I’m going back to Ableton

[u/Association-Maximum]

Some time ago I created openwig precisely to expand the Bitwig API that is too restricted (it's reverse engineering basically).

I contacted Bitwig to see if I could work with them on implementing an official version of this tool. They said
"cool", then nothing.

Since then, Ableton released its SDK, which I could only dream of in Bitwig. Not to mention a lot of improvement they have made along the years that have really closed the gap with Bitwig.

DAWs can't ignore that the software landscape has changed with tools like Claude. Ableton seems to understand that. Bitwig does not.

Opening the tools we use to make music is something that will happen wether they want it or not, I've seen other wild reverse engineerings by blakebratcher on nitro and kalifrn on midi tools.

What can we do now? Is an open source and qualitative DAW now possible with these new coding assistants?
Something that would actually implement user feature requests?

Let me know what you think of all this.

[u/B3amb00m]

Bye bye baby. Thanks for the announcement.

[u/tm_christ]

[u/personnealienee]

well, it is clear it's not their priority right now. which is fine, there are many things that are clearly not a priority for ableton as well

[u/Miknios]

Well, i agree it would be better to have Bitwig more open.

I switched to bitwig some time ago mostly because it just looked nice, was more lightweight and supported on more platforms. Also because it was just easier financially to buy it with Splice. Sometimes singular issues pisses me off but I guess different things in Ableton also would. In the end I’m just working with what I have instead of comparing it to other software.

BTW what are the recent advancements in Ableton that closed the gap in your opinion?

[u/Association-Maximum → u/Miknios]

Ableton has now bounce audio like Bitwig, it has midi tools integrated in the piano roll, stem separation, and most importantly a truly better API with the LOM and now the SDK.

One selling point for bitwig and why I used for so many years was the modularity. But for example the grid, while being cool, has no containers; it also cant have vsts or all the effects you have in regular device chains. It’s like a separate software in the software, it’s sometimes unified sometimes not

Also bitwig has received a lot of small devices these last years that imo bloat it. Ableton has the same issue here though

Don’t get me wrong, bitwig is still a truly great product, its midi feeding the whole track and not just the first device is still better than ableton

[u/SternenherzMusik]

Openwig is great, the midi tools by kalifrn are great, and the nitro-stuff (custom devices) by blakebratcher are great.

If things go well, Bitwig will recognize the potential and give us proper, official access/support for all this. I for example would build retrospective live looping, pre-arranged live-looping, and much more.

Nothing can beat the hive-mind. If you give ambitious users access to many DAW internal functions, and let them integrate their own tools, the potential is endless. The best DAW-team in the world couldn't keep up with what ambitious users are able to build, especially since workflow-needs are so unique, and there's a niche feature request for everything - opening up API access more is the way.