Ableton or Bitwig? Help!!

[xbitz]

should try this in your production environment with the demo of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWZe2o969IU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZrSnEvsNSE

not sure that it's a general issue but personally exactly this is why I've dropped Live (beside the constant crashing after MAX is installed), it's sluggish as hell, professional feeling bah

Bitwig has a nice free trance template

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_8CT_sjZeg

viewtopic.php?p=6603029 it can be tested with it (I know it's but I would download the cracked version before the playing and played with it for couple of weeks ...)

[Orbit-50]

Ableton Live is cool in it's own way, but Bitwig is more modern. It's like if Live and Studio One 3 had a baby, it would be Bitwig Studio.

[llze]

You will find unsatisfied people in every DAW forum. Best to judge the software based on your own system and experience.

[J-909]

So you are afraid of some hypothetical future things down the road about your "dream DAW" and because of that thinking to choose DAW you don't like that much right now instead, seems quite strange...

It absolutely makes sense, I dont want to get stuck to something that I find doesn't work or makes me loose time in the long run (that's my fear with Bitwig). Let me put an example, your favourite car, you love it but it keeps breaking and letting you down in the worst moment, or you have to be fixing it everyday, you just quit driving it to a not so cool car that simply works fine

[J-909]

Live may be closer to v10 than Bitwig to v2
I would wait unless you are not capable of making music which seems unlikely since it sound like you know exactly your set up etc.

Nice to hear that mate , how closer can that be? weeks or months? I am not a Live-follower so I don't know about release dates.
And yes, I can totally work with my Cubase stuff yet

[J-909]

Bitwig is stable here on my mac.
Stuff like layered editing, hybrid tracks, group handling, nested fx, plugin sandboxing and bounce in place is awesome! If you like that i would not look anywhere else.

I agree, I think if they keep on they will definitely be the future of DAW's. How about performance with heavy projects? Some people argue there are cpu spikes and that Live is stronger in that respect. Other people have suggested that they are having no touble at all with dense stuff or that they just bounce what they got to keep on working.

[llze]

No issues with performance here, really and i'm running a hackintosh, so maybe even not that regular kind of system. I'm also coming from cubase and am a happy camper now. I wanted a combination of live (cliplauncher) and cubase (proper arrangement view), and Bitwig is this and a lot more Bitwig specific glory. Sure bitwig is still young, so some stuff is missing, can be improved or need to be fixed but all together they are doing a great job imo.

[J-909]

Live may be closer to v10 than Bitwig to v2
I would wait unless you are not capable of making music which seems unlikely since it sound like you know exactly your set up etc.

At the pace Bitwig has been going, 2.0 is another 10 years away.

They effectively haven't updated their DAW in about 1.5 years, only added API stuff, and its been on 1.3x for over 1.3 years now.

Bitwig still also feels like a beta DAW to me, the sound engine has been horrible for me, samples crack, constant audio-engine crashes, audio warp is horrible compared to Ableton. Dom has disregarded every suggestion saying otherwise, saying their "audio warping is fine, because he thinks it is". And he banned me from KVR for pointing out bugs in the DAW. There is also no 4-4 grid marking in the piano roll, no custom project file directories. The sampler in Bitwig is 1/2 that of Abletons Simpler.

I am fed up with BW at the current moment, they have no customer-business relationship. Their DAW development has completely stalled. Even though they are partnered with Microsoft, they haven't fixed numerous windows 10 bugs. Dom basically told me to F-off and live with it, then permabanned me without any explanation when I pointed out Windows 10 related bugs in the KVR forum. Months later, now tons of people are expressing the exact same initial problems I had.

Ableton on the other hand is professionally established, feels 'complete' when you use it.

Bitwig has gone from being over 300 euros 2 summers ago, to occasionally selling for around $100 in the KVR marketplace now the past couple months. At least if you snag it for a sale there, you won't be losing much... But their team, I swear I have no idea what they are thinking anymore, and their support (basically Dom), is the worst I've ever experienced. It is like they have given up. The last implementation to their DAW was cowbell (lol), well over a year ago. Their bug fixes are arbitrary, and they don't fix anything important.

If you are in it for stability and long-run established use, go with Ableton. Bitwig has years before they will be even close at this pace. Ableton is much more in-depth, and even easier to use once you develop workflow (Bitwig's sole strength) and learn the commands.

Cheers for you review mate. From the distance of still not having Bitwig I think the developers are doing a good job, at least I see them answering stuff in posts. As regards Ableton I see no communication with users, for instance, the scroll wheel mouse option has been demanded in forums of 2007 and still no answer/feature. But that is just my view from the distance, maybe if I go for Bitwig I end up frustrated for the same reasons and I really don't want to get there.

As for features I find Bitwig much better, but I find Live rock solid (and Bitwig really unstable). So that's the issue: features/workflow vs stability, what do I choose?

[J-909]

No issues with performance here, really and i'm running a hackintosh, so maybe even not that regular kind of system. I'm also coming from cubase and am a happy camper now. I wanted a combination of live (cliplauncher) and cubase (proper arrangement view), and Bitwig is this and a lot more Bitwig specific glory. Sure bitwig is still young, so some stuff is missing, can be improved or need to be fixed but all together they are doing a great job imo.

That's exactly what I'm looking for: combination of Cubase workflow and Live clip launching. So you quitted Cubase or still using it besides Bitwig? I mean, you produce and mix with Bitwig? Has it overtaken Cubase on your work?

[J-909]

Let me add a question for both Live and Bitwig users:

- Has it ever let you down at a critical point in your work?
- Has it ever made you lost all the work you did before? (for instance, suddenly the project doesn't open anymore, and doesn't open previous versions either)
- Has it made you get pissed off at some point and say "Why am I still using it?"? What was the reason?

[Lejurai]

Atm I'd pick Bitwig but I'd wait until Ableton 10. If it has nothing ground breaking to offer, Bitwig. Though they'll most propably will copy everything to Ableton what makes bitwig better.

[llze]

That's exactly what I'm looking for: combination of Cubase workflow and Live clip launching. So you quitted Cubase or still using it besides Bitwig? I mean, you produce and mix with Bitwig? Has it overtaken Cubase on your work?

completely replaced cubase for me. I produce and mix in it yes, it's awesome for both. It tops cubase for sure in terms of creative inspiration and workflow. Sure cubase has matured over the years, so it's audio editing is advanced i would say but i can live with that.

Let me add a question for both Live and Bitwig users:

- Has it ever let you down at a critical point in your work? (not really, well in the beginning there were a few nasty issues with GUI responding slow but has been solved)
- Has it ever made you lost all the work you did before? (for instance, suddenly the project doesn't open anymore, and doesn't open previous versions either) (not once in bitwig, while it did in live)
- Has it made you get pissed off at some point and say "Why am I still using it?"? What was the reason?
(bitwig no, live yes because of the arrangement view and i spent a lot of time getting follow actions on scenes to work, wich never worked out stable)

I used live for two years in parallel to cubase but i couldn't stand the stuff mentioned above anymore.
As to the communication issues that shonoob mentioned just bear in mind that communication always happens two way. I never had any trouble talking with Dom at all.

[dave dove]

i stopped using ableton cos M4L reliability is variable at best
bitwig is fine for my limited needs
and the modulation options actually work

dave

[xbitz]

i stopped using ableton cos M4L reliability is variable at best
bitwig is fine for my limited needs
and the modulation options actually work

dave

+1, btw I've created a nice forum post about the routing of Bitwig pls. check it before do anything in it http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 6#p6331726

[Zexila]

So you are afraid of some hypothetical future things down the road about your "dream DAW" and because of that thinking to choose DAW you don't like that much right now instead, seems quite strange...

It absolutely makes sense, I dont want to get stuck to something that I find doesn't work or makes me loose time in the long run (that's my fear with Bitwig). Let me put an example, your favourite car, you love it but it keeps breaking and letting you down in the worst moment, or you have to be fixing it everyday, you just quit driving it to a not so cool car that simply works fine

Does it work for you now, that's the question, something will get broken with any DAW and car on long run anyways, it's hard to predict these things.