#154

I’ve begun to switch from Live to BitWig over time and it’s fantastic. Feels much more natural to me in its layout. And it’s proven to be so much more flexible. At some point I want to give these touch controls a shot on Apple SideCar. Not sure if it’ll work, but seems rad. Otherwise, it’s just got many of the tools I need and want. Really a blast. I’ve been using it on my desktop PC recently, just as a way of really pushing weight, so I can run my rack, BitWig and all the software I love. But if I’m just going to be rack only, having an iPad with touch controls next to the rack seems like a real possibility.

1 Like
#155

Resizing certain views in Bitwig still needs some help.

#156

3.2 is a sneakily amazing update, the Saturator and EQ+ devices are great, and the new Grid modules make the Grid environment a lot more useful.

4 Likes
#157

Totally agree! Modulating an EQ+ is just magical.

2 Likes
#158

I was on the search for a DAW to supplement renoise and ended up biting the bullet and buying bitwig while it’s on sale. no regrets. I was really surprised at how easy it was to figure out, I watched a 15 minute overview of the GUI on youtube and that was about it. I wish envelopes on audio events/time stretching had more control but hopefully that will come down the road. I really haven’t even been doing much with automation and the grid yet!

#159

I continue to like Bitwig overall.

  • I’ve had some trouble getting mouse-based scalling and (horizontal) navigation of the timeline to not be weird.
  • I’m having some trouble with the HW Clock device and suspect it’s not all that consistent—in any case Pamela’s New Workout is not favorably impressed; I’m having much better luck with a clock generated via the phase unit on Grid discussed here. (I have reported all this to the Bitwig folks.)
1 Like
#160

one bitwig concept that has expanded my thinking about electronic music is their representation of clocking/timing as phase. defining the passage of time as a cyclical waveform (ie. linear = ramp wave) instead of measuring the amount of time between clock pulses (and then choosing to multiply/divide from there) is blowing my mind. such a wonderfully expressive way to visualize it.

bitwig’s “grid” has a bunch of modules to manipulate phase information. simply feeding an exponential phase curve to a gate sequencer is giving me lively dynamic rhythms that speed up and slow down, but remain “in the loop”. incredible!

perhaps this is an old concept? feels fresh to me :slight_smile:

16 Likes
#161

“waveshaping the phasor” is definitely a powerful modality.

bute yeah, definitely something i associate with analog sequencers, though i guess it is not as universal in practice as it seems in my mental model.

e.g., don B didn’t think to add direct CV stage selection to sequencers until the 200 series AFAIK. but it’s been a constant feature since 1970 or so.

anyway it’s nice that bitwig allows that

8 Likes
#162

I like that too – it’s basically CV-addressed sequencing, but from a different perspective which invites “phase distortion” of clocked sequences. :smiley: Not just looking up values, but also “bending” the rhythm of triggers and gates, etc.

“Pitch to Phase” is interesting too, a representation of pitch class as a phase value. You can do something like this to create your own scales (probably works best with macrotuning; trying to define a 34-note scale this way would probably be extremely awkward!)

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Bend or Formant on the pitch “phase” also works well :smiley:

Also the new Array module uses two phase inputs for read and write positions in a buffer – lots of fun to be had there I think. I’ve barely scratched the surface of that one.

3 Likes
#163

I’ve been using Bitwig Studio since v1 back in 2014 or so (I’ve written most of the Sound On Sound reviews). I think the only major room for improvement at the moment is file management: it doesn’t let you organise audio files and share them amongst projects with the same flexibility and clarity as Ableton Live. Some instruments (Grid, Sampler) are amazing; some (FM-4) could do with a bit of interface love.

I’ve not looked at the third-party integration with the Push 2 yet - though I doubt it’s as tight as Ableton provides. I’d also love a built-in wavetable synth: Ableton is winning on this.

2 Likes
#164

I’ve been using Bitwig recently and I’m enjoying it a lot. The UI is very well judged and for me the combination of clip launcher and arranger is really flexible and useful for sketching up ideas. (I haven’t used Live in earnest but have used arranger focused DAWs such as Reaper and MPC which has a clip paradigm.)
I like the horizontal device chain visualisation and the use of the main panel for detailed views.
The modulation features are really great and very inspiring for sound design.
The Grid looks really powerful, but I hope it doesn’t take over the development cycles to much - some other things still feel a bit immature. It would be good to have an undo history for example. And to be able to rename midi devices. Sample stretching is comprehensive but quite involved - I would like to see a quick and dirty stretch option like alt-drag in Reaper on an audio item.

1 Like
#165

How does it differ from the wavetable mode in the Sampler? I haven’t used Live beyond vague tinkering with the LE version that came with some controller I bought.

1 Like
#166

Wavetable in Bitwig’s sampler doesn’t oversample afaik, so it gets aliasing artifacts. But the sampler module oversamples 4x in grid. I‘d be curious to hear what feature people would like from a dedicated wavetable device beyond workflow improvement over poly grid.

As far as my own feature wishlist, midi grid is probably still on top…

3 Likes
#167

well - I renewed my yearly license for the third year running (despite not meaning to). The reason I did this year was a) decent summer sale offer and b) am vaguely wondering about setting up a non Mac based music machine (jury still out on that one).

I’ve been using it a bit so I feel better about the license (& also been using my Seaboard a bit more too which precludes Ableton)

There is a lot of love about Bitwig. It feels like you need to properly embrace their way of doing things - and it’s a real “studio is the instrument” kind of tool. Feeling like I should immerse myself in it a bit and see where I get to

4 Likes
#168

Alas, my clocking misadventures with Bitwig continue. While the clocking strategy I’ve adopted here works—initially—after a period of time, something like 15 minutes, it totally freaks out, races, and fluctuates wildly. The only way I’ve found to reset it is to restart Bitwig, and then it will work for another short period of time. This one is going to be tedious to document, but I guess I’ll try.

1 Like
#169

I was traveling and left my DIN sync cable at home that I usually use with PNW. I didn’t have cv interface, but I did have midi-to-cv through Entropy Engine.

Perhaps there was an easier method (I couldn’t find a midi metronome like Logic has), but I built a clock using the grid (LFO with Transport and NAND out to Replacer and Note Receiver) to send midi at whatever division Pam’s best followed through Engine channel with midi-to-cv. The clock held up for the few hours I used it.

So grid to midi to cv at least seems to be stable.

1 Like
#170

Does one have to pay every year? Is that to get new upgrades? Will old versions still work if you stop paying?

#171

The license gets you the upgrades. I believe it keeps running at whatever version.

1 Like
#172

I really like Bitwig. I’ve been running it on a 2018 15" MacBook Pro for a few years and decided I like it enough to continue use on a dedicated PC build. We’ll see how that goes soon enough. Will be nice to push it and not have to worry about burning the table my MacBook sits on.

There are some nice options for 10th gen Intel motherboards with integrated Thunderbolt 3 support.

…And RGB to match that new EQ+ look…

2 Likes
#173

I’m looking at Bitwig more and thinking it might be worth investing a few days in a trial to see if it works for me. Just to clarify though, can the modulators be used on any VST, or just bitwig devices? Anyone had any compatibility issues there? Also I don’t have anything like an expert sleepers but have been thinking about it for a long time and if I switched over to bitwig would probably pick one up since it seems they really have integration in mind. So can those modulators then also be used then for generating CV signals to go out?