Bitwig Studio updated to v1.2 (v1.3 release candidate also available)

Bitwig Studio was recently updated to v1.2, the most significant free update so far. Those of you currently using the 1.2 Beta will discover a very welcome new addition, a major update to the Bitwig Studio Factory Library. Their Sound Team has taken a fine-toothed comb to every existing preset, resulting in a hands-on browsing and macro control experience unlike anything you've experienced before.

Also included, 500+ brand-new fully mapped clips and presets from their partners at Detunized, Overclock Inc, Mode Audio, Prime Loops, and Sample Magic. Each collection uniquely demonstrates the power of the devices available in Bitwig Studio 1.2.

Bitwig Studio 1.3 Release Candidate
Bitwig have developed complete multi-touch functionality to quickly identify gestures for unique and intuitive workflow. The Bitwig Studio 1.3 release candidate is now available for all three platforms, including multi-touch on Windows, Linux, and optimized with a special display profile for Microsoft Surface Pro and Surface Book. Mac OS X does not fully support multi-touch at this time, but Bitwig Studio is ready when that day comes. In the meantime, Mac users will be happy to find several bug fixes and the new E-Cowbell device while they wait.

Bitwig Studio 1.2 Release Notes

New:

• Automatic quantization of recorded notes.
• Pop-up Browser: Context sensitive browser that enables more convenient and faster browsing of devices, presets, samples, multi-samples and clips, and allows to audition choices before inserting.
• Customizable keyboard mappings including MIDI controller support.
• Jack support including Jack Transport on all platforms.
• Group Tracks.
• Double-size clip slots in mixer view.
• Support for high resolution displays on OS X (Retina) and Windows (High-DPI).
• Multi-touch support on Linux.
• Per-project action mappings for MIDI controllers (both raw MIDI and via controller scripts) and computer keyboard.
• Inspector for devices - makes it more convenient to keep overview about modulation mappings.
• Oscilloscope device.
• Add ALSA support.
• Support for new MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) specification.
• Added side-chain to ring modulator device.
• Add template support.
• Delay-4 device.

Improved:

• Allow to rename devices.
• Better support for touch and pen input devices.
• Modulation mappings from polyphonic sources to monophonic destinations.
• Attack and sustain modulation sources for Transient Control device.
• Better font rendering.
• Arpeggiator now analyses incoming note expressions and applies them to generated notes.
• Stronger highlight for played keys in piano roll editor.
• Add graph to dynamic devices, such as Audio Mod, Compressor, Dynamics, LFO Mod, Peak Meter, Gate and Transient Control.
• Display the band's frequency in EQ-2 and EQ-5 devices.
• Clips on Master and Effect tracks can only be dragged to pre-existing audio or instrument tracks. .
• Shortcut changes: "B" for popup browser,"Alt-B" for side panel browser.
• When saving a scene, prefill dialog with scene name.
• Add VST 64-bit and VST 32-bit file types to the device popup browser.
• Controller API: add observer that reports if a device is a plugin.
• Buffer sizes don't need to be limited to power-of-two values on OS X any more.
• Add note retrigger option to Step MOD.
• Add context menu entries for deleting clip automation to editor background, launcher clip overview and automated parameter controls.
• Focus should not change unless user is making a selection or clicking in empty area of a panel.
• When saving a project always collect files that are in another project folder to the one we are saving.
• Controller API: add function to toggle PreRoll.
• Controller API: allow to navigate items in browser filter columns with nested entries as a flat list.
• Controller API: add access to siblings of a track.
• Controller API: track bank should allow to navigate flat track list, so that simple controllers work with tracks groups.
• Controller API: cursorBrowserItem.selectNext/Previous should perform selection instead of only moving the cursor.
• Added "Note Steal Release Time" parameter to sampler to let the user control what happens when a note is cut-off by the same key. (useful for cymbals).
• Added jitter meter to the DSP Performance Graph which will shows how stable the audio processing scheduling is. If its not in the single-digit percentages try another buffer size.
• The user can tell Bitwig Studio to forget about deleted projects in the recent document list.
• Remember the next track color.
• Shift + Click on the meter's peak value resets all the meter's peak values.
• Controller API: fixed direct parameters should be listed before dynamic direct parameters (e.g. in layer device).
• Controller API: add option that controls if siblings track bank contains effect tracks and master track. .
• MMC transport support for generic controller scripts.
• Controller API: allow to specify whether track cursor looks at flattened tracks, nested tracks, or as shown expanded in the GUI.
• Optimized the WASAPI implementation for Windows 10.
• No way of knowing the tuning (in note) of a tune-related parameter other than by changing its value (therefore detuning it).

Fixed:

• If you load a project that makes use of a sample that is part of a library pack, but the pack is currently not installed on the machine that loads it, you'll get the message: "This file is available in the package manager. Would you like to download and install it?" Bug: If you click "Yes", nothing happens.
• Controller API: track position observer should take navigation context into account.
• Macro section displays "Default Preset" after loading a saved VST preset.
• Dragging arranger time to clip launcher should make slot empty if no content on arranger.
• Saving of VST plugin states crashes the plugin host on Windows.
• Icons for file types do not show up in file manager after installing Bitwig Studio on Ubuntu .
• Application icon no longer shows for Bitwig Studio on Ubuntu.
• Some equalizer bands could go below 20Hz.
• Add action to show plugin device window.
• Sends of single device chains don't get muted if you mute the main channel.
• LFO Phase parameter stopped working when Retrig is on.
• Application crash when ungrouping a group track containing a track which routes notes to the track group output.
• Crash if rescan of plugin in plugin error list window took some time and window was closed before plugin scan completed.
• Engine on Mac OS X crashes sometimes if a plugin crashes.
• Arranger cue markers and loop region should always show the events from the top level group.
• Crash when showing context menu for a modulation source that is modulating a parameter that is not available (e.g. if plugin not loaded).
• Routing choosers show the device preset name instead of the name of the device.
• Crash when consolidating clips on the arranger while the note editor is looking inside one of the clips being consolidated.
• Engine crash related to sends of nested device chains.
• Instrument Track input chooser button shows empty string when selecting renamed controllers for the first time.
• When dragging multiple audio files from the browser and using Ctrl key to put them in one track the files were still put in separate tracks.
• Controller API: crash when calling addDeviceCountObserver on device bank of cursor track.
• Shortcut modifiers are shown wrong on different operating systems (e.g. "super" on Mac).
• Controller API: accessing sends of drum pads does not work.
• Potential crash when no insertion layer is selected in layered note editor.
• Rare crash when dragging and dropping clips in the clip launcher.
• Controller API: some device parameters are not included in the direct-parameter-id list, but their values are reported.
• Big clip height does not resize the group's scene header in the mixer.
• When removing a library location it does not get removed from the search results if the cursor is currently inside that location.
• Controller API: add selectInEditor to device interface.
• Controller API: select functions in CursorDevice not working for nested VST plugins.
• Audio engine can't connect to new projects sometimes when dragging tracks from one project to the project tab bar.
• Not possible to select a waveform background in layered note editor.
• Crash when in mixer view and cursor is in mini device chain and arrow right from last track when the effect tracks are not visible.
• Dragging a no looping clip from the arranger to the clip launcher does not set the correct loop region.
• Showing the input/output section in the arranger resulted in the track names getting shorter.
• Search field is not focussed when opening Popup Browser via Drum Machine.
• Occasional crash when dragging empty scenes in clip launcher.
• Filtering of control surface shortcut in preferences did not work.
• Project folder not named correctly when saving project with a dot in filename.
• ASIO: Not all different bit-depths were properly supported + crash with buffer-size of 2048 samples.
• When saving clips or presets and clicking ok the last tag in the tag field would not be committed if the user had not typed space after it.
• Saved scenes would output to "No output" and could not be previewed in the browser.
• Impossible to create Smart Collections within a folder on Windows machines.
• Sometimes when making a shortcut assignment that is already made to another shortcut the message is not shown explaining this.
• Crash when dragging 2 empty scenes in clip launcher after the last scene in the clip launcher.
• Crash sometimes when moving cursor for the any file result of a filter column in the browser.
• Crash sometimes when double clicking recently used document in file browser.
• Wrong solo behavior for sends when tracks are routed to another track instead of master.
• Crash when working with mappings in old documents that contains plugins that can't be found.
• Occasional crash when closing document while having controller connected.
• Zooming in clip content note editor does not take loop region of empty clips into account.
• Controller script does not reach the maximum value if they overflow the range 0..127.
• When dragging in a MIDI file with tempo automation ask the user if they want to import the tempo from the clip or not.
• Controller API: crash when grouping, ungrouping or deleting group tracks in some cases.
• Controller API: "any" filter item should be part of the list of items.
• Controller API: crash when calling session.addIsActiveObserver.
• Duplicate does not work for Effect tracks.
• Links to web site from help menu did not work on Linux.
• Tag input field doesn't create tags from pending text input when losing focus.
• Notes which are cut off by the same key had a note length jitter when using large buffer sizes in the bitwig instruments.
• Controller API: crash when using selectNext/Previous with named device cursor.
• Time selection in the arranger timeline header area does not work.
• Remember state of popup browser when browsing for samples or multi samples for a sampler.
• Clip launcher clips we're slowly drifting apart due to accumulating rounding error.
• "Copy value to all layers" and "Copy modulation to all layers" don't work correctly in some situations.
• Adjusting time/secs of a beat marker by dragging inspector value is not applied.
• Crash when opening a document from native file manager before the main window of the application was shown.
• "Plugin windows follow current track" always opens VST GUI on primary screen, regardless on which screen it was open.
• Stopping the playback in the middle of a sustain-pedaled note playing creates hanging note.
• Unable to drag individual tracks for a document from the file browser.
• Window disappears from screen on Windows sometimes.
• Glitches when pitch sliding with organ with non-multiple-of-4 buffersizes.
• Retriggering the same key from MIDI is unreliable in 1.2.
• It was possible to create a feedback loop by moving a VST Instrument from a group track onto one of its child tracks, if the child track's output was routed to the VST as MIDI.
• Engine crashes when connecting to document when a scene file is selected in the browser.
• Renaming a track in the inspector creates an undo step for every single character entered.
• Renaming a device does not create an undo step.
• Crash when shift-selecting multiple launcher clips in note editor layer list.
• The same shortcut can be added multiple times to a single action and application would crash when deleting the shortcut mappings.
• Crash when dragging an empty MIDI clip into the application.
• Application crashes when trying to save clip to browser in some projects.
• Pasted notes are not inserted into the correct layer in layered note editor.
• Deleting or installing a VST while app is running does not cause the preset browser to update with the change.
• Can't activate the audio engine on OS X if set sample rate is set to automatic.
• Controller API: old preset related functions are not working any more.
• ASIO: Issue switching sample-rate.
• Soloing group with subgroups doesn't play/solo the subgroups.
• Controller API: opening application panels such as browser should not try to focus them first.
• Shift and right click to open popup browser on favorites should work in empty space too not just directly over the + button.
• Controller API: cannot select first device in chain via cursorDevice.selectPrevious ().
• Wrong default value for Step MOD (32/1).
• Files embedded in clips were not extracted into the project folder when dragged into project.
• Crash when switching documents with some controllers connected.
• Crash when control script connects to a plugin device under some circumstances.
• Soloing tracks routed to hardware outputs does not mute other tracks routed to the same output.
• Time and value fields are missing in note expression event inspector.
• Inspector shows old button style for mute and solo buttons when clicking on a layer device chain.
• Rare crash when selecting device via controller API.
• Controller API: crash when switching VST presets on controller.
• Macro doesn't receive name when mapped to 'enable bipolar' button of an LFO.
• Bouncing a clip on a track in a group to a new track should create the new track within the group.
• Context menu for a track in a track group shows a blank line instead of the item to show popup browser.