Sluggish/sloooow GUI Bitwig 2.23 macOS Sierra 10.12.6

[olaims]

No, you don't need a faster machine to have a more fluent Bitwig GUI. It is slow by design - at least I am afraid of. My machine could easily drive two 4K monitors at 60fps. There is some bottleneck either in the whole JAVA/OpenGL structure or actually in their GUI code.

That said JAVA always was slower on macOS than on Windows, so I would assume those GUI slowdowns are less drastically on Windows.

I think you are really right.....


Here a Windows10 User... where Ableton projects with 10x times more Plugins/Channels runs fluid but Bitwig with 6 Channels and 10 Vst die (only visually I mean)

[feedbackmachine]

No, I was not right.

Please read the statement from the Bitwig dev some posts ago. He stated that the Bitwig GUI currently is fully CPU driven, and GPU acceleration does not yet exist at all. They are on it to change that, at least for the most demanding GUI areas, he wrote. Although there are references in the .app to that JAVA GUI library I mentioned above, the developer says they are using Cairo graphics library. Maybe they are using both then.

For a GUI tha is fully software driven, the performance on a 4k screen is quite impressive. But of course you will reach the natural limits of a CPU here, since the GPU was built for doing raw mass tasks, and not the CPU. Surely such an effort on the CPU as a lot of impact on the available processing power of the audio dsp.

Ableton's GUI already uses GPU acceleration, on macOS at least for some specific zoom levels: 50% and 100%.

[mrfrenkie]

Work on the project is impossible.

Makbook Pro 2017 15"
Default display scale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAwIYcH ... e=youtu.be

[ejgallego]

Work on the project is impossible.

Makbook Pro 2017 15"
Default display scale.

Yup, rendering in OSX is just very slow. Is that with 2.3 beta?

I'm much afraid you'll have to decrease the resolution until the devs improve the performance.

[krixa]

That's just... TOO slow

[Enrize]

I have the same terrible performance. If it wouldn't be like that I've already renew my licence. But until i can't work normally my relationship with Bitwig are suspended. Sadly.

[Hanz Meyzer]

I would be happy about a much faster GUI, too. It is not that extreme like in the video above, but it still stutters a lot while editing, zooming. And the more instruments added, the heavier it is. The audio engine also starts to stutter as soon as the graphic area is huge. This shouldn't be the case. It's a bummer.

[trancema]

That is ridiculous for a professional (and expensive) piece of software to be slow and stuttering like that.
I like Bitwig but I am still on the fence should I purchase it especially seeing things like this, it is unacceptable and not professional by all means.
Would you tolerate if Photoshop or Office to behave like that? Or even having a car which looks nice and has nice specs and features but it is stuttering and unreliable all the time.
I think Bitwig team should stop all further development and focus on fixing speed and stability first, then add new features.
Similar thing happened with Live when version 8 came out they stopped adding new stuff until they fix all bugs and instabilities and it was public announcement.
About that time some of developers left Ableton and formed Bitwig.
Strange decision to implement fresh, new optimized code and chose Java instead C++ for gui, now this is consequence when rushing to release premature code.
Completely unacceptable if you ask me, but I still have faith and I want Bitwig to succeed.
Please developers, make it number 1 priority to have smoothest user experience then add features later.

[ejgallego]

That is ridiculous for a professional (and expensive) piece of software to be slow and stuttering like that.
I like Bitwig but I am still on the fence should I purchase it especially seeing things like this, it is unacceptable and not professional by all means.
Would you tolerate if Photoshop or Office to behave like that? Or even having a car which looks nice and has nice specs and features but it is stuttering and unreliable all the time.
I think Bitwig team should stop all further development and focus on fixing speed and stability first, then add new features.
Similar thing happened with Live when version 8 came out they stopped adding new stuff until they fix all bugs and instabilities and it was public announcement.
About that time some of developers left Ableton and formed Bitwig.
Strange decision to implement fresh, new optimized code and chose Java instead C++ for gui, now this is consequence when rushing to release premature code.
Completely unacceptable if you ask me, but I still have faith and I want Bitwig to succeed.
Please developers, make it number 1 priority to have smoothest user experience then add features later.

Pfff, save your useless rant for a different kind of forum. You clearly have no experience with software development, and you don't understand the concrete technical problem OSX users are facing. Office? Are you kidding me? Office or Windows were built by a team a few orders of magnitude larger than BW and they are been consistent pieces of shit for many years, crashing often and taking millions of hours of work away while doing so...

In this case, the problem is well-identified [Cairo on OSX... ] and it will be fixed in due time. BW is a young, multiplatform piece of software and just that last part is quite challenging by itself.

[kdejaeger]

Again, don't blaim Java, it's unlikely the issue. And personally I trust the Bitwig devs to solve any problem we'll encounter in time. I hope they minimize the usage of Cairo in the future, unless suddenly Cairo becomes a popular project again with lot's of committers.

[trancema]

That is ridiculous for a professional (and expensive) piece of software to be slow and stuttering like that.
I like Bitwig but I am still on the fence should I purchase it especially seeing things like this, it is unacceptable and not professional by all means.
Would you tolerate if Photoshop or Office to behave like that? Or even having a car which looks nice and has nice specs and features but it is stuttering and unreliable all the time.
I think Bitwig team should stop all further development and focus on fixing speed and stability first, then add new features.
Similar thing happened with Live when version 8 came out they stopped adding new stuff until they fix all bugs and instabilities and it was public announcement.
About that time some of developers left Ableton and formed Bitwig.
Strange decision to implement fresh, new optimized code and chose Java instead C++ for gui, now this is consequence when rushing to release premature code.
Completely unacceptable if you ask me, but I still have faith and I want Bitwig to succeed.
Please developers, make it number 1 priority to have smoothest user experience then add features later.

Pfff, save your useless rant for a different kind of forum. You clearly have no experience with software development, and you don't understand the concrete technical problem OSX users are facing. Office? Are you kidding me? Office or Windows were built by a team a few orders of magnitude larger than BW and they are been consistent pieces of shit for many years, crashing often and taking millions of hours of work away while doing so...

In this case, the problem is well-identified [Cairo on OSX... ] and it will be fixed in due time. BW is a young, multiplatform piece of software and just that last part is quite challenging by itself.

I have to say that I am sorry that it felt like a rant, but actually it can't be more far away from the truth. It was not my intention to sound like that, it was constructive criticism, and I love Bitwig as an excellent one solution alternative for my current 2 DAWs (Logic and Live).
There is no need to be angry on my post, I have no intention of making anybody emotional (especially in negative concept) about my opinion about tools that we are using for our work. (which, at the end of the day, they are)
Funny enough, professional software development (C++ back in days and mostly C# nowadays) is my main job over 25 years.I also admit that I don't have much experience with Java particularly, but I know it is very similar with C#, and me personally wouldn't use it to develop (real)time critical complex software package, but that's a different story. (although I know audio engine in Bitwig was done in C++)
I do understand why did they chose to do it in Java though, and I am not blaming them. It's hard to develop and support one OS, not to talk about 3.
But as an end user I shouldn't care or feel consequences of which platform for developing did they use, as long as performance and stability is in proper order, but, this is not the case here, I'm afraid.
I understand and know how libraries work, and perhaps it was a bad decision to proceed with Cairo, without proper testing or thinking about alternative from very beginning.
Also, when I was mentioning analogy with Office and Adobe package it was purely from user operational standpoint (as both of those are professional tools), not from a point of complexity of software or team being involved into it, because most of (even average) computer users understands importance of Office running smoothly and it would be really strange and unacceptable not to work like it.
Now, why that would be different for Bitwig users? It's not fair to pay for something which is almost unusable to work comfortably in environment that you paid for.
If you, as a developer, sell your product that should work equally good on all 3 supported OS' then you should keep your side of promise/agreement.
Now, I understand that they are working on solution and that is a good thing, but it should be number one priority, or they should charge less for OSX version (which is, of course - absurd).
I do make music for money, but I can't call it my main profession, more like a passion, and I am really interested in buying Bitwig but I simply can't justify to pay for something that doesn't work fully as it should, and will introduce frustration to my workflow and only solution is to wait and hope that devs with come up with solution for a problem that shouldn't be there in first place at all (especially considering that they had all the time in the world after forming company to come with good strategy for ideas, development and anticipation of possible problems and drawbacks before releasing V1).
I think that is the major drawback with Bitwig because as a "new player" in DAW world it should be super responsive and reliable which should put much confidence and trust on end-user when buying it and using it.
Last thing for a user of a software is us to worry about performance of language or library that piece of software was written on. Leave that to developers. I wasn't implying that Java is a bad choice for writing GUI, I was just saying that it wasn't perhaps most optimized choice and now they have to cope with consequences.
Bitwig DAW should be transparent and not obtrusive to stand in a way between flows of creative juice and potential problems with making that transition into finished tracks as smooth as possible.

Again, please, understand that I am not ranting on Bitwig, just thinking loud. I am quite sure that I will purchase it at some point as I am impressed with its capabilities, but until they solve these issues I am still on the fence and keeping up with other 2 DAWs.

(Also, if you wonder, yes, I am programming on WIndows OS, but working on my music in OSX)

Thank you for reading all this and I hope you understand my friendly point as an end user, no need to be offensive

[Hanz Meyzer]

you don't understand the concrete technical problem OSX users are facing. Office? Are you kidding me? ...
In this case, the problem is well-identified [Cairo on OSX... ] and it will be fixed in due time.

It will mainly happen on 4K / Retina screens. And of course there is no difference between Mac and Windows version, since it is a problem in the architecture of Bitwig.

[ejgallego]

[
It will mainly happen on 4K / Retina screens. And of course there is no difference between Mac and Windows version, since it is a problem in the architecture of Bitwig.

I dunno about Windows, but Cairo tends to perform very differently on Linux vs OSX, with Linux usually being much faster. I'd be cool if somebody could compare both platforms with the same project.

[Enrize]

[
It will mainly happen on 4K / Retina screens. And of course there is no difference between Mac and Windows version, since it is a problem in the architecture of Bitwig.

I dunno about Windows, but Cairo tends to perform very differently on Linux vs OSX, with Linux usually being much faster. I'd be cool if somebody could compare both platforms with the same project.

I did. No difference. At least between Win and MacOS.

[Hanz Meyzer]

:C