Bitwig

  On 11/24/2014 at 10:26 PM, entropi said:

Bitwig Studio would need Ableton Live's easy and flexible midi mapping before I bother to look at it... I've seen that there's "scripts" for controllers, but then it's just like reason - to freely map what ever you want is one of Live's greatest strengths, IMHO.

I agree. Reading around the talk on forums (the devs have been very talkative with the community and are taking requests constantly) it seems it's just on the way. Using javascript to write controller interfaces is pretty cool though already.

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Bitwig just went on a black friday sale at Musician's Friend for $200 USD if anyone's interested. Just scooped it up myself. Regular sale price has been $300 for a while so not too shabby.

I also feel like a really annoying broken record in this thread right now but fuck it all this DAW is just awesome.

  On 11/26/2014 at 5:18 PM, fiznuthian said:

Bitwig just went on a black friday sale at Musician's Friend for $200 USD if anyone's interested. Just scooped it up myself. Regular sale price has been $300 for a while so not too shabby.

 

I also feel like a really annoying broken record in this thread right now but fuck it all this DAW is just awesome.

I ordered it too this week on the $200 deal. Been using it cracked up until now but just had to buy it at that price. Too many people have been quick to write off this daw because of some early teething problems but it just has to be given a chance. It's fucking ace and the bitwig team work really hard and fast at fixing bugs and adding features. To those who downloaded at 1.0 and dismissed it, I say go and get 1.1 and give it another chance. It's vastly improved.

I run a hybrid setup with both external instruments and effects. How is it with that?

  On 1/3/2015 at 12:33 AM, kakapo said:

I run a hybrid setup with both external instruments and effects. How is it with that?

Currently it's a tad bit primitive but works pretty well. I'm not a hardware guy so i'm just echoing what others have been saying.

There's two devices that you can load into a track's device chain:

Looks pretty obvious what these do. Sends MIDI out or receives audio in from your interface. The other is just a loop I guess for sending/receiving audio. I presume this is where you route audio out into your hardware effects then route the signal back in. Latency, gain, etc.. Fairly straightforward.

With the Hardware Instrument device on a track you can then send CC messages in automation lanes like so:

Lastly, you can sync MIDI clock to external devices by adding a "MIDI Clock Transmitter" in the preferences:

[youtubehd]L-lPTyyi0Y0[/youtubehd]

There's a lot more features going to be added soon enough.. The devs are collecting a giant list of requests from their official forum and plan to try meeting everyone's needs. There's also a lot of people writing scripts for their devices too. The scripting system uses javascript, so if you're a seasoned coder it should be very easy to program.

Cheers, I'll download the demo and give it a go.

Whats the word on this DAW?

Ease of use, learning curve, quality of synths/features?

Is it worth checking out if I already have Ableton and Logic?

I have found a DAW only really starts to deliver once you know it pretty damn well to fuck with it, but this one might be worth learning. Looks creative

lol, can't even install the demo, need to upgrade my installer wat?

  On 1/8/2015 at 8:49 PM, vamos scorcho said:

Whats the word on this DAW?

 

Ease of use, learning curve, quality of synths/features?

 

Is it worth checking out if I already have Ableton and Logic?

 

I have found a DAW only really starts to deliver once you know it pretty damn well to fuck with it, but this one might be worth learning. Looks creative

Very easy to use. The workflow is very fast with Ableton like clip and arrangement views, with a slight variation that makes arranging the clips much easier. Working with the piano roll is fast with nice 1-5 hotkeys to the midi tools. The instruments sound great, but the FM synth could use some work maybe. It's polysynth is a virtual analog and sounds fucking awesome. The effects are very nice standards I find. It will be having more in the future. A couple are not as nice as Ableton's, like the EQ. They sound good regardless but just aren't as fancy. Bitwig has a really interesting take on modulation routing that is pleasant to look at but can get really complex really quick if that's your thing. It has layered editing similar to Reaper (Logic might have this too?), which is something Ableton lacks but isn't going to get anytime soon. The ability to slice audio clips into sub-clips (called Events) is awesome and i'm spoiled rotten on it. Bitwig has some really cool routing devices that let you send MIDI and Audio into any track by inserting them into the device chain, and that data can then modulate other parameters that you link to them. It has an inspector panel which really grew on me. You can access parameters for things that you click on like midi clips, audio clips, tracks, notes, etc with it. Inside the inspector is a 'histogram' for things like velocity, timbre, pan, etc.. it's a graph with distribution parameters that is basically a much cooler humanize function and adds variation easily. It has multi-band effects chain devices, XY pads, devices for instrument layering and effects layering, a bunch of MIDI devices for creating scales and replacing notes and filtering notes..

Basically your suspicion is correct. Bitwig's a lot of fun because it has quick workflow and is fun to be creative with. There's a LOT of similarities with other DAWs but also has many unique features not found yet in others. Their algorithms (say, for timestretching) are homebrew and not licensed from other companies. This gives them a lot of flexibility to add features people want.

Interestingly the entire DAW is actually modular, but the modular back-end is not open for users quite yet. The devs are saying it will be unveiled when version 2 releases. From the pictures, it has graphical structures like Max/PD/Reaktor.. The devs has said every device currently in the DAW was created using this back-end modular environment.

Check out some of these videos if you're curious: https://www.youtube.com/user/bitwig/videos

I'd say if you're perfectly content with Ableton and Logic, then you might not really want to switch. Bitwig is cool, but at the moment some people feel like there's a lot of waiting to be done before it reaches it's fullest potential. I can agree I guess. But for the most part everything works great and I love the way it feels so i've went ahead and bought it and am staying along for the ride.

(shit english sorry, wrote this in a hurry.. )

  On 1/9/2015 at 12:17 AM, Djeroek said:

lol, can't even install the demo, need to upgrade my installer wat?

Get it working? Which OS are you on?

  On 1/9/2015 at 1:54 AM, fiznuthian said:

 

  On 1/9/2015 at 12:17 AM, Djeroek said:

lol, can't even install the demo, need to upgrade my installer wat?

 

Get it working? Which OS are you on?

 

Nope, did a lot of updating only to find out vista is not supported :) . I'll check it out on another computer.

Oh shit weird.. I guess most people have left vista huh

I love this so much

Layered audio editing

[youtubehd]Gg9ApjAdQK4[/youtubehd]

Layered midi editing

[youtubehd]qvKk2nxV2gA[/youtubehd]

^ Yeah that's really handy, use it all the time (surely there are other DAWS with that feature, yeah? Pro Tools?). Also having a lot of fun with the 1.1 devices (audio & note mod mostly)... you can get some really cool effects going really quick.

  On 1/11/2015 at 8:23 AM, fiznuthian said:

I love this so much

 

Layered audio editing

[youtubehd]Gg9ApjAdQK4[/youtubehd]

 

Layered midi editing

[youtubehd]qvKk2nxV2gA[/youtubehd]

I feel like that would have been much much easier in reason....

though I gather there aren't many reason fans on watmm.

  On 1/12/2015 at 5:11 AM, StephenG said:

 

  On 1/11/2015 at 8:23 AM, fiznuthian said:

 

 

I feel like that would have been much much easier in reason....

 

though I gather there aren't many reason fans on watmm.

 

I know whoopdee and osobjornmedved do!

Reason can do layered editing? I wasn't aware.

You're not talking about combinator are you? That's layering instruments and effects, and Bitwig does that too with a device called either "Instrument Layer" or "FX Layer". FX Layer works great for parallel processing tasks like creating custom multi-band effects and sidechain whatevers.

Well... the interface isn't like ableton, where you can see it in waveform...

but I would have just loaded up the drum samples in redrum and shortened the length of the drum hit by turning the knob. Would take about 6 seconds to do what that video showed in 3 minutes.

I guess it's user preference, but reason is pretty powerful in the right hands (not mine haha).

Am I missing a key component of what is shown there?

  On 1/12/2015 at 5:20 AM, StephenG said:

Well... the interface isn't like ableton, where you can see it in waveform...

 

but I would have just loaded up the drum samples in redrum and shortened the length of the drum hit by turning the knob. Would take about 6 seconds to do what that video showed in 3 minutes.

 

I guess it's user preference, but reason is pretty powerful in the right hands (not mine haha).

 

Am I missing a key component of what is shown there?

 

 

Oh yeah, we're thinking of different things. Bitwig has a drum rack too, and hits load into a sampler which has amplitude envelopes too. I guess his video confused you because he was working with drum samples, but the idea is that you can edit multiple audio tracks at one time, regardless of whether it's drum samples or whatever you put in them.. The audio can be anything whatsoever and just like Photoshop edits images using "layers" you can enable the tracks to display in layers on the same timeline. Like, if you wanted to chop some audio up and place the cuts only on certain transients of the other audio track. This make any sense? :) In his second video he's showing off the midi layering. You can have multiple distinct midi tracks and edit all of them within the same piano roll editor where each instrument has a different color.

Another cool thing is on a MIDI track, you can display an audio waveform as it's background beneath the midi notes.. I took a photo of midi notes being entered on top of the amen break:

Doesn't have to be drums either.. I can take an audio clip of synth, guitar, etc.. if you know which transients you want to sync notes to you just enter them in where they start.

Aye that's quite a nice way of working, particularly in the midi layering - quite nice to see all the notes on 'one page' to see how the notes interact with one another

Gotcha, gotcha. thx man

That felt really hard to explain. haha

No problem though.

I must admit Reason is really awesome in a much different way. Sat in chatmm listening to whoopdee talk about it and I ended up watching Reason 8 youtube videos for hours. It's definitely a different world of DAW.

  On 1/12/2015 at 5:43 AM, fiznuthian said:

That felt really hard to explain. haha

No problem though.

 

I must admit Reason is really awesome in a much different way. Sat in chatmm listening to whoopdee talk about it and I ended up watching Reason 8 youtube videos for hours. It's definitely a different world of DAW.

I'll be honest... I HATE it as a DAW.

I typically use it only for producing sections and then I export those and use them as samples/stems in ableton lol.

I find reason super powerful in terms of producing, super weak for sequencing.

Hope that made sense.

I've been trying to wrap my head around the container devices in Bitwig. Ableton has a similar thing going on with their device chain setup, but it's been a while since i've used it.
Nonetheless, this shit gets crazy. Bear ( ) with me...

Instruments and most effects have different types of internal device chain loops that you can nest devices in. Some are wet signal loops, others are strictly for the reverb tank, for processing an instrument's midi data, pre/post chains, etc. Devices can be nested within devices within devices and within devices.

There's a whole set of "container devices" that are strictly for nesting instruments/effects in. You can split the audio signal into 2 and 3 bands, morph the signal 4 ways into an XY pad with 4 seperate device chains, layer devices, replace the audio with midi data when conditions are met, crossfade four instruments on an XY pad, and do mid/side band processing.
Those are the basic components, but it gets more complex as you start nesting and routing, and even more insane when you start routing modulations (audio or LFO) through the signal.

Here's a mock chain I threw together using all of them within eachother:

That's a reverb nested within the mid band on the mid/side split device, which is nested within the post-FX loop of the XY effect container, which is nested within a layer within the FX layer device, which is nested within the high band on a 3 way multiband device, which is nested within the high band of a 2 way multiband, which is nested within another post FX chain on an XY device, which ultimately created one long device chain that can be mixed dry/wet with the original signal OR any of the above.

That's just a shit example, but start throwing LFO modulated EQs (homebrew phasers), compressors, flangers, chorus, filters, ring mods, or whatever VST you want in there and is just gets absolutely insane. Since I suck i've just been creating my own custom multi-band compression and experimenting with weird effects on audio.

The modulation devices can also be nested within eachother.. LFO for example: you can have an LFO within a step modulator within an LFO within a step modulator all serially modulating eachother's rate until the last one modulates the cutoff on your synth. Fucking weird man.

  On 1/12/2015 at 5:33 AM, fiznuthian said:

 

  On 1/12/2015 at 5:20 AM, StephenG said:

Well... the interface isn't like ableton, where you can see it in waveform...

 

but I would have just loaded up the drum samples in redrum and shortened the length of the drum hit by turning the knob. Would take about 6 seconds to do what that video showed in 3 minutes.

 

I guess it's user preference, but reason is pretty powerful in the right hands (not mine haha).

 

Am I missing a key component of what is shown there?

 

 

Oh yeah, we're thinking of different things. Bitwig has a drum rack too, and hits load into a sampler which has amplitude envelopes too. I guess his video confused you because he was working with drum samples, but the idea is that you can edit multiple audio tracks at one time, regardless of whether it's drum samples or whatever you put in them.. The audio can be anything whatsoever and just like Photoshop edits images using "layers" you can enable the tracks to display in layers on the same timeline. Like, if you wanted to chop some audio up and place the cuts only on certain transients of the other audio track. This make any sense? :) In his second video he's showing off the midi layering. You can have multiple distinct midi tracks and edit all of them within the same piano roll editor where each instrument has a different color.

 

Another cool thing is on a MIDI track, you can display an audio waveform as it's background beneath the midi notes.. I took a photo of midi notes being entered on top of the amen break:

Doesn't have to be drums either.. I can take an audio clip of synth, guitar, etc.. if you know which transients you want to sync notes to you just enter them in where they start.

 

oh shit that's awesome. I have so many band recordings that I want to turn into electronic tracks without having to quantise anything; that looks like it'd be perfect for that kind of thing!