But they are the normal daws now, most of hobbyist dont do Multi track recording like you had to do.
i mean, the early versions of live didn´t have Bounce/Render track functions

 

I was really open minded about Bitwig and decided to give it a try. It seemed to be really well laid out, but it will not read AU plugins. I decided against going through the trouble of re-installing all of my plugins just to give Bitwig a thorough chance. Maybe I'll try it again when I set up a new computer.

EDIT:
I highly respect the devs out here in the audio world that are building Linux compatibility. There is huge potential in the future for Linux audio and more dev teams should be incorporating this line of thought.

 

I have recorded into it, for shits and giggles with some friends. It handled two a KORG Karma, Kronos, an electric guitar, 2 microphones, and output from an old Alesis Reverb Unit (8channels audio) + 2 Midi all in sync into a MacBook Pro. It wouldn't fail as recorder. It actually handled itself quite well. Don't know of a modern DAW that couldn't handle recording at least 16 channels without a problem.

Anything they can get their hands on. I've heard projects done in Garageband on an IPad that were passably well recorded. It's more of a user thing than a software thing for recording these days.

For fast workflows and old school compatibility Bitwig doesn't do VCA or fader grouping and control surface/board compatibility good as the traditionist DAWs, it's also isn't as intuitive as it could be. Automation is on par with Live, but it doesn't have shapes pre-set shapes like Live does, it relies on it's modulators for that.

The configurability of the effects outstanding, you can turn the standard EQ into a DEQ in seconds, you can make the stock compressor do whatever you want +/- if you were buying fresh and had no investment or know how in an other product and were under 32 tracks for projects the only reason you wouldn't buy in would be Reaper.

The only thing that makes it just takes space on my disc rather than using is a lack of books and after so many years of Logic/PT/DP and the impatience of getting older and just getting stuff done.

For just straight recording though, it's a bit overkill when you compare the cost to Reaper even if you can make whatever you want chances are at that point in your journey you don't even know what you want to begin with.

 

Studio One is very complete DAW, but I don't like audio editing in it. It is very powerful, but I prefer the way Ableton, Cubase and especially Bitwig way of editing audio clips. Stock plugins consume are not cpu efficient, and I don't like using them. I am just nitpicking.

Perhaps because you were already used to Ableton. For a complete beginner, Bitwig makes more sense than Ableton. Theme/skin of Bitwig is not minimal like Ableton because they have to make it user friendly for touch screen users.

One simple example of Bitwig making more sense than Ableton - try adding a midi plugin before an instrument on a track in ableton. You can't, you have to create one instrument track for midi plugin and one for instrument plugin and then you have to route them. There are many more examples I can think of where Bitwig makes more sense to a new user than Ableton, because it is actually what Bitwig's developers wanted to create in the first place - Solving workflow which Ableton did wrong.

Exactly, first DAW is mostly the comfortable DAW. For ableton users, who are used to things specific for Ableton, Bitwig may not make sense to them. For a complete beginner, Bitwig makes way more sense than Ableton.

Two big things I miss in Bitwig are:
1. Melodyne type manual pitch correction. It doesn't even have ARA support, which sucks really bad.
2. Automation clips. Automation clips are very powerful. Ask FL Studio users and Reaper users. Every DAW should support automation clips. Reaper implemented them perfectly.

 

Bitwig is mandatory for me for techno live gigs. Better than ableton because of the crazy modulations everywhere, far better than Ableton.
On the other side Logic pro for studio work, huge sound library, and very good plugins, even if older UI of them has not been refreshed for 20 years, which for a billionaire company, sounds a pitty and looks odd with the rest of the DAW wich has a modern UI.

 

FL's automation clips are fucked. If you use them like samples, chopped and repeated (that's what the idea behind clips is anyways) you run into various glitches and pops especially with smart disable. Sometimes if your playhead is at the position a clip starts it might occur at times that the clip doesn't get "activated" or send any parameter changes to the plugin.

 

I have experience of Reaper. I didn't know that FL's automation clips are buggy. My point is automation clips are very powerful. Reaper's implementation is perfect.

Only thing I hate (yes, hate) in Reaper is parallel plugins processing which is done via pin system. I mean who has time for that, it's pretty bad user experience. I have to safe fx chain to save time, but still, it is not a good experience. Otherwise, Reaper is a complete DAW for me.
Reaper needs to implement parallel fx/instruments processing like in Studio One, or something like FL's patcher.

 

WARNING : this is a very long story to basically say "I love Bitwig"

I was a Live fan to the core. I invested a lot of time to master it, I had nailed my workflow perfectly. I learned all the keyboard shortcuts, the hacks, how each device works... When Ableton released the M4L Essentials plugins (or shall I say added the control devices like LFO or Envelope Follower with Live 10) it marked a shift in my approach to production : so now, instead of painstakingly draw every line of automation by hand, I had devices that would somehow do them automatically, to a certain degree. Plus, the added unpredictability, the new randomness of it was a dearly welcome change. I started to re-build my technique around these new elements, they became vital parts of my workflow.

Then in 2018 I stumbled upon the Youtube channel of Benn Jordan aka The Flashbulb, one of my favorite musicians. He had made what could very possibly be the first video about VCV Rack. That made a huge impact on me, I discovered proper modular synthesis and went HARD at it : I spent the following two years almost exclusively on VCV, except for the occasional project that called for a proper arrangement capable DAW.
Here was what I was trying to do with Live, but with infinitely more control AND randomness. Modular was definitely my new passion, I was browsing module catalogues all day even though I didn't have any money to build a synth lol.

At the end of 2019, the mandatory military service finally caught up with me, I couldn't run from it anymore, I had to go away for several months, away from my music tools, from everything.

As I was packing my bags and getting ready to leave in a few days, Benn Jordan released another video that would once again change the way I do music (and cement his status as one of my favorite people ever) called The 6 Best New Pro-Audio Software Tools of 2019. In it, he mentions two amazing modular plugins, namely Phase Plant and Lion by Unfiltered Audio. Strangely enough, I never really did gel with Phase Plant for some reason (the fact that my CPU would instantly max out when the patches got a tad more complex than a simple sequencer with a mono subtractive voice probably didn't help) and although I found Lion to be extremely powerful and infinitely more interesting than most VST instruments, it never became anything more than something I would fire up when I wanted to do little more than preset browsing and jamming without much aim. And to this day, I maintain my opinion that it's one of the best synths for that kind of stuff. But I digress.

Another tool he mentioned was Bitwig. As a modular lover himself, Benn was of course very impressed by Bitwig and its Grid. So I downloaded it from sister site just a day before my military service started. I knew I wouldn't have time to play with it for months, but just to satisfy my initial curiosity I opened it and gave a quick look for a few minutes. I remember how, unlike most other DAWs I've tried, the workflow seemed very intuitive. This of course is logical, as others have already pointed out a few billion times Bitwig was created by ex-Ableton guys. So I closed it, thinking I definitely needed to check it out when I'd get back several months later.

So fast forward to several months later. I come home wanting to forget about how I had just lost several months of my life for something useless and the first thing I did was open Bitwig.

My first session with it lasted several hours, and I kid you not when I say after that I haven't even opened Live for months. Here was everything I ever hoped Live to be, with extra stuff that I couldn't have even dreamed up.

Now people have been saying it's good for sound design but sucks for mixing etc. I disagree. Maybe other DAWs are better suited, but I firmly believe if you know your DAW enough you can do literally anything. Benn Jordan himself did anything from mind bending IDM to orchestral stuff for films and advertisement in FL Studio (funny anecdote : for a good while he actually lied to his employers about which DAW he was using because he thought, probably rightly, that no one in the industry would take seriously someone who used a DAW known for hip hop and electronic stuff like FL). Maybe if you're an engineer who has to mix quickly it's not the best choice, but I have been able to do everything I want with it.

My only wish is that it looked a bit more like Live. There's something about Live's interface that makes it so easy to get to work. I couldn't really tell what it is.

But anyways, Bitwig is by far one of the best products I've come across in my life. I'm really happy it exists. And they keep adding incredibly cool stuff, so it's very exciting to think about how it's gonna evolve.

Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

 

Hi, couple of days ago, I've posted here I don't like Bitwig... blabla.
However, I'm giving it an another chance!

Like any DAW (or any software, in general), more or less personal investment is required to discover, to understand, to master...

So, I assume to have a lot of practice about REAPER (main DAW) and Ableton Live Lite (used for live performances), because I'm using them since 2014.

Finally, I re-discover Bitwig Studio (v4.4) and to be honest, I admit they're very interesting goodies, such Grid (I start to dig inside more deeply). Modulations are just... awesome! They're good tutorials on YT and sister site.

Another feature I like: CLAP support (I don't know if other DAWs support recent CLAP at the moment, nope for REAPER and Live). I've tested lastest TAL-Reverb-4 and Odin 2 & Vital synthesizers, all CLAP plugin format.

Another one thing I appreciate: my Komplete Kontrol S61 MK2 keyboard is natively recognized as "control surface", so I can control Bitwig without addon (unfortunately, my Arturia BeatStep Pro MIDI controller is not in the list at the moment, but it's not really critical for my usage).

I'm considering a professional-like DAW in the near future (Q1/Q2 2023) - Ableton Live 11 Lite have too limitations IMHO, my REAPER license will expire at version 7. Perhaps the next it will be... Bitwig Studio!

A French expression says: seuls les imbéciles ne changent pas d'avis, can be translated as: only idiots don't change mind/opinion.

 

Last edited: Nov 22, 2022

REAPER just got the CLAP

 

Yep it's a excellent news, since yesterday (version 6.71).

I keep REAPER as second DAW, I'm new Bitwig Studio user (have bought a license during 100 € save-up period).

 

BitWot?

 

If any DAW does what it says it will do then it is a good DAW. Pitting one against the other which is truly personal preference is for me, a waste of my energy. We each like what we like.

 

I believe it's a very well put together DAW & objectively quite capable; I just prefer what I'm used to of course!