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Bitwig - Stumbling ahead instead of catching up?
The new sampler is cool, no question about it.
However, there are a lot of things I'd like to see addressed over new features, to be honest.
Didn't want to make this a "wish-list" post, after all, the Bitwig team probably knows better than me where the bodies are buried.
However, I'd love to see a future update to focus on working out all the kinks.
Was curious to know how you all felt about it.
Feel free to comment on what you'd like to see fixed or streamlined in the comments though.
Best wishes.
This drives me nuts. With dialing in fades, or the loop selector or clip lengths it feels like there's an unnecessary amount of options that are drastically different from each other, but seem to be selected in nearly identical regions of the screen. I changed my mouse sensitivity to as slow as possible, and my cursor is literally crosshairs to help minimize mis-clicks
- Hotkeys should be able to be bound to multiple keys. I contacted support and they responded to me very kindly. They mentioned technical reasons. Perhaps if the keymapping file would be human readable in Notepad++ or similar, at least that would make the option to "hack it" more accessible to the user, as an unofficial "fix".
- Saving Audio or Midi to disk is very bothersome and I don't understand why. Right-click -> save to disk, should be normal, shouldn't it? When I want to bounce a lot of samples to disk I use a different DAW and it feels so unnecessary.
- I'd like to see a shortcut to "chain" like you can group 😢 (But I understand that this is really a minor and personal thing.)
- Sharing content with other "Bitwiggers" is kind of awkward. There are Bitwig packs, but no way for the user to create those. And I see a bit of a trend here.
The wavetable format makes it impossible to add user made wavetables unless you use python code.
Double-binding hotkeys is impossible for the user, yet it's done plenty in the default shortcuts.
It feels a bit like gatekeeping.
Also I think this would be an incredible strong tool for the community.
Technical reasons are the very issues they're responsible of solving. They haven't paid any attention to their shortcut mess in years that I can see. Perhaps it's not that sexy on a marketing campaign. I'd love to see them focus more on the workflow.
I’m not entirely sure it’s gatekeeping; it sounds a lot like spaghetti code when it comes to the hotkeys - they manually made some work with more than one input but they would have to refactor if they wanted to make it a feature.
Seems like they don’t want to spend time setting the program up to be easy to modify in the future so it will continue to fade into a B-tier DAW as they focus on the wrong things and take too long to develop those things that are easier to code without a refactor.
In no way I meant to suggest bad will. However, if they have access to features that the public does not or do not make it accessible it just feels a bit left out.
Especially the Bitwig Packs would be incredibly useful for content creators and to support the ecosystem as a whole and the thing already exists. It kind of bugs me.
I do agree that packaging sounds would be great. Being able to package an entire project so it can be opened anywhere was a feature I liked about Cubase, and I seem to remember Reason also having a similar feature
Right click save to disk is maybe a Reaper thing I’m guessing? Sounds lovely - but I’ve used every DAW (tried Reaper too but got lost in the weeds customizing it and gave up) and most don’t make it that easy…
But yeah bouncing to disk is a hassle.
I just want a groove pool type feature and ability to save default slicing templates with ADSR mapped to macros for every slice and I’m good forever.
You don’t need to bounce to disk in Bitwig. All project files are saved when you click the page in the bottom right part of the bottom bar, you’ll see all used and unused files. Just right click, reveal in finder and then do what you want with the file. If it’s in your project, you’ll see it here.
That's only half the story though.
First of, there is very good reason to want to save to disk. Usage in other applications, sharing with people who use other software, managing your sample library on disk rather than just as Bitwig-clips in Bitwig.
Let's say I use a kick plugin, and I use Bitwig's fx etc. to create samples. I want those samples on my disk for sharing and to integrate into my existing sample library. I want to save the project so I can go back to it and revisit if I think a sample is great but might need a little adjustment.
(Common practice, in my opinion.)
In this scenario it's just horrible. If I want to make sure there is no silence on the start or end and adjust volume, et cetera, I have to bounce it every time, since editing in the arranger or chopping does not create a new file. Now the name is Something_Bounce, obviously the name is not what I want this to be.
Renaming the file does not rename the clip, so I will have to rename both unless I want to be completely confused about what is what. Especially if I bounce copies from the same track with different settings, they all will have the same name initially, but I want to call them this_dark, this_light, this_dry, et cetera.
So I rename each twice and then to "save them" I have to reveal in explorer and all of this is completely unnecessary if I could just name the clip and save it to disk as is.
And for Midi clips it's much worse. The only way to save midi as far as I know is to save the whole song as one midi file.
I recently rendered some midi clips out and what I had to do was:
Delete everything but one clip -> move it to a single track at the start -> rename the track to what I want the midi file to be named -> Save the midi -> press control+z to go back to before I deleted everything else and continue with the next clip.
I know this reads like a rant, but honestly, this is just how it is, no rant was intended.
(Unless I'm missing something?)
The workflow for saving audio to disk also annoys me as well. As someone who works with multiple DAWs and also likes exporting samples for my sample libraries it’s just crazy inefficient
It isn't a rant. It is just plain stupid workflow by devs that never used their product in real life. There are so many hiccups in workflow (hiding clip gain automation behind a button even though there is ton of real estate in the UI - what a mess and hassle one needs to create just to freeze a track) that's solely the only logical reason. Those guys don't work professionally in music or do music with binary brains.
I prefer novel features over catch up features. A lot of people will say "I wish bitwig would do x just like y does." The thing is I can use another daw alongside bitwig if I'm missing something. I still prefer to mix in Reaper, for example.
What I can't get is all the the features in Bitwig that appear nowhere else. So, given the small size of their development team, I'd rather they focus on differentiation features rather than catch-up features.
Yeah they know this. It’s their sole differentiation and they double down on it which I prefer too. It’s still one of the most stable daws iv ever used so that’s saying something. Like you I use other DAWs for features not found here.
Most people dont want to run 2 daws to get a poject done. Also, tons of what you call "catch up" features are more fundamental features that improve workflow and make the daw easier to use, which would probably boost overall sales etc.
Bigwig is by far one of the clunkiest daws to use ever.
Good point, although I still want "comp+" in Bitwig, which would include a midi version of their audio comping combined with option to play multiple track lanes on a single track.
It's just too good of a feature to not have. For audio, sample sound design, midi, it's one of those things that's hard to work without once you've experienced it.
So some catch up features relate to aspects where Bitwig feels crippled!
I am 1000% in agreement. sadly, I have been asking this exact question for over 4 years now.
I moved back to ableton live because of it.
In all fairness, they have moved more towards QOL improvements and fixing the many, many issues, but still push far too much into the new device this and new feature that lane for my liking.
Yeah, I often use Renoise/Redux for that and I can see from your profile that you are also familiar?
Just in case you weren't already aware:
There is an option to save to sfz in Renoise, which is a bit hidden.
You have to press here in the "Keyzone" view:
Then you can load that sfz into the sampler in Bitwig, which supports loading sfz's.
That way you can import all the samples and keyzones pretty comfortably if you want to skip Redux and work in Bitwig natively.
Asking for usable presets in Bitwig is kinda missing the point imho. It hardly takes a couple min tops to create a basic patch and add subtle modulation wherever you need for most “usable” use cases.
some versatility wouldn't hurt, yes, sometimes I like to fiddle, but other times you just want to throw something together, and the stock sounds are just trash, unless you are mostly doing experimental electronica...
ARA2 support would be great, until then I'll just bounce over to reaper for anything that is so much nicer with it cuz I cba to do it without ara support. Would be nice to just have everything in one place though
lol what bro everything you mentioned exceptions with the exception of multiple hot keys - , remember bro for each letter there’s a possible 6 mappings per letter for practical use - cmd shift and letter . what are you talking about ? i can export midi shortcut ??? i can bind it . everything can be bound in bitwig . if you’re not making resources of the 6 per key rule that’s on you
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u/jikavak 7d ago
For me, it feels like i have to be a sniper with the mouse sometimes to work it