In the process of waiting for a couple of months, since I first saw the link here, on Renoise forums, I deleted my Linux installation. So I won’t have the joy of using a new cool DAW coming to Linux world.
Sad thing. I am now in the 90% Windows world. I can’t whine now that Ableton is not on my platform . But somehow I feel comfortable about it. I guess if it takes them for so long to open the beta, the Linux platform is not of a priority.
But I would like to hear, if the beta starts, how does the Bitwig behave on Linux with JACK, since there are Linux people in here.
I think it sounds exciting. Too echo earlier sentiments if it’s good it’s good software and it’s affordable, this could really draw in an audience for Linux. And if that happens it lead to some much needed hardware support. The only reason I don’t go full blown onto Linux is that my interface isn’t supported and so I cant really produce audio. Also I’d miss my NI plugins, although I could probably live without them.
While it is always nice to have some choice of music production software and this piece does look nice, I really don’t see anything ground breaking in it, all that they are showing there is pretty much standard stuff that is everywhere these days. Am I missing something?
Thanks for posting the new video… It really does look like Live with a few workflow enhancements.
If they get away with ripping it off so heavily then I imagine the folks at Ableton will be pretty quick to respond and steal a few ideas the other way, especially if they start to lose market share to Bitwig…
Interesting to see how this develops, its nice to see a bit of competition aimed at Live
My take - despite Live’s success, not a lot of DAW’s have borrowed some of the ideas that make live’s workflow work really well. It has this almost groovebox style of non-stop realtime song construction that is pretty impressive (I don’t use live, but I’ve been flirting with the demo for a while). Honestly I would’ve thought that somebody would’ve ripped off the things that worked in live and tried to improve on it years ago given their success, but it hasn’t happened. However, Live’s pricing model is just too much - 700$ for the full suite. Even the regular version is $450 and it was released 3 years ago. Also, the updates have not kept pace with other DAWs.
So new users (myself included) are interested in giving that Live-style workflow a spin for a price that’s hopefully-more-reasonable (which it’ll have to be if they’re going to gain any market share). Existing Live users are hoping it’s good enough to take the place of Live 9 that really should’ve been released years ago (it was formed by ex-ableton employees after all). Not to mention other nice promises that live doesn’t have - linux support, modular routing interface (not in v1 though), etc.
I’m realistic about what it’ll end up being, but I’m definitely looking forward to what comes out. It’s weird that none of the betatesters have even posted an anonymous review yet. You’d think that with all the interest, someone would say something.
Perhaps because there is no beta at all and there will not be coming any Live 9. You can at least expect Beta users to say something that gives at least a clue of the very existence of Live 9. I don’t think they get a financial penalty for revealing that.
What seems to be suspicious, is that the ONLY information we have is from the official pages/videos. No spoilers, no revelations by the testers, no secret anonymous info from the employees… and we can only guess how does it work/sound. We only have a few screenshots and videos! Well, maybe they just do a good marketing stuff and do their best to hide as much from it as possible before going public… And I never saw any “real” betatester of Bitwig, so I don’t know if there are any
Perhaps they can’t speak about their testing or whatever… anyway I hope this is not just a hoax, and I’m definitely IN for the open beta! Only if it wouldn’t cost much…
I don’t live in Germany, so I don’t know how their government deals with matters like this, but AFAIK both Ableton and Bitwig were founded as Aktiengesellschafts after having won a goverment subsidy competition for innovative company product ideas. Ableton won this many years ago (think it was back in the late 90’s), and Bitwig won this not so many years ago. Think it was 50.000 Euros or something of that order, money that was used to finance the start-up along with private funds. Maybe this has something to do with the terms for that prize itself, i.e. the goverment has imposed some restrictions on marketing etc?
Bitwig beta testing has started today. I signed up for it ages ago but haven’t had an invite for this first batch of testing. Looking forward to seeing how it pans out though. There’s a new video released too, more in depth than the others:
. But somehow I feel comfortable about it. I guess if it takes them for so long to open the beta, the Linux platform is not of a priority.
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