but it's impacted solidity for me in a negative way - I'm getting many more plugin crashes than ever before. Bitwig was always very reliable in the past, not so much now.
I've been looking at the current sale and debating whether I should risk buying another years plan or hold out until I can thoroughly test 6.0 (or whatever it gets called). I'm very much in two minds. Bitwig is still my favourite DAW by a long shot and I want to support the devs, but currently value for money is pretty poor, especially for someone like me who only has a few hours a week to enjoy this stuff.

[pdxindy]

I'm just a bit afraid that Bitwig is doing itself not a favor with their current course of mostly focusing on nerd stuff - and that's bad for everyone.

But like you, I can appreciate the nerd stuff. It just shouldn't come on cost of fundamental feature requests.

I disagree with the narrative that they are mostly focusing on nerd stuff.

First, the feature that took the most development time in 5.3 was the audio system overhaul. I'd guess that 75% of the development time for 5.3 went to the audio system changes. That's core functionality.

Then they improved the loading time for projects and presets. Is that nerdy stuff or a fundamental improvement?

5.3 also added Bitwig support for Windows Arm. I'd put that in the fundamental feature column too.

Then there were various bug fixes. That is important core work to keep an application stable and reliable. Plus some controller scripts were added. Not nerd features either.

5.3 also had the drum modules and step sequencer. Okay, I suppose someone can call those nerdy, depending on how you define the term. I don't personally consider those nerd stuff as drums and a sequencer are pretty basic musical building blocks.

But regardless, the majority of development time for 5.3 did not go to nerd stuff. It was the same with 5.2 with stuff like:

New Graphics Engine
Plugin Undo
Beat Detection improvements
Object Selection Workflow improvements
New Time Selection functions
Lots of refinements to other existing functions

None of that is nerd stuff and the graphics engine was the biggest consumer of development time.

[monolithx]

- Plugin Undo
Unfortunately the only new "user" core feature in the list, as many features, has minimal implementation with no customization option. After using it, messing DAW undo functions with plugins undo ones, is a complete STUPIDITY!
And where a simple checkbox to deactivate it, would be able to solve plugins continuously flooding the undo queue. Support throws away the problem by pushing the responsibility back to the plugin editor (if it still exists). It's not my job here to debate VST2/3 specs. But as a generic, "pro" DAW, Bitwig should be able to manage corner cases. Do other DAWs having the issue?

- Audio system
I don't see any difference under Windows. Still not releasing the audio driver for me.

- New Graphics Engine
I don't see any effective improvement.

- Others:
Anecdotic

[Fannon]

I disagree with the narrative that they are mostly focusing on nerd stuff.

First, the feature that took the most development time in 5.3 was the audio system overhaul. I'd guess that 75% of the development time for 5.3 went to the audio system changes. That's core functionality.

Then they improved the loading time for projects and presets. Is that nerdy stuff or a fundamental improvement?

5.3 also added Bitwig support for Windows Arm. I'd put that in the fundamental feature column too.

Then there were various bug fixes. That is important core work to keep an application stable and reliable. Plus some controller scripts were added. Not nerd features either.

Fair point, many of the added features can be considered quite fundamental. And I think with them working on this, they may have now the DAW with the most modern foundation.

For me, it wasn't that useful, e.g. I don't need ARM support, nor did I notice any changes of the audio system rewrite, except that Bitwig stability seem to have degraded for some. I think they did audio engine rewrite to support their own audio interface better (which I don't see a need of). GUI rewrite seems promising for the future, but didn't change anything noticeable for me either.

So yes, fundamental changes and improvements were added, some of them nice and useful to me. But almost nothing of that was on my wish / need list to be honest.

[pdxindy]

So yes, fundamental changes and improvements were added, some of them nice and useful to me. But almost nothing of that was on my wish / need list to be honest.

Of course, if someone is not satisfied with the development approach, that is their opinion and there's nothing really to say about it. I only responded because this narrative that they (the Devs) focus on nerd stuff gets thrown out regularly and I don't see that as an accurate description of reality.

The last couple updates didn't have anything significant from my wish list either. But I make music and Bitwig works for well enough to get stuff done and enjoy it. The truth is, for me at least, if my entire wish list were fulfilled tomorrow, my music wouldn't be better, or change in any appreciable way.

[TheYke]

As for the audio engine rewrite: what has been added is quite substantial for Linux users, and I'm very grateful for the full fledged Linux support.

E.g.: aggregate devices (outside of Mac universe) is a pretty cool thing.

EDIT: One could argue, of course, that Linux support in it self is outright nerd stuff So keep on, please.

[coroknight]

How dare the developers spend my hard earned money on features other users find useful. It’s all about me me me /s

[Fannon]

When new features drop, many of them are something people haven't been anticipating / wishing for. That speaks for innovation and independence, but not so much for customer focus maybe.

I'm not so concerned about the Bitwig devs not doing what I personally want. Its also my own decision when to buy / activate upgrades. Just noticed that in my case, the last upgrade round had almost nothing I really needed / wanted. If you look at what the community wants from Bitwig (e.g. Bitwish), it seems like this is not just me. It looks like v6 / next update may change this.

[BazJacuzzi]

I've defended Bitwig a lot in the past, but the last few updates have made Bitwig a lot more unstable on my system. The graphics/audio engine rewrite has introduced bugs, as has the very poorly implemented plugin undo. Blows my mind that there's no way of turning plugin undo off, even at a global level.

I'm now in the position of having to use an upgrade just to get bug fixes for these features.

It's great software still, but the last couple of years have not been encouraging.

[GGaudio7]

Started using Bitwig for its exceptional MPE support (at a time years ago, when Ableton & Cubase did not) and love using it with my Seaboards ...
Although I am on macOS, I do really appreciate their support for Linux, as I do think, it is always good to have choices ...
Still on version 5.2 though ( so cannot comment now on any, maybe audio engine implementation related misbehavior ),
and really interested what comes up with Bitwig 6 !
( wandering if it brings something concerning GUI-workflow ...)

[tumface]

The graphics engine update was great for me. UI significantly faster. The audio engine update is nice in theory if I want to use external devices that can send audio over usb. (OS-level aggregate devices on Mac are pretty ass, and don't exist at all on Windows.)

The plugin undo thing is just obnoxious. There's no way to turn it off and lots of plugins flood undo history and/or don't handle having the parameter change reverted by the host. And lots of plugins do stuff that can't be handled correctly by a host-level undo (like destructively editing a big wavetable.) Yeah, OK, maybe it's the plugin developer's fault for not doing something correctly. Too bad! I can't get them to fix it. The host should have a way to deal with this. Even just a checkbox. I emailed Bitwig about this, but still nothing. Sigh.

[ThomasHelzle]

Curious if/when something will come along that will put me over the threshold again.
Very happy on 4.4.10 - stable and even has a usable browser.
Renoise is a lot of fun too...

[coroknight]

As a reminder, they literally said the next update will feature changes to the piano roll and arranger. So we are getting fundamental workflow updates.

[EggplantS07]

Are their update cycles getting longer?