I've been using FL Studio for a couple of years and am currently looking at other DAWs. After installing the Bitwig demo, I'm not really comfortable with the browser and the organization of my plugin collection in particular. In FL I created a very detailed folder structure for my plugins (see image). It seems that it is not possible to create a detailed structure of folders and sub-folders there, with which I can filter by manufacturer on the one hand, and by category on the other. Without subfolders, it is also not really possible to separate effect plug-ins and instruments within collections. If you have several hundred plug-ins, it will be difficult to make a targeted selection without a lengthy search - unless you can remember hundreds of names and functions. I think I will have to find another way of sorting my collection for quick access if i want to switch to Bitwig.

 

Bitwig's own pop up browser gives you vendor filtering options, if you want to mirror this one from the picture, just do that on the folder level in your main VST folder. But yeah, probably not as good as in FL.

 

As the plugins are installed in many different folders in Windows, I would probably have to reinstall them all. This is currently not an option - and therefore Bitwig will probably not be my choice - the lack of a quick and dead easy way to select my plugins without further searching would probably interrupt my workflow too much. Maybe I'm just too inflexible and should rethink my approach. Thanks for the answer anyway.

 

In Bitwig you can type the company name, or plugin name. And you can create collections, tags, folders: https://www.bitwig.com/userguide/latest/browsers/

Ableton 12, has a new good plugin selection system too.

Finally plugin user's should learn company's names and plugin's names to know how to find them, for the better.
I don't know any other system. Daw's are a mess. If you have a lot is better to create an excel with all the info just in case.

 

Trouble with Bitwig is if you're using uhe plugs and have a healthy collection of presets, bitwig wants to index them all.. It slows stuff up massively.

 

That's Ableton⤴️

Bitwig has no issues with scanning being slowed down by too many files. I have not only lots of u-he presets but all the sample packs indexed aswell. Absolutely no hiccups (legit Bitwig 4.something)

As for plugin organization, I just know what I need by now, so I simly search, but at least in my version, I have my vst2/3 placed in category folders and Bitwig sees them as such

 

Bitwig certainly has issues with uhe presets. Let's say there's 40,000 presets located in the default prest path for Diva. Bitwig wants to index all of them. There's no way to stop bitwig from looking in that location. I think the relationship bitweem uhe and bitwig forges this problem. But there it is. If you've got thousands of presets for uhe stuff then bitwig is going to scan it all..

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2024