Help me decide between Ableton & Bitwig please...

If you are new here check this forum first, your question may have been answered.
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

Passing Bye wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2019 7:01 am
M-Prod wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 12:56 pm All in all I think Bitwig is the best
Me too, so another vote for Bitwig!
:lol:

Post

I started with Live at v9.7 and got Bitwig v2 before v10 was released. Right now there's no coming back to Live for me, but had the Live v10 been released before I got Bitwig v2 I probably would've stayed there, because it addressed a lot of issues I had with it, primarily related to workflow, touchpad support, high-DPI screens support, multi-track editing, MaxForLive integration and stability, nested folders, convoluted ways of doing simple stuff like sidechaining VSTs, etc. All this - plus lots more - has been fixed and added in v10 and v10.1. Also the integration with Push2 is just flawless, even though Bitwig does awesome job to keep up in this regard via 3rd party scripts. On the flipside The Grid in Bitwig v3 is revolutionary in that it's super easy to wrap your head around and just use it on a daily basis to quickly execute some ideas, wile being sufficiently powerful for most users. With Live's M4L most users are left to 3rd party M4L devices, many of which are awesome (and thus paid), but order of magnitude more are crappy and/or unstable.

Both DAWs are awesome and I'd be super happy with Live v10.1, if Bitwig 3 wasn't there :)

Like others said, I think it's key to simply try them both out for as long as possible and simply try to write some music. It's usually sublte details that tip the scales either way and they might not be relevant (or even visible) for other people who try to "help", like me :)
Music tech enthusiast
DAW, VST & hardware hoarder
My "music": https://soundcloud.com/antic604

Post

I personally would roll the dice. At least that prevents you from the effort of demo'ing the DAW's yourself.

Post

chk071 wrote: Thu Aug 22, 2019 3:55 pm I personally would roll the dice. At least that prevents you from the effort of demo'ing the DAW's yourself.
:lol:

It's a strange question to ask isn't it? Bitwig, Live, and Reaper are the easiest DAWs around to demo and spend a lot of time with the interface and features to see if you like it.

IMO it really comes down to which strong features of the two you feel are more important. Live Suite offers a whole hell of a lot of extras with Max 4 Live, video DJing, and endless fx and instruments etc. Bitwig offers MPE, note expression, better modulation routing, sandboxed plug ins etc. IMO easier instrument building in Grid, but as of now Max is far more versatile than Grid.

So which is more important to you?

Post

:tu:

I think the choice of a DAW is about as personal as it gets.

Post

Ok today I found another example basic interaction subtleties that are missing from bitwig. The repetition of key commands.
Whey you want to repeat a key command like duplicate (cmd-d on osx) or undo redo. You have to press the key repeatedly. In Ableton, I can just hold down the key and it will repeat automatically (at the rate I have set in my system preferences). Great for duplicating notes fast or undoing/redoing lots of steps. Like I said earlier, it's interface subtleties like these that tip the scale to Ableton for me still.

Post

M-Prod wrote: Fri Sep 13, 2019 8:11 am Ok today I found another example basic interaction subtleties that are missing from bitwig. The repetition of key commands.
Whey you want to repeat a key command like duplicate (cmd-d on osx) or undo redo. You have to press the key repeatedly. In Ableton, I can just hold down the key and it will repeat automatically (at the rate I have set in my system preferences). Great for duplicating notes fast or undoing/redoing lots of steps. Like I said earlier, it's interface subtleties like these that tip the scale to Ableton for me still.
This has a certain reason which I personally find much more important:

In Bitwig you can press and hold a key for a certain action as long as you need it and when you let go the key it reverses to the previous state...
Meaning i.e. slicing manually a clip in multiple user defined parts: the number 5 on the keyboard brings up the knife tool but instead of (like many other DAWs do) having to press "5" do your slicing and pressing "1" to bring up the pointer again like before, you can just press and hold "5"... do your slicing with the "5" pressed all the time and when you let go the key it reverts automatically back to the pointer again...

This is just a little example (there are many others where you want a certain state just for a little moment) and sounds trivial but once you get used to it you never want to miss it again ...

But this means repetition of commands has to do with pressing the keys multiple times...
I personally rate the temporary function of Bitwig a million times higher as you will use it much more often than repetitive commands... every medal has 2 sides... 8)

Post

I agree that is a nifty way of interaction. Though I'm not sure why that would exclude some key commands like duplicate, undo/redo to allow key repeat. In ableton you can adjust all values with the up/down keys so key repeat not just nice, its a must there. I hope this als gets implemented in bitwig. This makes me use my mouse much less.

Post

Oh and one for bitwig I also just found out. When I extract a drum pad from ableton it is 'crippled'. Deactivated notes become activated and automation dissapears. When I drag a drum channel out of drum machine in Bitwig, it just remains identical as I would expect.

Post Reply

Return to “Getting Started (AKA What is the best...?)”