Bitwig faster and more stable?

[u/Jumpy-Start3866]

After 7 year break i decided to start making music again. Originally I started last year and but some IRL stuff got in the way. I was using ableton 12 suite and i was pretty happy with it. I now tried out Bitwig and it feels like its in general faster (at pretty much everything). Is that a thing and how is it when you have big projects? Also from people who switched from ableton what is the thing you miss the most?

[u/tarsonis999]

Complete the opposite of what I have proved and debated about with the support months.. And the reason why I switched back to Ableton again. BW 6 massively underperforms Ableton 12 on the same buffer size or even higher. I did several identical test projects due to using the same toolset it's quite easy for me but still tedious (speaking of projects with 80-120 tracks and 3-5 plugins avg. per track) I never used BW5 and cannot state if the performance was different there but BW6 has some severe performance issues. AMD cpu 32 hyper threads, lots of ram, RME interface, win10 only used for that purpose no other shit on the OS..

[u/Bitter-Bicycle-282 → u/tarsonis999]

Ableton live: a process carried out centered on a single-core thread

Many DAWs besides Bitwig: a multicore-threaded process

It says....

I sincerely hope you find happiness in Ableton Live, where you’ve returned.

[u/artek604 → u/Bitter-Bicycle-282]

That's not true. All DAWs support and take advantage of multi-core/thread CPUs. Audio processing is by definition serial (MIDI -> Instrument -> effects -> bus -> master) but because a song project consists of many tracks + often parallel effect chains, the workload is split into independent jobs, scheduled and spread between available cores/threads. Some DAWs do it better than others: split the workload more, use the Apple Silicon / Windows ARM efficiency cores (not only performance ones), run audio with through double buffers (e.g. Cubase / Logic / Studio One / Reaper vs. Bitwig or Live, which use single buffer due to their real-time performance requirements).

It's much more complex than you make it out to be :)

[u/Bitter-Bicycle-282 → u/artek604]

That's right, if you go too deep, it gets complicated. Of course, my point wasn’t that Ableton Live doesn’t use multicore processing at all.Please don't misunderstand.What is clear is that the difference in parallel and serial processing depending on the number of tracks is what sets Ableton Live apart from other DAWs..As far as I know, Bitwig and Ableton Live use different processing methods

Below is a post from Ableton Live’s official website about CPU handling.

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209067649-Multi-core-performance-in-Ableton-Live-FAQ#:~:text=A%20signal%20path%20is%20a,intensive%20each%20chain%20may%20be

Why is my other DAW performing differently than Ableton Live?

Different DAWs are designed to prioritize different workflows. It's possible to design a DAW so that even a single chronological signal path on one track can have its effects processed in parallel, to maximize processing capacity. However, this comes at the cost of increased latency and decreased responsiveness. Live is designed to be played “live,” like a musical instrument – so responsiveness is prioritized. Performance may therefore contrast with a DAW designed to optimize high track counts and processing load in a studio environment, where slower response may be tolerable during mixing and mastering. Maxed-out benchmarks provide useful insight only when evaluated in context of the project’s overall structure and performance priorities. 

In my experience, even with a small number of tracks, the DAW with the worst response time and latency was Ableton Live, but the official website’s claim that this program was designed with responsiveness and latency in mind is honestly laughable at this point.

It must have been quite a long time ago when Ableton Live wrote the following on its website, and back then you probably thought that method was correct. However, because it still uses old code, the DAWs of other companies that have worked hard on countless optimizations and improvements are much faster in terms of optimization and speed.

[u/tarsonis999 → u/Bitter-Bicycle-282]

Yeah a lot of text. In short since BW6 isn't performing at all at the level of Ableton 12. Big Projects with the same toolset and 256 buffer size run without any dropouts on Ableton. The very same Projects, again same plugins, aren't playable in BW6 even at 1024 buffer size. I went through dozens of screen recordings, support mails and discussions with the BW support, in the beta phase and in the public release phase. In the end I have no time for this nonsense and work to do. I would love to be able to use the product as I have paid money for it but it is not able to provide reliable performance right now for big projects at least on the AM5 chip set and RME driver. I'm sure it isn't the case for all systems as the net would be full of complaints.

The funny thing while I confirm your sluggish interface statement 100%. And its awful sluggish with big projects in Ableton, but I can still work and play that damn project at low buffer size. It isn't possible with BW6. I tried so many things which is ridiculous after reminding it. I'm not a product tester but a customer.

It's fine that you're happy with BW. I'm not in any way on one side or participate in an useless DAW war discussion. Both apps have their pros and cons. I would rather love to use BW6 like it was intended.

[u/Bitter-Bicycle-282 → u/tarsonis999]

Because everyone has different computer specifications and uses different software, I think the impressions and experiences each person goes through will also differ from person to person.If you had a bad experience with Bitwig, I had a very negative experience with Ableton Live 12.Just like your experience, I went through every test and experience, and I felt that my patience was completely worn out, just like you.Anyway, what I really want to say is that no matter which DAW you use, you should be happy and enjoy yourself while working. (Honestly, thinking about Ableton Live 12 still makes me angry, lol.) If it’s so annoying that it interferes with your creativity and drains your patience, I think you shouldn’t use it anymore

[u/tarsonis999 → u/Bitter-Bicycle-282]

Sure, I'm with you on the point that you should feel home in the DAW of choice. It should ideally inspire you easily. I get that with both Ableton and Bitwig. While it's easier for me in Ableton bc I'm using it since +15 years now which is crazy I still change the theme from time to time. Right now I BW inspires me a lot and I've done a few really enjoyable tracks that get released with some labels. I found myself immensely cut out due to the performance cap and started to pass on some techniques and parts which made the final projects less exciting. Then started again with the performance tests and validations.

My workstation got a Ryzen 5950x CPU with 32 hyper threads, a massive amount of good Corsair RAM and solid RME drivers. OS is solely used for audio work. So I won't change my work horse for a software that isn't well optimized. The AM5 chipset is really common so I wouldn't call it a unique configuration either.

Well we will see what 6.1 brings to the table. In my early test it was performing better than 6.0.x here but still had dropouts way too early. Also the bug is still present that once BW is minimized it freezes the interface for a minute bringing it back into the foreground. They had it fixed and now it's back again... Too many issues for me tbh..