Bitwig is just in version 3.3 and has all those great features imagine when it hits version 11.I like both of them but Ableton is way too pricey
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Think it is not a tracker.
Simply NO! 600 € for a DAW where you have to use a piano roll for making a beat? 
My brother has got Ableton, but he’s not using it quite often, so it’s just a waste of money. If you’re not using it as a professional artist it’s WAY too expensive, better buying Renoise 10 times. And for those who really think 60 € for Renoise is too much there’s Sunvox for free. A friend of mine is using it and he’s very excited about it.
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I did not know that it costs 600€… Wow, this is so much overpriced. There is a 349 EUR version, but I guess you need Max4Live already to do a simple meta LFO? Did expect 350 EUR for the max. version.
I’ve paid close €600 for just a single hardware synth, Make Noise 0 Coast, and Xfer Serum, probably the most used software synth in the world, costs €150, a quarter the price of Ableton just for a software synth alone. So I don’t think Ableton is overpriced at all when you consider the amount of functionality you get out of it, along with the free add on content, plus consistent updates, a very very active community of users who share information, and then Max 4 Live which extends the capabilities for sound creation and device creation even further, among other things.
All hobbies cost money that’s the bottom line of it. €600 is nothing in terms of expense. If you were into photography you could pay that for a starter camera with a crappy stock lense that wouldn’t get you near where you wanted to be. With Ableton you get almost everything you need straight out of the box.
Sure.
But it costs the same as cubase…
bitwig costs much less, even more on sale (got v2.5 for 320€ on a summer sale)
Ok, is Cubase considered worse or better or something?
The point I’m tryna make is that if it takes time to make it’s gonna cost big $$$ if people want it. €600 isn’t an enormous amount of money. It’s good that Bitwig and the like is coming along cost it’s cheaper price could push down the price of Ableton by creating a competitive market. Ableton was sorta running a monopoly, kind of, among the average producers so obviously they could make it a certain price and not have too much to worry about. But yeah that’s changing now it seems
But these programme also take money to develop and to maintain. Renoise is wicked cheap which is great, but it’s what, 4-5 people running the whole thing. The lack of income and manpower results in barely any major updates and the constant looming presence that development could just stop overnight. When you don’t have a decent cash flow one wrong turn can sink a business.
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What about the model that image line has with lifetime upgrades how do they survive? Ableton is a bit greedy company if you ask me and maybe they are on top now but things as we all know can change rapidly
What MPE feature is about?
I don’t really understand, it’s some kind of complex midi feature?
I presume that Image Line get there one of payment for the full version of FL Studio for like $450 or whatever and that can keeps them going. Maybe a lot of users choose not to upgrade to new version once they have a full working version with everything they need to do them for several years. I’m sure a lot of people who buy into Ableton pay the one of price and then don’t upgrade each time a new version is out, only the die-hards do. Lots of people just buy one version and use it for years and years. If Renoise updates weren’t free I probably wouldn’t be bothered updating till at least a couple new updates came out after a few years.
Do most people here really feel like €600 is an extortionate amount of money. I’m quite comfortable paying that for something I’m gonna get 1000s of hours of use for. To think of all the money I’ve spent on cigarettes and booze down the years for a quick buzz, I could have bought Ableton, FL, Cubas, Bitwig, the lot, several times over and would still have them. It’s all a matter of perspective
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Yeah well, I find Ableton still too overpriced. So for me that is a no-go. Maybe one day I will be rich…
I obviously have a problem with finishing songs. It is not the fault of any DAW of course. But I always had a hard time to quickly enter notes in a pianoroll. My imagination lasts only a short time. If I have to record first multiple times what I have in my mind using a midi keyboard (my playing capabilities suck, too), need to quantize and fix timing bugs (renoise), or fix some technical problems, my creative idea already dissolved. Do you have a similar experience here, that technical issues have a strong anti-creative effect to you? I like to “step-edit” stuff in Renoise’s pattern view a lot. I can then transfer my idea in my mind to the pattern. Exactly this keyboard driven step editing is what I miss in Bitwig. Is it possible in the same manner?
For example I love these little but yet so great features in Renoise pattern view:
- Set stepwidth to 0, trying different chords on the same position
- Playing the notes under the cursor/bar position (pressing return)
- Setting stepwidth so quickly
- Seeing tracks notes and rhythmical structure very nicely side-by-side
- No need to touch the mouse very often, no annoying “painting” operations in between
How to do that in Bitwig? Are you so obsessed with workflow like me?
Yes for me workflow is important, because I make music because it is fun to do, not only for the result. If it is a pain, I don’t want to do it, it’s my hobby after all and not work.
And yes, programming drums in midi in Bitwig is not fun at all for me.
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i simply use bitwig because it’s supported on linux. But i would like to see retro-recording like found in live ableton… that thing is hella fun, and you do not need to ‘press record’ in order to capture an idea… it’s really a pleasure to make music that way… About ableton devices - Bitwig surpasses them in almost any way… except the new convolution type of reverb which is kinda cool…
And i really do not understand statements ‘Ableton effects sound better than Bitwig’. Which one do sound better, and do you have an clear idea what is ‘wrong’ with the Bitwig ones? Since i cannot determine. Does Ableton’s eq sound better? in which manner? do you know how it’s programmed behind the curtain, so you can match the parameters? i really do not understand these claims… Bitwig devices are more than sufficient for anything, literally
Bitwig = dynamics + any device to process the signal feeding the compressor
can this be done in Ableton Live with native devices? except builtin eq in the compressor eq section?
well, if your paycheck is 500$ (or most likely below), and if your daw is 600$.
subtract the rent, the bills, the food, transportation, and you’ve on survival mode. 600$ does seem like something not even possible from that perspective. This depends on your pocket of course… but in my country, the average is less than 300$. With that, i could buy a pc with decent soundcard for a year or two, ableton for 3 years maybe, if everything stays ‘ideal’… soooo… it’s a long discussion.
And i also agree that the price is not expensive for the Ableton itself… It’s about context and conditions you’re in
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this is possible by using the layer view in Bitwig i suppose
i love retro-recording in Ableton Live for this purpose. I jam on qwerty, then capture idea, edit a bit with mouse, and there you go 
no need to ‘program’ or ‘paint’, something in-between i guess
Yes, a lot of such workflow stuff is missing in Bitwig. And it was requested since a lot of years. They do not seem to care for such stuff at all. I think they very much design it by their own preference, not the customers.
I don’t like layered pianoroll editing, I think it is conceptual a mess and a poor workaround. Notes can even cover other notes, what a nonsense…
Are there at least a lot of shortcuts in layered pianoroll editing, @dspasic ?
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I think a two pianorolls NEXT to each other (one on the top, one on the bottom) would make a lot more sense, and some shortcuts where you quickly switch the tracks, for each of the two pianorolls.
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About the price, if Ableton is considered as a professional DAW (and I think yes it is) then it’s ok. For a hobbyist the full version it’s certainly quite expensive.
There is another point underestimated, Ableton Live is, according to me, the only DAW that have some strong marketing hype (for example I saw at least 2 or 3 art exhibitions and events in Paris related with Ableton Live, not for other DAW). An certainly this marketing have a cost, but also it’s necessary for a commercial company to stay visible so it’s nothing bad.
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for those who want to use rewire:
It is disabled by default and not officially supported anymore, since Propellerheads (now Reason Studios) themselves killed Rewire’s development.
You can still enable it with options.txt and “-EnableReWire” option.
(The “Redist” folder in Live’s install folder still has the ReWire.dll file.)