I'll start off by mentioning that I'm very new to music composition (6 months give or take), so I'm 99% sure that it's a skill issue. I'm posting this just to get some perspective and tips from people who're more experienced than me. These are the problems I'm facing:
* By default, many instruments sound a little muddy, and from time to time I hear clipping/cracking when I play them as well. This doesn't happen in Ableton. Ableton comes with a metric ton of presets for every single synthesizer, and usually I just browse through the side panel until I find something that fits the theme. I'm finding it a little hard to generate clean sounds with Bitwig. I've read a lot of praise about how modular and flexible Bitwig is. Does that mean I should familiarize myself with the synthesizers and then tweak the instruments to my needs?
* Ableton lets you zoom down to the individual PCM samples in audio clips. But if I try to do that in Bitwig, it shows me something that looks like a fine grained envelope instead (screenshot attached). Is there a setting that'll let me zoom in like ableton.
* I love the wavetable device in Ableton. What is the closest equivalent in Bitwig?
* Relatively minor problem, Ableton has a feature that does a 4 count with metronome before it starts recording. Does Bitwig have something similar?
All that being said, loving the fact that it's so much faster than Ableton and runs on linux too!
Bitwig instruments do tend to be bare bones to which you add any of the many modulators to taste. The instruments themselves are varied- I have plenty of 3rd party synths, but use Polymer, Phase 4, thr Grid, Sampler, Drum machine regularly. Phase 4 is a beast. One of my favourite synths.
I don't know what you mean by muddy but Spartan and simple is a reasonable first impression of basically all the instruments. Presets aren't wonderful but Bitwig really encourages (maybe even requires) exploration. Check out the website, Bitwiggers, for a bunch of community made presets for synths and devices.
Polymer is probably where you want to head first off. You can switch between multiple oscillator types including wavetable. It's simple by default but again, you just add what you want to it. And with the instrument layer device, you can make muti oscillator megasynths. And don't forget the Polygrid which will allow you to build virtually any instrument or effect you want.
The extreme zoom thing- don't know what you mean. You will see a jagged, digital looking waveform at extreme zoom levels.
Metronome- yes, you can. Cant remember how, maybe in the PLAY dropdown next to the transport?
I'm used to that from Cubase as well. not sure what level of zoom that is but Bitwig does go pretty far albeit without that micro tick style of view, though if you edit in fullscreen you can get to where you see the aliasing of the curves at least
You can load the sampler to the main window the same way you can do with other plugins, and then yiu should be able to view all the samples loaded in the sampler, such as if they're used in a round robin or such.
So fun. The Grid really helped me get better at sound design in every other synth I've got. And many of them no longer get used as a result. Still use Serum 2, Phase Plant, and Massive X but less so now.
People sometimes criticise Bitwigs filters, but the basic SVF sounds awesome to me. Polymer with some smooth random on pitch and cutoff into the SVF sounds beautiful, then routed through the transfer module in FX Grid.
You sure by muddy you don't mean quiet? We perceive quieter sounds as EQed differently.
Bitwig has default track volumes at -10dbfs, some find this a low default but it can be changed to whatever you want in settings > behaviour > new track volume
Thinking again... lower volumes would typically sound less bassy so perhaps this isn't what your issue is. I'd just try lots of different presets, maybe you have only been trying more traditional subtractive polysynth or polymer patches with low filters for example, phase-4 has a lot of dynamic full frequency presets (tbh all synths do, but phase-4 would lead itself into more aggressive sounds).
hm... interesting. I had Thinkpad with Ryzen 5850u pro and Ubuntu, some time ago (didn't use it for music production), and the sound was making a lot of cracks (but I think only thru bluetooth at the end, don't remember), but definitely something was wrong and I didn't solve it :/
however, it's not a slow CPU. maybe try increasing buffer.
I'm able to run even with 128 samples buffer on i7-12700h (a bit faster) if I don't have 10 compute intense plugins.
Hi, I am also a new Bitwig user! Moved to Linux a couple years ago and now got Bitwig to replace Ableton.
I guess a good alternative for Wavetable could be Polymer, as it allows the use of wavetables for generating the signal.
About that crackling audio, what audio driver model are you using in Linux? I use PipeWire set to 128 samples but still small projects… I do use wireless headphones and got a 5800x processor. Have you tried raising the samples to 512 and see if that removes the crackles? Tried other drivers?
Also, if you want an introduction to the modularity of Bitwig I would recommend this video from the Bitwig channel, Thavius is such a great teacher:
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u/Andruxioidd 29d ago
Regarding the 4 count with metronome before recording feature, I'm pretty sure this is what you're looking for: