Bitwig 5.2 BETA available

[_leras]

The problem is just that the main part of every update are these devices... DAW features come always second... there the option you could use just 3rd party stuff instead is no great consolation... at the very end I pay for this quite a bit of money...
And if I setup my business scheme like this, I better fulfill my part and deliver something competitive both in quality (what it is) and efficency ...at least the same what others provide ...
I cannot tell many times I would agree that both requirements are met...

Perhaps I am too nitpicky but again for stock devices I expect functional plugins which offer a certain up to good quality but are more efficient (least equally) than 3rd party as they are supported natively ...at the least when I charge a not inconsiderable portion of the update fee for them.

DAW updates are probably harder to implement than new devices in many ways. Offloading the graphics to GPU is no small task. I didn't really have any issues with the gui, but many people asked for this.

I also would like a refocus on some of the DAW stuff, but it is coming if a bit slower than you'd like. I think the clap format and Gui have taken a lot of time. I'd love a whole point release just tweaking some of the existing stuff, but only better groove is really having me feel like I'm holding out.

Btw, why do you think in built plug ins would really be more efficient by being 'integrated'? It might help a few things like the gui, but the main number crunching wouldn't improve at all... The reason built in FX would be lower CPU is so you could use lots of them, not for better quality.

It's unreasonable to expect Bitwig to match Uad, softtube or other longs standing FX companies.

[] Peter:H []

I think the oversamplig story is actually very weird if you think what happens inside a processing chain inside a DAW

Think of a linear plugin chain of plugins A -> B -> C ... -> F

If you have oversampling sensitive plugins in this chain, i.e such that need oversampling in order to not destroy the sound, then multiple opersampling computations happen in this chain.
Let's aasuume in the example all from A to F need oversampling. This ends up in a chain with multiple (U)psampling and (D)ownsampling operations: (U-A-D) -> (U-B-D) -> (U-C-D) ... -> (U-F-D)
If these plugins are from different vendors then the Us and Ds might even be different in terms of algorithm and quality. I can oversample most Melda plugins up to 48x. I don't know though, how good the algorithm is.

Are these multple Us and Ds really necessary?

Why can't we simply have something which would fit the DNA of Bitwig: An Oversampling-Container which does U and D exactly once and then runs everything inside with out further Us and Ds... like
U -> (A -> B -> C ... -> F) -> D

I think such a thing would perfectly fit each mastering chain if you master in the DAW.

[Bjørnson]

As it’s Sunday contemplation time, I really wonder if other DAW forum discussions have similar drama queens that don’t feel heard about their bugs / problems in nearly every of their posts.

Watched not enough of this.

I think every DAW will have its frustration around missing roadmaps, features missing since version X.0, CPU hogs vs. too neutral FX… Too long update cycles vs. boring releases.

Seems not a Bitwig specific problem?
Maybe Bitwig is special with it's pricing model which heats the discussion more than others.

As Thomas Sowell says: Everything is a tradeoff.
So know the pros and cons of your DAW of choice and work around it to produce music... If frustration stays too high too long, choose another DAW.

Complaining too long about the DAW fanboys seems like the least helping path to get your music done?

[Jac459]

As it’s Sunday contemplation time, I really wonder if other DAW forum discussions have similar drama queens that don’t feel heard about their bugs / problems in nearly every of their posts.

Watched not enough of this.

I think every DAW will have its frustration around missing roadmaps, features missing since version X.0, CPU hogs vs. too neutral FX… Too long update cycles vs. boring releases.

Seems not a Bitwig specific problem?
Maybe Bitwig is special with it‘s pricing model which heats the discussion more than others.

As Thomas Sowell says: Everything is a tradeoff.
So know the pros and cons of your DAW of choice and work around it to produce music... If frustration stays too high too long, choose another DAW.

Complaining about too long about the DAW fanboys seems like the least helping path to get your music done?

Well believe it or not but Bitwig "fights" are actually quite peaceful... Ableton is the same story and Reason Studios is much much more violent. If you go to Reasontalk, you will see a level of bitterness that is really ... sad to see.

[pdxindy]

Wow... this will be my last comment:

Are you guys able to read???

I'm able to read. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean they cannot read.

Comp+ currently uses approx 2+ times as much CPU as Presswerk. Likewise, u-he's Zebralette 3 uses a ton of CPU and has no "oversampling" settings either.

One thing they both have in common is that they are in early beta and both are likely to be optimized before official release.

My guess is that it is unlikely for Comp+ to get quality settings. That is because there are already the original Compressor and Dynamics devices which use very little CPU. In that regard, the low quality settings were already there and now they are adding the high quality settings. You're just having some difficulty recognizing them as such.

[strangeraeons]

Oversampling synth oscillators has been standard practice for well over a decade. 4x seems to be the sweet spot at a native sample rate of 44.1 before you get increasingly diminishing returns.

Non linear processes like saturation distortion as well as any modulation at audio rate sound ugly when oversampling isn't applied. That's a contributing reason why the grid sounds so good! Same with Bitwig's saturator, which when compared to ableton's sounds far superior in my opinion.

Before upgrading my computer, my cpu did struggle, but it would be stupid to blame developers for that. Most modern machines are capable of handling this kind of load, I'm sure a whole lot of research goes into making sure that is the case. My solution was to bounce more tracks to audio to compensate, but from some people might feel to entitled to make that compromise.

I've written to Bitwig and they seem very open, so as long as it isn't too out of the way, they may just implement an oversampling toggle in the inspector for some devices. Personally, I think it's better on as default, especially for beginner and intermediate producers.

It might also be the case that the Bitwig refiusing to compromise on sound quality being the case that oversampling being outside the control of the user. I imagine that's the case for many synth manufacturers

[pdxindy]

I've written to Bitwig and they seem very open, so as long as it isn't too out of the way, they may just implement an oversampling toggle in the inspector for some devices. Personally, I think it's better on as default, especially for beginner and intermediate producers.

It might also be the case that the Bitwig refiusing to compromise on sound quality being the case that oversampling being outside the control of the user. I imagine that's the case for many synth manufacturers

The place where I would like an option to turn off oversampling is in the Note Grid. I use the Note Grid for some simple utility purposes. For example, remapping CC#2 to CC#1. I'm not knowledgeable on the subject, but that seems like a case where there would be no quality loss.

As for adding a low quality option to audio FX that use more cpu, there are already low cpu devices in Bitwig to add saturation, compression, etc.

[strangeraeons]

I've written to Bitwig and they seem very open, so as long as it isn't too out of the way, they may just implement an oversampling toggle in the inspector for some devices. Personally, I think it's better on as default, especially for beginner and intermediate producers.

It might also be the case that the Bitwig refiusing to compromise on sound quality being the case that oversampling being outside the control of the user. I imagine that's the case for many synth manufacturers

The place where I would like an option to turn off oversampling is in the Note Grid. I use the Note Grid for some simple utility purposes. For example, remapping CC#2 to CC#1. I'm not knowledgeable on the subject, but that seems like a case where there would be no quality loss.

As for adding a low quality option to audio FX that use more cpu, there are already low cpu devices in Bitwig to add saturation, compression, etc.

I could be wrong, but i highly doubt the note grid or any midi devices are oversampled

[pdxindy]

I could be wrong, but i highly doubt the note grid or any midi devices are oversampled

Try putting the same modules in Note Grid and in Poly Grid and the CPU use is the same.

[Jac459]

I've written to Bitwig and they seem very open, so as long as it isn't too out of the way, they may just implement an oversampling toggle in the inspector for some devices. Personally, I think it's better on as default, especially for beginner and intermediate producers.

It might also be the case that the Bitwig refiusing to compromise on sound quality being the case that oversampling being outside the control of the user. I imagine that's the case for many synth manufacturers

The place where I would like an option to turn off oversampling is in the Note Grid. I use the Note Grid for some simple utility purposes. For example, remapping CC#2 to CC#1. I'm not knowledgeable on the subject, but that seems like a case where there would be no quality loss.

As for adding a low quality option to audio FX that use more cpu, there are already low cpu devices in Bitwig to add saturation, compression, etc.

Oversampling is an audio process no ?
How is it applied to midi ?
Midi messages are midi messages, and there is no "sampling" in a midi message and thus no "over"-sampling.
Or am I missing something ?

[pdxindy]

Oversampling is an audio process no ?
How is it applied to midi ?
Midi messages are midi messages, and there is no "sampling" in a midi message and thus no "over"-sampling.
Or am I missing something ?

Hellifiknow... Note Grid, generating and/or processing notes, takes a fair bit of CPU.

Perhaps one test would be to make a project with a bunch of Note Grids generating notes (but no synths or audio FX) and see if the cpu use changes running the project at 48khz vs 96khz. I haven't tried that.

[] Peter:H []

As it’s Sunday contemplation time, I really wonder if other DAW forum discussions have similar drama queens that don’t feel heard about their bugs / problems in nearly every of their posts.

Watched not enough of this.

I think every DAW will have its frustration around missing roadmaps, features missing since version X.0, CPU hogs vs. too neutral FX… Too long update cycles vs. boring releases.

Seems not a Bitwig specific problem?
Maybe Bitwig is special with it‘s pricing model which heats the discussion more than others.

As Thomas Sowell says: Everything is a tradeoff.
So know the pros and cons of your DAW of choice and work around it to produce music... If frustration stays too high too long, choose another DAW.

Complaining about too long about the DAW fanboys seems like the least helping path to get your music done?

The problem is expectation management. I thought that Bitwig Devs are different (whatever "different" means). Actually now I own Bitwig since 2.x and learnt they just do what they want, as other DAW manufactures do. For instance they think that CLAP is a good idea which will beome a perpetum mobile and everybody will cheer and throw $ at them ... don't think so. Nevertheless the have spent Dev capacity on this. And they will host many session for Clap on one of the next trade fairs ... but honestly ... is this the core of Bitwig? A little company which has far to few Devs coming up with it's own plugin format...and promoting that on the expense of my upgrade plans?
Over the time I came to the conclusion, they are good as DSP but suck at marketing and growing their business. I repeatedly stated, the "add ons" hickup could have easily been prevented, if they'd "honored" long time supporters with a free add-on per every upgrade plan that was bough in the past model. Speaking about contemplation... this easy idea one can have after 2h of thinking or after 7 bottles of beer by accident. The failed upgrade plan move took away sources of income ... which would have been needed for growth as a company ... growth in terms of man power. Missing growth in man power then results in slower speed in development... and this results in less meet expectations. Missing growth is not only me guessing, but when looking into their tax sheet which they have to pubish...they are on a constant level much lower than abelton. but I have to be honest, I have't looked into an update on their tax sheets for a year or so. May be they have grown ...
But it's good that they have invested in the necessary GUI to GPU stuff ... but this takes away lot's of scarce Capacity of Devs which then cannot be spent in shiny cool features (whatever "shiny cool" mean to everyone).
Sum it up: Bitwig best meets my needs as a DAW in a pros/cons evaluation, but nevertheless it sucks at some core DAW aspects. Will I buy new upgrade plans. I think yes. Will I become a "fan boy" saying yes and amen to everything. No way. Am I disappointed about the last updates? Depends. The browser sucks in my eyes, whereas other users are hugh fans of it. The GPU thing is cool, because it removes technical debt and will help in the future. So I don't have a clear verdict... Let's wait and see. And this is by the way the only thing we can actually do.

[drsyncenstein]

At least it's stable and does not trash my groove.
Drama was live 7+8, that took years to improve.
But Ableton has done incredibly well in term of sales and could invested in lots of new developers.

It's now ten tears old, the guys that started a sequencer with stubborn ideas and a different idea of developing might be surprised a bit by the bitrot they build themselves. Maybe pruning and maintenance are more difficult to sell in a subscription model.
At least they seem to be working on it.

[Funk Dracula]

Oversampling is an audio process no ?
How is it applied to midi ?
Midi messages are midi messages, and there is no "sampling" in a midi message and thus no "over"-sampling.
Or am I missing something ?

From my understanding, all Grids (Poly/FX/Note) are the same thing just packaged in a different containers. For example, the FX Grid has a Mix knob. They all have the same default CPU hit when empty, which is not entirely insignificant and can add up. So you actually can't use Note Grids like crazy to do simple MIDI processing across a session nilly willy without taking the CPU hit into consideration.

I'll give a real world example; I was using an FX selector that contained about two dozen Note Grids in the slots of the selector to handle articulation mapping. All the Note Grids were doing was generating a single solitary note that was added to whatever MIDI was playing back from clips (a keyswitch note.) This meant I ended up having up to 100 Note Grids in a session. Whilst only one Note Grid would be active at a time, and all it was doing was generating a single solitary MIDI note, this ended up using mad amounts of CPU. What I ended up having to do was optimize it by using only a single Note Grid to generate a single note, then using regular MIDI transpose FX in the FX selector slots to transpose that single generated note coming from the Note Grid. The result was literally 95% less CPU usage.

So the Note Grid is definitely a scenario where it actually really makes sense to offer a different version, because it does indeed have a ton of unnecessary CPU overhead for a device that is meant to only be used for the lightest of CPU tasks (MIDI data manipulation.) I don't think we will see it soon tho, because I think it's more of an overhaul/completely different environment from it's current iteration, which is just a Grid labeled "Note Grid" simply put into a different device rack container.

If I recall, I think I've read somewhere that audio rate modulation starts to fall apart without oversampling or something along those lines. So the Grids being 4x oversampled by default might not just a question of audio quality/oscillator quality, it might be the logistics of the modulation quality offered in Bitwig as well. I'm not an authority on this stuff, just throwing it into the discussion. Perhaps somebody who knows more can chime in and verify or dismiss that.

Cheers

[Bjørnson]

Well believe it or not but Bitwig "fights" are actually quite peaceful... Ableton is the same story and Reason Studios is much much more violent. If you go to Reasontalk, you will see a level of bitterness that is really ... sad to see.

That sounds fun! I looked at Studio One some time ago and there seems to be a lot of feature frustration since the Fender acquisition - next to quality issues with the support.

I often hear that Reaper has a nice community around it and with upcoming extensions like Playtime 2https://www.helgoboss.org/projects/playtime/ there could be a proper clip matrix for arrangement ideas that I would miss otherwise in classic DAWs.
But then there are the "option menus from hell" that you have to live with, and I don't know if modulation can be achieved on a basic level.