
Bitwig Studio 3: Enter The Grid. - antfarm
https://www.bitwig.com/en/19/bitwig-studio-3.html
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teilo
It amazes me how fast this product is developing compared to all the
competition.

Their architecture must be far more flexible than Ableton, who's 9 -> 10
upgrade was seriously underwhelming for the five years they had to work on it.
Nested groups, multi-track editing, and capture are all welcome, so I'm not
discounting what they DID add, but for the life of me I can't understand why
here is still: No MPE, no VST3, no inline VST MIDI effects (you still have to
use multi-track hacks), no comping, no global time signature changes, and the
same stunted MIDI/Audio routing system.

The Grid has Max4Live directly in its crosshairs. It is obviously not a direct
replacement — yet, but it covers 90% of the way most people use Max, without
the need to dive into the guts of Max signal processing, and with far superior
DAW integration.

My prediction is that this is a prelude to Bitwig releasing a module designer
app, with full access to the DSP components that underly the existing built-in
synths and modulation system, that will bring this thing home.

~~~
mrbrowning
I don’t remember where I saw it, so it could be apocryphal, but I saw an
admission from an Ableton developer that the difficulty in implementing MPE
support is down to the fact that MIDI implementation details are baked into a
bunch of disparate components across levels of abstraction within Live, which
seems pretty plausible to me. I don’t envy the effort involved in rectifying
that, but it does have me looking at Bitwig more and more.

~~~
teilo
Oh I have no doubt that's the case. Ableton, remember, began its life as a
clip launcher. I have no doubt that its architecture has been built up over so
many generations that moving forward in any significant way would require a
massive compatibility-breaking re-write. That's why all the changes for the
last few versions have been mostly extra effects/instruments and workflow
improvements. It also explains why the new Max integration does little more
than improve its launch time.

Bitwig has had the advantage of a greenfield redesign based on lessons learned
by former Ableton devs. Their choice to implement the audio engine in portable
C with proper process isolation and a Java UI is a brilliant move. It is so
refreshing to have Bitwig's audio engine crash, and be able to choose to start
it again or save my project without losing a thing.

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evo_9
Pretty interesting addition. Reminds me of AudioMulch which basically only
does this and is pretty fun sound creation tool too.

[http://www.audiomulch.com](http://www.audiomulch.com)

~~~
rzzzt
More things to try if you are interested in connecting modular bits for sound
generation:

VCV Rack - [https://vcvrack.com/](https://vcvrack.com/)

Jeskola Buzz - [http://jeskola.net/buzz/](http://jeskola.net/buzz/)

Reaktor 6 - [https://www.native-
instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synt...](https://www.native-
instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/reaktor-6/)

~~~
stuntkite
Buzz takes me back. I spent so many hours with that in high school making acid
house and annoying gabber.

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dominotw
I think is the only major DAW that works on linux.

~~~
roberto
There's also Ardour, which I use after starting in Ableton and going through
Bitwig. I love Bitwig and its modular approach, but I really wanted to make
music with open source software.

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timc3
My favourite DAW. Think I am going to have to invest in a new DC coupled
interface with lots of inputs and outputs now to drive the modular.

~~~
33degrees
You're likely aware of this already, but the expert sleepers ES-8 is a great
way to interface the two worlds.

~~~
brokenmachine
I don't know anything about modular, do you use this to route audio through
modules?

What's a typical use case for this? Custom audio effects, or is it mostly just
to get audio back into the DAW from your modular?

~~~
twalla
You can route audio into/out of a modular synth with this but the main selling
point is being able to send CV or control voltage signals from your DAW to
your modular. CV is just DC electrical signal that represents some value you
want to manipulate. Think of 0v representing the lowest note/frequency on the
keyboard and 5v representing the highest, with all voltages in between
representing intermediate values, or 0 representing a filter being set to the
lowest frequency and 5 representing completely open, letting all sound
through. Boutique analog equipment that can manipulate/sequence CV is usually
pretty expensive, but with a module like this you can get similar/more
functionality for less.

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camerondoll
Bells and whistles and no improvements to workflow. Sad to see because this
DAW is really promising. At the moment they are still far behind Ableton and
Ableton itself is lacking in the workflow department. The market is so
underserved that those companies can throw anything and people will buy, sadly
they forgot about professionals again.

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starsinspace
Site is hard to reach, but here's the YouTube video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wHHbV8Zw4g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wHHbV8Zw4g)

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tarnith
I've been a steady user since version 1, and I've really enjoyed seeing this
DAW progress.

The modulators and easy workflow/resampling (bouncing tracks) is very
intuitive and efficient. The addition of this is going to really make it the
ultimate sound design playground.

Looking forward to what this team continues to bring!

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adamnemecek
I'm working on a new DAW of sorts. Check it out if you are interested, I'm
hoping to make your workflow really fast

[http://ngrid.io](http://ngrid.io)

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FraKtus
The site is down for me. But amazing project and team!

~~~
npolet
It's back now. Definitely worth a look. Been using bitwig for ages as it works
beautifully on Linux and I'm really excited about version 3. Nice to see the
project progress in such an amazing way.

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hackermeows
Looks like it is down. HN hug of death ?

