11 ms·

Bitwig Studio 6 details revealed, and editing gets a big boost

154 points by robenkleene 1y ago

80hd 1y ago
After using Ableton for years and previously Logic, I've never used music software that evolves as fast as Bitwig. The rate at which they improve it is pretty mind-blowing in comparison.
- whydid 1y ago
  When the founders are also the lead engineers, incentives are aligned. I asked the Ableton CEO at multiple events and expos to fix repeatable bugs, and add proper PDC, and he mocked me.
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    He mocked you? Well, I am sure we would like to know more. In another comment someone said "at least developers have thought of others" because they dump their stuff in plaintext, but then you come out with such a story which makes me want to stay away from anything related to Ableton.
    - mettamage 1y ago
      Seconded, I think even one such a story on HN for this specific topic, where big tech incentives aren’t that high, is a high quality signal of company rot. I’m staying away from Ableton.
      - coldtea 1y ago
        sure, base your software decisions on random anecdotes on HN, from people who might had been rude themselves, misreading the response they got, or worse...
        mettamage 1y ago
        I see what you’re saying but I have noticed that random anecdotes on HN are worth quite a bit more than on other similar sites such as Reddit
    - coldtea 1y ago
      >but then you come out with such a story which makes me want to stay away from anything related to Ableton. Knee-jerk responding like that to a random anecdotes by a random person on the internet, who might as well be total bullshit, is not exactly the most prudent software evaluation path. Perhaps the "mocking" was just the CEO not placing the importance that the person thinks their request should. Or the CEO responded to rude incessant tone. Or the CEO had a bad day, and the parent was like the 10th person nagging their balls with their pet peeves at that show. The amount of information to that comment is almost zero, and we don't know tons of context.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        Hence my request for elaboration. I did not like Ableton to begin with anyways. If anything, it is confirmation bias.
        johnisgood 1y ago
        Oh geez, wonder what was wrong out of these 3 sentences. 1st: Bad? 2nd: Bad? 3rd: Bad? Please bots, help me clear this up. :) Down-vote afterwards, or I am sorry, is the down-vote for the 2nd? Cry me a river, then, for not liking Ableton. sighs. I prefer FL Studio. I swear these down-votes are utterly useless. I will apply the previously mentioned uBlock rules so I will not see these pointless (!) down-votes. God forbid I do not like the software you like. God forbid I am aware enough to realize it might be a bias. God forbid I ask for elaboration. God forbid I voice any of this.
        coldtea 1y ago
        Admission of "confirmation bias" doesn't make the comments about the software more valuable, it makes them less. Probably that's what drove the downvotes.
        johnisgood 1y ago
        > doesn't make the comments about the software more valuable I admitted to having confirmation bias, which influence my decisions. I think it is valuable to recognize and to admit to one's biases, regardless of the subject matter. I never liked Ableton, and I still do not know if I should believe the guy, I would really like some details.
  - wsintra2022 1y ago
    I believe I read once that Bitwigs engineers were ex ablteton engineers. Anyone have more on this?
    - diggan 1y ago
      Yeah, I think four of the founders/initial employees were ex-Ableton people, it was a thing that was highlighted when Bitwig first launched (around 2014 maybe?), together with that they were also Berlin-based (because that matters...) and it had Linux support from day one :) I'm not finding any first-hand sources about it, but remember that most articles at the time mentioned it one way or another.
      - prmoustache 1y ago
        If my memory is correct both headquarters are just a short walk appart, on 2 different streets that cross each other.
  - earthnail 1y ago
    Wow, that’s a very different experience to what I had with the CEO. Haven’t met a nicer, more honest and supportive CEO. Not saying your experience wasn’t as you describe it, just want to say that I personally rate him highly and was surprised to read it.
  - easyThrowaway 1y ago
    On the other hand I once opened a ticket for Ableton Live 9 asking to fix an extremely annoying windows-only race condition when using midi at the same time from a Komplete Kontrol Instance and a regular track session session using an M-series Native Instruments keyboard, and they fixed it after a few weeks. I did the same with Bitwig in 2022 and the bug it's still there.
- diggan 1y ago
  > I've never used music software that evolves as fast as Bitwig I've been curious about Bitwig, played around with it a bit, but never made the switch from Ableton. After reading this, which I think was intended as a positive, I'm now less curious about Bitwig...
  - Capricorn2481 1y ago
    I get your meaning, but I associate changes to DAWs more positively than changes to other software. Ableton famously had a horrific bug with its plugin delay compensation for multiple versions. You deal with that long enough, you appreciate an attentive developer. Also love FL Studio. They've made amazing changes over the years. Now they're... Experimenting more with AI. Not a big fan.
- coldtea 1y ago
  Not sure. 6 looks nice, but the past 3-4 versions just had this modularity improvements, which I don't particularly care for, and much smaller workflow, sequencing, audio editing, fx and audio vst improvements (which I do care for)
whilenot-dev 1y ago
For people that don't know, Bitwig Studio is one of the few DAWs that support Linux officially. This is great news!
- Leptonmaniac 1y ago
  For the other people who don't know: What's a DAW?
  - Twixes 1y ago
    Digital Audio Workstation, which is a fancy name for a kind of app where you can make a song on your computer. Whether that's a recording of an instrument or voice, or a digital instrument playing from MIDI signal (piano, synth, anything), or recorded samples from various sources, you can put all that together however you want, including all sorts of effects (lotta plugins).
  - viraptor 1y ago
    Digital audio workstation. It's used for putting together music tracks, but... the scope of that is huge. It's probably best to find some demo/tutorial on YouTube to understand it. Even the ultra compressed bitwig6 announcement should give you an idea https://youtu.be/xJF7i3x46Ec https://youtu.be/xJF7i3x46Ec
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Digital Audio Workstation, basically all those programs with multiple tracks per music channel, tons of effects and plugins, with MIDI input to be controlled by any kind of musical devices, even macros can be assigned to specific chords or melody snippets. The audio version of Photoshop.
  - enqk 1y ago
    an operating system for music making, usually hosted as an application
- pjmlp 1y ago
  And for others that also don't know, a great example on how to do cool UIs with Java.
smallerfish 1y ago
Bitwig is my favorite software - it really is all in one music production software, and they have great support for Linux. I have used it hooked up to a room full of synths, but these days (due to space constraints) I make music with just the software (with occasionally a midi keyboard). No need for any VSTs (unless you really want to) - the built in synths and effects plugins are high quality. (I started out using trackers in the 90s - Fast, Impulse, and eventually Buzz. I held off using DAWs for a long time because I didn't like the lack of information density that trackers are good at, but turns out I really don't miss that in Bitwig.) Here's a couple tracks I've made with it: https://synth8.bandcamp.com/track/spring-trap https://synth8.bandcamp.com/track/spring-trap, https://synth8.bandcamp.com/track/prompt https://synth8.bandcamp.com/track/prompt
- Intermernet 1y ago
  Good to see another fellow past Buzz user. Seriously underrated piece of software!
  - smallerfish 1y ago
    Some background on Buzz for others: Buzz was a tragic case of not using version control. Apparently the author had a hard drive die, and his only copy of the source control went with it. It had a unique routing UX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeskola_Buzz#/media/File:BuzzScreenshot.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeskola_Buzz#/media/File:BuzzS...) that allowed you to chain sources and effects using a graph. Bitwig has a similar idea in The Grid (https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/ https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/), though that's limited to just one track; Buzz did this for the entire composition. There was at least one rewrite attempt, and there are various clones (Aldrin) but they never quite made it.
    - stavros 1y ago
      Sounds like a tragic case of not making backups, to me. Even if the author used a VCS, when the drive died it would have taken the repo with it all the same.
    - 1y ago
Polarity 1y ago
Can't live without Bitwig!
nialse 1y ago
Bitwig was the next big DAW with a lot of YouTubers making content some 3 years (?) ago, then the content suddenly stopped. It was some move the company made which upset the community IIRC. Bitwigs YouTube presence never recovered. Anyone with insights on what happened and how it has turned out eventually?
- jedimastert 1y ago
  They made a bunch of extra-special devices called the "spectral suite" that they were gonna paywall beyond the normal upgrade plan. There was the big backlash and they fully backed down pretty quickly and that was that. I'm not sure why the content stopped, but it might be that it was sponsored content and a bunch of sponsor-creator relationships got soured https://musictech.com/news/bitwig-studio-4-spectral-suite-apology-upgrade-plan/ https://musictech.com/news/bitwig-studio-4-spectral-suite-ap...
- p0nce 1y ago
  Most of the content in this space is paid for.
- hrnnnnnn 1y ago
  It was specifically Benn Jordan and Venus Theory who cut their ties. Polarity has never stopped making Bitwig content and I've learned an absolute ton of stuff from him. https://youtube.com/polaritydnb/ https://youtube.com/polaritydnb/
  - brulard 1y ago
    Do you know why those two stopped? I know their content a little, but I'm not aware if they had specific reasons to stop talking about bitwig
    - m_kos 1y ago
      https://musictech.com/news/bitwig-studio-4-spectral-suite-apology-upgrade-plan/ https://musictech.com/news/bitwig-studio-4-spectral-suite-ap...
charcircuit 1y ago
>There’s something refreshing about v6. No AI or stem separation I think it's weird to praise not adding useful features.
- jedimastert 1y ago
  I don't know if you're in or around the musician or especially EDM producer community, or just the online artist community in general, but the general sentiment is that most if not all AI features are for people who aren't actually interested in making music, so maybe not actually all that useful.
  - plemer 1y ago
    I’m not in those communities anymore, but is stem separation not legit useful?
    - wsintra2022 1y ago
      I think it is, before it was built into Logic I had a little script setup that would use Meta Demucs. I would use it on my own tracks so I could remix (especially old ones which I had no stems for). It’s also great for sampling and experimentation
    - jedimastert 1y ago
      Kinda? The biggest thing is that it's been done by so many other places already that it's sort of a waste of time to spend any time on it when there's already a number of other services. It doesn't really fit into the rest of the design and purpose of Bitwig, so it would really just be a gimmick, or at least seen as one by the core community. Also, they're sort of an legal-ethics dilemma in that The only time you would really use stim separation is if you don't have the stems already, and therefore almost certainly don't have clearance and can't really use them for anything commercial. Probably not as big of a concern but definitely something to consider. Really the big one is that a lot the creative online community and especially the kind of community around Bitwig has a pretty strong opinion against generative AI, which includes things like stem separation.
mettamage 1y ago
Good to see Bitwig here. I alternate using Bitwig and Logic. Would love if The Grid would get some kind of scripting support. Also, a bit related and a bit not. Has anyone checked out Strudel? The musical programming language?
- inciampati 1y ago
  Yes! Strudel and tidal cycles are amazing livecoding systems. I'd like to match the expressiveness of bitwig though so I'm working on a merge of glicol (web based livecoding with signal processing) and studel.
- segphault 1y ago
  Strudel is fun. If you're interested in getting Strudel-like sequencing inside of a DAW, check out the latest version of Renoise, which added a Lua-based phrase scripting environment with support for Tidal Cycles notation. They also added it to their Redux plugin, so you can use it in literally any DAW.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
mettamage 1y ago
Hey guys, I like making music using Bitwig and Logic. I used to do this for a year when I was 16. Now I’m more than twice as old and picked up the hobby again. Does anyone want to connect and hangout (maybe even making some music together?). I also have a decent to good beatbox, some rapping skills (mostly Dutch but English too) and some indie singing skills. I started making EDM and lofi at the moment. Maybe we could make a small group even and see what happens, no expectations. My email is in my profile.
- Ylpertnodi 1y ago
  sonobus.net
meowface 1y ago
I started using Bitwig 10 years ago as my first (and still only) DAW, predicting it would be a good early adopter effort investment. I wasn't wrong.
wintermutestwin 1y ago
>There’s something refreshing about v6. No AI or stem separation. Stem separation in Logic is an insanely useful feature.
- diggan 1y ago
  > Stem separation in Logic is an insanely useful feature. For some, and for others not. DAWs are so huge, feature-packed and try to cater to so many use cases, that at one point you have to say no to something. While stem separation is useful for many things, I've only "missed" it for DJ duties, and then I'm not using a DAW anyways but whatever DJ OS/software the controller needs/has, so I'd probably say I'm another user who don't care about my DAW having stem separation or not. I don't think I've felt like I needed that even once for production purposes.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - wintermutestwin 1y ago
    Don’t you use reference tracks? I assume that anyone seriously using a DAW does. Imagine being able to easily reference just one instrument. Just to call out a pretty universal use case for stem separation…
    - vunderba 1y ago
      Not OP, but my workflow for composition is to sing a new melody, flesh out an arrangement on my Montage, and bring it into my DAW for adding layers, effect chains, etc. I don't think I've ever used a reference track in the 20 odd years I've been making music. Personally I'd prefer Bitwig focus on core DAW features rather than something like stem separation for which there are already many decent dedicated tools (demucs, spleeter, etc.)
    - diggan 1y ago
      I used reference tracks for mastering before, once or twice for mixing, but outside of that, not so much. And when I've used them, I haven't thought once I needed to separate out the instruments, but I guess that's because of what I used them for. Most of the production I do is outside of Ableton, so maybe I'm not considered a "serious" Ableton user :)
deleted 1y ago
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edem 1y ago
I bought a MIDI controller a few weeks ago and it came with a Bitwig license. I told one of my friends (musician, uses Ableton) and he told me that I should learn Ableton and forget about Bitwig. When I asked why he said that Bitwig is very new and it can disappear overnight just like many others before it. He said that the staying power of DAW software is very low. What's your take on this? I really liked Bitwig (much more than Ableton), but I don't want to invest my time into something that's not gonna be around.
- LevGoldstein 1y ago
  It's been around for over a decade at this point, so I'd say it's as likely to disappear as Ableton Live at this point. Bitwig was made by ex-Ableton engineers and outside of some of the more niche features, they're similar enough that anything you learn about Bitwig is transferable to using Ableton Live. Much more so than trying to move to one of them from Reaper, for instance. If you depend mostly on 3rd party plugins and less on what's built into the DAW, then they're effectively the same outside of simple navigation quirks unique to each. I have active licenses for both and have used both for personal projects. I find Ableton to be slightly faster to navigate, probably because I've been using it for longer. If manufacturers of high quality multichannel interfaces had better Linux support, I'd migrate fully to Bitwig.
  - edem 1y ago
    I just started learning so I have no preference...I might move to Linux though
- cyberpunk 1y ago
  I don't think you'll find a professional studio anywhere that doesn't have at least one Ableton live station. If you're into electronic music you'll be hard not to spot live being the driver for a lot of (non-dj) performances. I don't really think you can go wrong with it. But either way, switching isn't too much of a problem. I'm with Ableton because I love the push hardware and ui, but everyone's different.
  - 1y ago
mmmnnn 1y ago
yea
oh_my_goodness 1y ago
Can anyone give a few specific advantages of Bigwig over say Logic or Ableton?
- JodieBenitez 1y ago
  Made the switch from Ableton to Bitwig a few years ago and never looked back so maybe out of date now: - modulations everywhere that is actually easy to use and works - easier modular synth environment than Max. Think easy like Nord modular but much, much better - Linux support - better UI overall
- replygirl 1y ago
  bitwig is the leader in probabilistic sequencing and automation. they entered the space with three big ideas: (1) you can modulate anything by anything else, (2) any modulation can have probability applied, and (3) automation can be applied to individual notes. these ideas were always around but relegated to more niche tools like reason and max. thanks to bitwig, the other daws have spent a lot of the last ten years applying these ideas as well, but bitwig still has the most complete solution. it's a great primary daw for outboard- and plugin-averse recording engineers and bedroom producers; it's the best _secondary_ daw if you use one of the majors for work and want something fresh for play, inspiration, or continuing education. i use ableton. every time i get excited for an update, it's because i'm finally getting something bitwig users have had for years
- vunderba 1y ago
  Don't know if it is still the case - but one of Bitwig's initial advantages over Ableton was that it did a better job of "siloing" your plugins, so if for some reason one of your VSTs crashed it didn't take the entire DAW down with it.
dfedbeef 1y ago
Oh hell yeah
Kye 1y ago
>> "No AI or stem separation." That's unfortunate. Live's ML-based sample tagging and similar sound search have been a huge help. I don't think I could give it up. I guess this wouldn't matter if you don't do much with samples but samples are a huge part of modern music production. I've followed BitWig for a while now and it's increasingly clear with each release that they have a particular kind of music production in mind, and it's not for me. That's a good thing: being differentiated is how every other DAW has survived. I just had some hope it might permit a path to Linux for me and the way I make music some day.
henjodottech 1y ago
I do not think I could deal without my m4l devices and rack presets in ableton - if it weren’t for that I would probably be using bitwig.
nylonstrung 1y ago
I like Bitwig a lot and appreciate the Linux support But there's a new FOSS DAW called Zrythm that is essentially a featureful clone of Bitwig I'd recommend https://www.zrythm.org/en/index.html https://www.zrythm.org/en/index.html
- DoesntMatter22 1y ago
  Looks interesting but it doesn't look like it supports the independent track looping mode that bitwig does
- dottjt 1y ago
  I wouldn't recommend it. It was very, very, very buggy and unpolished when I used it.
  - nylonstrung 1y ago
    Damn how long ago did you try it
mrandish 1y ago
The new timeline event editing functionality looks fluid, powerful and polished. I've never used Bitwig but have heavily used dozens of timeline-based media editing GUIs over the last three decades including leading video, audio, animation, 3D and music production tools. Just watching these brief demo videos, I'm seeing some very nice editing features as well as thoughtful interaction touches. I appreciate the Bitwig team's choice to focus on perfecting timeline event editing workflow at a time when many media production tools are bolting on poorly thought through AI features of questionable value. In most advanced media creation workflows, some detailed event editing will always be necessary and, IMHO, it's still far from a "solved problem." While some tools have put in the sustained effort over many years to become "pretty good", IMHO none are yet "great", and too many are still lagging with 2000s-era timeline event editing. Even today's best of breed tools can become at least tedious, if not frustrating, during an intense multi-hour session of complex detail work. Yet in recent years I'm not seeing much sustained focus or effort going toward improving timeline event editing in most mature tools. While "Timeline Event Editing" isn't nearly as sexy sounding as AI - for me AI features in media creation tooling have so far mostly focused on reducing the time I spend doing the parts of media creation I enjoy the most. Whereas the features Bitwig is showing here are focused on minimizing the time and effort I have to doing the parts I hate the most.
afarviral 1y ago
I wasn't planning to renew so soon. Then they dropped this bombshell and I impulse bought another 12 months subscription. So far I'm digging it and looking forward to composing some spicey chord progressions.

154 points by robenkleene 1y ago

80hd 1y ago

After using Ableton for years and previously Logic, I've never used music software that evolves as fast as Bitwig. The rate at which they improve it is pretty mind-blowing in comparison.

whydid 1y ago
When the founders are also the lead engineers, incentives are aligned. I asked the Ableton CEO at multiple events and expos to fix repeatable bugs, and add proper PDC, and he mocked me.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  He mocked you? Well, I am sure we would like to know more. In another comment someone said "at least developers have thought of others" because they dump their stuff in plaintext, but then you come out with such a story which makes me want to stay away from anything related to Ableton.
  - mettamage 1y ago
    Seconded, I think even one such a story on HN for this specific topic, where big tech incentives aren’t that high, is a high quality signal of company rot. I’m staying away from Ableton.
    - coldtea 1y ago
      sure, base your software decisions on random anecdotes on HN, from people who might had been rude themselves, misreading the response they got, or worse...
      - mettamage 1y ago
        I see what you’re saying but I have noticed that random anecdotes on HN are worth quite a bit more than on other similar sites such as Reddit
  - coldtea 1y ago
    >but then you come out with such a story which makes me want to stay away from anything related to Ableton. Knee-jerk responding like that to a random anecdotes by a random person on the internet, who might as well be total bullshit, is not exactly the most prudent software evaluation path. Perhaps the "mocking" was just the CEO not placing the importance that the person thinks their request should. Or the CEO responded to rude incessant tone. Or the CEO had a bad day, and the parent was like the 10th person nagging their balls with their pet peeves at that show. The amount of information to that comment is almost zero, and we don't know tons of context.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      Hence my request for elaboration. I did not like Ableton to begin with anyways. If anything, it is confirmation bias.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        Oh geez, wonder what was wrong out of these 3 sentences. 1st: Bad? 2nd: Bad? 3rd: Bad? Please bots, help me clear this up. :) Down-vote afterwards, or I am sorry, is the down-vote for the 2nd? Cry me a river, then, for not liking Ableton. sighs. I prefer FL Studio. I swear these down-votes are utterly useless. I will apply the previously mentioned uBlock rules so I will not see these pointless (!) down-votes. God forbid I do not like the software you like. God forbid I am aware enough to realize it might be a bias. God forbid I ask for elaboration. God forbid I voice any of this.
        coldtea 1y ago
        Admission of "confirmation bias" doesn't make the comments about the software more valuable, it makes them less. Probably that's what drove the downvotes.
        johnisgood 1y ago
        > doesn't make the comments about the software more valuable I admitted to having confirmation bias, which influence my decisions. I think it is valuable to recognize and to admit to one's biases, regardless of the subject matter. I never liked Ableton, and I still do not know if I should believe the guy, I would really like some details.
- wsintra2022 1y ago
  I believe I read once that Bitwigs engineers were ex ablteton engineers. Anyone have more on this?
  - diggan 1y ago
    Yeah, I think four of the founders/initial employees were ex-Ableton people, it was a thing that was highlighted when Bitwig first launched (around 2014 maybe?), together with that they were also Berlin-based (because that matters...) and it had Linux support from day one :) I'm not finding any first-hand sources about it, but remember that most articles at the time mentioned it one way or another.
    - prmoustache 1y ago
      If my memory is correct both headquarters are just a short walk appart, on 2 different streets that cross each other.
- earthnail 1y ago
  Wow, that’s a very different experience to what I had with the CEO. Haven’t met a nicer, more honest and supportive CEO. Not saying your experience wasn’t as you describe it, just want to say that I personally rate him highly and was surprised to read it.
- easyThrowaway 1y ago
  On the other hand I once opened a ticket for Ableton Live 9 asking to fix an extremely annoying windows-only race condition when using midi at the same time from a Komplete Kontrol Instance and a regular track session session using an M-series Native Instruments keyboard, and they fixed it after a few weeks. I did the same with Bitwig in 2022 and the bug it's still there.
diggan 1y ago
> I've never used music software that evolves as fast as Bitwig I've been curious about Bitwig, played around with it a bit, but never made the switch from Ableton. After reading this, which I think was intended as a positive, I'm now less curious about Bitwig...
- Capricorn2481 1y ago
  I get your meaning, but I associate changes to DAWs more positively than changes to other software. Ableton famously had a horrific bug with its plugin delay compensation for multiple versions. You deal with that long enough, you appreciate an attentive developer. Also love FL Studio. They've made amazing changes over the years. Now they're... Experimenting more with AI. Not a big fan.
coldtea 1y ago
Not sure. 6 looks nice, but the past 3-4 versions just had this modularity improvements, which I don't particularly care for, and much smaller workflow, sequencing, audio editing, fx and audio vst improvements (which I do care for)

whilenot-dev 1y ago

For people that don't know, Bitwig Studio is one of the few DAWs that support Linux officially. This is great news!

Leptonmaniac 1y ago
For the other people who don't know: What's a DAW?
- Twixes 1y ago
  Digital Audio Workstation, which is a fancy name for a kind of app where you can make a song on your computer. Whether that's a recording of an instrument or voice, or a digital instrument playing from MIDI signal (piano, synth, anything), or recorded samples from various sources, you can put all that together however you want, including all sorts of effects (lotta plugins).
- viraptor 1y ago
  Digital audio workstation. It's used for putting together music tracks, but... the scope of that is huge. It's probably best to find some demo/tutorial on YouTube to understand it. Even the ultra compressed bitwig6 announcement should give you an idea https://youtu.be/xJF7i3x46Ec https://youtu.be/xJF7i3x46Ec
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Digital Audio Workstation, basically all those programs with multiple tracks per music channel, tons of effects and plugins, with MIDI input to be controlled by any kind of musical devices, even macros can be assigned to specific chords or melody snippets. The audio version of Photoshop.
- enqk 1y ago
  an operating system for music making, usually hosted as an application
pjmlp 1y ago
And for others that also don't know, a great example on how to do cool UIs with Java.

smallerfish 1y ago

Bitwig is my favorite software - it really is all in one music production software, and they have great support for Linux. I have used it hooked up to a room full of synths, but these days (due to space constraints) I make music with just the software (with occasionally a midi keyboard). No need for any VSTs (unless you really want to) - the built in synths and effects plugins are high quality. (I started out using trackers in the 90s - Fast, Impulse, and eventually Buzz. I held off using DAWs for a long time because I didn't like the lack of information density that trackers are good at, but turns out I really don't miss that in Bitwig.) Here's a couple tracks I've made with it: https://synth8.bandcamp.com/track/spring-trap https://synth8.bandcamp.com/track/spring-trap, https://synth8.bandcamp.com/track/prompt https://synth8.bandcamp.com/track/prompt

Intermernet 1y ago
Good to see another fellow past Buzz user. Seriously underrated piece of software!
- smallerfish 1y ago
  Some background on Buzz for others: Buzz was a tragic case of not using version control. Apparently the author had a hard drive die, and his only copy of the source control went with it. It had a unique routing UX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeskola_Buzz#/media/File:BuzzScreenshot.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeskola_Buzz#/media/File:BuzzS...) that allowed you to chain sources and effects using a graph. Bitwig has a similar idea in The Grid (https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/ https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/), though that's limited to just one track; Buzz did this for the entire composition. There was at least one rewrite attempt, and there are various clones (Aldrin) but they never quite made it.
  - stavros 1y ago
    Sounds like a tragic case of not making backups, to me. Even if the author used a VCS, when the drive died it would have taken the repo with it all the same.
  - 1y ago

Polarity 1y ago

Can't live without Bitwig!

nialse 1y ago

Bitwig was the next big DAW with a lot of YouTubers making content some 3 years (?) ago, then the content suddenly stopped. It was some move the company made which upset the community IIRC. Bitwigs YouTube presence never recovered. Anyone with insights on what happened and how it has turned out eventually?

jedimastert 1y ago
They made a bunch of extra-special devices called the "spectral suite" that they were gonna paywall beyond the normal upgrade plan. There was the big backlash and they fully backed down pretty quickly and that was that. I'm not sure why the content stopped, but it might be that it was sponsored content and a bunch of sponsor-creator relationships got soured https://musictech.com/news/bitwig-studio-4-spectral-suite-apology-upgrade-plan/ https://musictech.com/news/bitwig-studio-4-spectral-suite-ap...
p0nce 1y ago
Most of the content in this space is paid for.
hrnnnnnn 1y ago
It was specifically Benn Jordan and Venus Theory who cut their ties. Polarity has never stopped making Bitwig content and I've learned an absolute ton of stuff from him. https://youtube.com/polaritydnb/ https://youtube.com/polaritydnb/
- brulard 1y ago
  Do you know why those two stopped? I know their content a little, but I'm not aware if they had specific reasons to stop talking about bitwig
  - m_kos 1y ago
    https://musictech.com/news/bitwig-studio-4-spectral-suite-apology-upgrade-plan/ https://musictech.com/news/bitwig-studio-4-spectral-suite-ap...

charcircuit 1y ago

>There’s something refreshing about v6. No AI or stem separation I think it's weird to praise not adding useful features.

jedimastert 1y ago
I don't know if you're in or around the musician or especially EDM producer community, or just the online artist community in general, but the general sentiment is that most if not all AI features are for people who aren't actually interested in making music, so maybe not actually all that useful.
- plemer 1y ago
  I’m not in those communities anymore, but is stem separation not legit useful?
  - wsintra2022 1y ago
    I think it is, before it was built into Logic I had a little script setup that would use Meta Demucs. I would use it on my own tracks so I could remix (especially old ones which I had no stems for). It’s also great for sampling and experimentation
  - jedimastert 1y ago
    Kinda? The biggest thing is that it's been done by so many other places already that it's sort of a waste of time to spend any time on it when there's already a number of other services. It doesn't really fit into the rest of the design and purpose of Bitwig, so it would really just be a gimmick, or at least seen as one by the core community. Also, they're sort of an legal-ethics dilemma in that The only time you would really use stim separation is if you don't have the stems already, and therefore almost certainly don't have clearance and can't really use them for anything commercial. Probably not as big of a concern but definitely something to consider. Really the big one is that a lot the creative online community and especially the kind of community around Bitwig has a pretty strong opinion against generative AI, which includes things like stem separation.

mettamage 1y ago

Good to see Bitwig here. I alternate using Bitwig and Logic. Would love if The Grid would get some kind of scripting support. Also, a bit related and a bit not. Has anyone checked out Strudel? The musical programming language?

inciampati 1y ago
Yes! Strudel and tidal cycles are amazing livecoding systems. I'd like to match the expressiveness of bitwig though so I'm working on a merge of glicol (web based livecoding with signal processing) and studel.
segphault 1y ago
Strudel is fun. If you're interested in getting Strudel-like sequencing inside of a DAW, check out the latest version of Renoise, which added a Lua-based phrase scripting environment with support for Tidal Cycles notation. They also added it to their Redux plugin, so you can use it in literally any DAW.
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mettamage 1y ago

Hey guys, I like making music using Bitwig and Logic. I used to do this for a year when I was 16. Now I’m more than twice as old and picked up the hobby again. Does anyone want to connect and hangout (maybe even making some music together?). I also have a decent to good beatbox, some rapping skills (mostly Dutch but English too) and some indie singing skills. I started making EDM and lofi at the moment. Maybe we could make a small group even and see what happens, no expectations. My email is in my profile.

Ylpertnodi 1y ago
sonobus.net

meowface 1y ago

I started using Bitwig 10 years ago as my first (and still only) DAW, predicting it would be a good early adopter effort investment. I wasn't wrong.

wintermutestwin 1y ago

>There’s something refreshing about v6. No AI or stem separation. Stem separation in Logic is an insanely useful feature.

diggan 1y ago
> Stem separation in Logic is an insanely useful feature. For some, and for others not. DAWs are so huge, feature-packed and try to cater to so many use cases, that at one point you have to say no to something. While stem separation is useful for many things, I've only "missed" it for DJ duties, and then I'm not using a DAW anyways but whatever DJ OS/software the controller needs/has, so I'd probably say I'm another user who don't care about my DAW having stem separation or not. I don't think I've felt like I needed that even once for production purposes.
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- wintermutestwin 1y ago
  Don’t you use reference tracks? I assume that anyone seriously using a DAW does. Imagine being able to easily reference just one instrument. Just to call out a pretty universal use case for stem separation…
  - vunderba 1y ago
    Not OP, but my workflow for composition is to sing a new melody, flesh out an arrangement on my Montage, and bring it into my DAW for adding layers, effect chains, etc. I don't think I've ever used a reference track in the 20 odd years I've been making music. Personally I'd prefer Bitwig focus on core DAW features rather than something like stem separation for which there are already many decent dedicated tools (demucs, spleeter, etc.)
  - diggan 1y ago
    I used reference tracks for mastering before, once or twice for mixing, but outside of that, not so much. And when I've used them, I haven't thought once I needed to separate out the instruments, but I guess that's because of what I used them for. Most of the production I do is outside of Ableton, so maybe I'm not considered a "serious" Ableton user :)

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edem 1y ago

I bought a MIDI controller a few weeks ago and it came with a Bitwig license. I told one of my friends (musician, uses Ableton) and he told me that I should learn Ableton and forget about Bitwig. When I asked why he said that Bitwig is very new and it can disappear overnight just like many others before it. He said that the staying power of DAW software is very low. What's your take on this? I really liked Bitwig (much more than Ableton), but I don't want to invest my time into something that's not gonna be around.

LevGoldstein 1y ago
It's been around for over a decade at this point, so I'd say it's as likely to disappear as Ableton Live at this point. Bitwig was made by ex-Ableton engineers and outside of some of the more niche features, they're similar enough that anything you learn about Bitwig is transferable to using Ableton Live. Much more so than trying to move to one of them from Reaper, for instance. If you depend mostly on 3rd party plugins and less on what's built into the DAW, then they're effectively the same outside of simple navigation quirks unique to each. I have active licenses for both and have used both for personal projects. I find Ableton to be slightly faster to navigate, probably because I've been using it for longer. If manufacturers of high quality multichannel interfaces had better Linux support, I'd migrate fully to Bitwig.
- edem 1y ago
  I just started learning so I have no preference...I might move to Linux though
cyberpunk 1y ago
I don't think you'll find a professional studio anywhere that doesn't have at least one Ableton live station. If you're into electronic music you'll be hard not to spot live being the driver for a lot of (non-dj) performances. I don't really think you can go wrong with it. But either way, switching isn't too much of a problem. I'm with Ableton because I love the push hardware and ui, but everyone's different.
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mmmnnn 1y ago

yea

oh_my_goodness 1y ago

Can anyone give a few specific advantages of Bigwig over say Logic or Ableton?

JodieBenitez 1y ago
Made the switch from Ableton to Bitwig a few years ago and never looked back so maybe out of date now: - modulations everywhere that is actually easy to use and works - easier modular synth environment than Max. Think easy like Nord modular but much, much better - Linux support - better UI overall
replygirl 1y ago
bitwig is the leader in probabilistic sequencing and automation. they entered the space with three big ideas: (1) you can modulate anything by anything else, (2) any modulation can have probability applied, and (3) automation can be applied to individual notes. these ideas were always around but relegated to more niche tools like reason and max. thanks to bitwig, the other daws have spent a lot of the last ten years applying these ideas as well, but bitwig still has the most complete solution. it's a great primary daw for outboard- and plugin-averse recording engineers and bedroom producers; it's the best _secondary_ daw if you use one of the majors for work and want something fresh for play, inspiration, or continuing education. i use ableton. every time i get excited for an update, it's because i'm finally getting something bitwig users have had for years
vunderba 1y ago
Don't know if it is still the case - but one of Bitwig's initial advantages over Ableton was that it did a better job of "siloing" your plugins, so if for some reason one of your VSTs crashed it didn't take the entire DAW down with it.

dfedbeef 1y ago

Oh hell yeah

Kye 1y ago

>> "No AI or stem separation." That's unfortunate. Live's ML-based sample tagging and similar sound search have been a huge help. I don't think I could give it up. I guess this wouldn't matter if you don't do much with samples but samples are a huge part of modern music production. I've followed BitWig for a while now and it's increasingly clear with each release that they have a particular kind of music production in mind, and it's not for me. That's a good thing: being differentiated is how every other DAW has survived. I just had some hope it might permit a path to Linux for me and the way I make music some day.

henjodottech 1y ago

I do not think I could deal without my m4l devices and rack presets in ableton - if it weren’t for that I would probably be using bitwig.

nylonstrung 1y ago

I like Bitwig a lot and appreciate the Linux support But there's a new FOSS DAW called Zrythm that is essentially a featureful clone of Bitwig I'd recommend https://www.zrythm.org/en/index.html https://www.zrythm.org/en/index.html

DoesntMatter22 1y ago
Looks interesting but it doesn't look like it supports the independent track looping mode that bitwig does
dottjt 1y ago
I wouldn't recommend it. It was very, very, very buggy and unpolished when I used it.
- nylonstrung 1y ago
  Damn how long ago did you try it

mrandish 1y ago

The new timeline event editing functionality looks fluid, powerful and polished. I've never used Bitwig but have heavily used dozens of timeline-based media editing GUIs over the last three decades including leading video, audio, animation, 3D and music production tools. Just watching these brief demo videos, I'm seeing some very nice editing features as well as thoughtful interaction touches. I appreciate the Bitwig team's choice to focus on perfecting timeline event editing workflow at a time when many media production tools are bolting on poorly thought through AI features of questionable value. In most advanced media creation workflows, some detailed event editing will always be necessary and, IMHO, it's still far from a "solved problem." While some tools have put in the sustained effort over many years to become "pretty good", IMHO none are yet "great", and too many are still lagging with 2000s-era timeline event editing. Even today's best of breed tools can become at least tedious, if not frustrating, during an intense multi-hour session of complex detail work. Yet in recent years I'm not seeing much sustained focus or effort going toward improving timeline event editing in most mature tools. While "Timeline Event Editing" isn't nearly as sexy sounding as AI - for me AI features in media creation tooling have so far mostly focused on reducing the time I spend doing the parts of media creation I enjoy the most. Whereas the features Bitwig is showing here are focused on minimizing the time and effort I have to doing the parts I hate the most.

afarviral 1y ago

I wasn't planning to renew so soon. Then they dropped this bombshell and I impulse bought another 12 months subscription. So far I'm digging it and looking forward to composing some spicey chord progressions.