Same here. Nothing beats the Renoise sampler, when it comes to quick edit or cut a recorded sample…
I also often record my VSTs or also hardware in renoise, when i need some oneshots from them. I also love the “Render to Sample” feature in Renoise. So easy to quick record some parrts of the pattern sequencer…
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Well I’m glad I’m not the only one. Thanks!
Yeah, I’ve recorded quite a bit into the Renoise sampler. That’s how I did it before I got Bitwig, but often timing isn’t perfect and I have to edit and I miss the creative moment of playing because then I’m in “editing mode”. How do you make your timing tight when recording into the Renoise sampler?
Recording longer takes can be tricky in Renoise too, although it’s possible, especially with that Autoseek feature.
If you mean recording from external hardware, i set the mode of the output device in my “MIDI track” to “LineIn Return” and on the Line Input device i set the latency mode to “MIDI Return Mode”. This will record the external hardware with 99% zero latency for me. Just in few cases i have to cut a bit of the beginning of the recorded sample. I mostly just record my hardware. No needs fo me to record VSTs to samples. Or let’s say not so often. All my hardware synths and drum machines can do what i need.
Those are all great tips for recording with MIDI. I meant more like when there’s a part in the track where I want to add guitar or play a synth… It’s hard to just add a layer of an external instrument, because you kinda have to play it into the sampler and then edit and sequence later. Bitwig and other “traditional DAWs” are probably better for live recording stuff in that sense, unless I’m missing something about how to do it in Renoise. But I’m really not criticizing Renoise, because it’s a tracker and it behaves like a tracker — I see the fact that we can record at all as a bonus.
Your post mirrors my experiences with Bitwig precisely, on paper it ticks every box for my needs but I hated using it. I’ve tried twice and asked for a refund both times, it just won’t click for me.
I’ve ended up sticking to Renoise and buying Reaper for when I want to work with stems and such.
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I have to rant a little here… I really don’t understand why even in 4.2 there still is no MSEG / free draw LFO… How can it be that difficult to implement that? People are requesting this since v2.0 or so, more than 5 years now… Even my mom could implement that within a day or so. Also I start to wonder, if all Bitwig devs gone on five-year vacation, and the only left person at Bitwig HQ now simply enables already implemented features from time to time… Still can find very old bugs, and a ton of missing basic stuff. Why are they always adding very niche stuff, instead adding the fundamental things first… Also the new plus devices are not in any way “normalized”, it adds highpass and eq attenuations, and also lacks of the standard ranges, etc. I bet someone clicked those together in the grid. Could it be that they switched to a fancy agile organisation pattern, and now all people suffer from this decision?
Ok will try not to think about this anymore, and waste your time with these kind of posts… 
But I have some suggestions for a good pianoroll: Overcoming piano roll hate - #32 by ffx
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Same issue for me. Not upgrading my licence. They first need to fix the sluggish software rendered UI, add basic features instead of synths/effects that you can do using VST anyways.
having a sampler with slicing or a piano roll that doesn’t suck are for me basic features (which are missing).
Besides that the grid is cool, but then why everybody ends up doing ambient random plucky sounds ? They should stop the synth nerdiness and add basic features, then play with their nerd stuff if they want.
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I’m also switching Bitwig and Reaper the last weeks again. Reaper is super lightweight, efficient, customizable, cheap, etc., but Bitwig has the better more consistent work flow. I wonder if just my Reaper settings are not right.In Bitwig everything feels more direct without going through many menus.
I also find the many modulators in Bitwig more distracting than helpful sometimes. Of course that depends on the music. Another plus for Reaper is LV2 support. Really can’t decide between the too, but I want stop switching.
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I have the same switching issue… bitwig - reaper - renoise - mpc one 
Maybe it’s just the need of change that is also a thing.
For me doing a project in Reaper feels less clean because I have to use at least a sampler vst (like redux) + more vsts for things that bitwig has built in. At the same time it’s so light on cpu and responsive compared to bitwig…
About the Reaper menu diving, you should look at how to create toolbar buttons. It’s really easy… I created one to resample the selected region for example.
+1 for the modulators. It’s cool for sound design and experimenting but at the end of the day, I end up more messing around than doing a tune. I think the key is to separate sound design sessions with tune making sessions and create patches or export samples.
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I keep trying to go all in on Bitwig. Nice update today. I love the concept and the fancy new toys, but I just cant get shit done in that environment. I keep coming back to Renoise. Bitwig has become and expensive way to edit my guitar tracks before shoving them into Renoise.
I have Redux, but using it seems like more work than just using Renoise with some synth vsts. (I can’t stand having to draw midi notes to trigger the phrases, and put the phrases in their own keyzones, I’m lazy)
Thanks for the update taktik!
Really nice convolver plugin. More flexible than Renoise’s one. But sadly the GUI gets slower and slower, now even the simple list of shortcuts can’t scroll smoothly anymore on this highspeed mac system. The additions are well thought and nice, but the ignorance over there for obvious things is stunning… Maybe an echo chamber effect. Might sell Bitwig due those technical issues which obviously never will be fixed. (Though selling value of Bitwig is very bad 
)
Can’t Taktik teach them how to implement Metal2 support properly?
Bitwig 4.3 (pre?)final out. Nice. 
Yet it has some Bugs not 100% fixed, e.g. transient shaper is now crackling and phasing at mixed amounts, if you use it with a feedback chain. Kinda breaking bug for me currently. Hoping for a soon 3.5.1 then 
Seems to me that reporting via email is quite inefficient, maybe not like JIRA, but still annoying… Thanks god that Renoise reports go into forum threads where you actually can communicate about the bug… WAY more efficient communication, IMHO.
the GUI performance of Bitwig really is a joke, so laggy and not fun. Really suprising how they didn’t think about that or think that this is acceptable 
or maybe I just have mouse adhs
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Yeah, well these guys always only do what they personally like. They seem to be immune against customer wishes, usability standards and good practice… even proper communication
Maybe it is time for me to sell this daw and don’t mind it’s usp the Crazy Modulation and routing System. The core audio concept really is the most modern existing. But also that’s it.
P.s. they told me that the new crackling intended, if you put the transient shaper into the feedback chain. So all songs with that now will sound different. They don’t mind a downwards compatibility mode or a transient shaper v2… imho it is bad practice to break songs.
Also only did like 2 really good songs with it, the rest is non sense… not much to loose here then. I am currently sorting those… what a mess.
100% agree. I was frustrated at first, because it does in theory so much that i would want from Live, but than it drops the ball on all the things Live actually does great.
I will upgrade my license from time to time to support them, but I’m really over Bitwig atm.
I am trying Ableton a bit… It’s unbelievable how much GUI performance matters. The sequencer view is way more fluent and lucid. I actually can see the notes there. Stationary scrolling just works. Also live recording is practical. If now the GUI performance was even a bit more fluent (like steady 60fps with 5K as a video game), and there was an inplace pianoroll in the sequencer, or a way to move notes around directly here, I would be already very happy. The onboard fx is very good, too. I also like how the GUI prevents floating windows just like Renoise. Ok, Renoise still is better here and its analyzer a lot faster and more precise. But this already seems to work better for me than Bitwig. And everything just seems to work. Groove templates very nice! Looks like every “base” functionality is in there. The concept seems to be “make it easy as possible”. I like that. You can load tracks of other songs simply by looking into the song file in the file browser.
If the basics work nice, I also can go without comfort stuff.
What do you think about Ableton in its current version?
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i agree totally here.
There are small things that matter - in Bitwig - remembering piano roll position is very annoying (very clunky), whereas in Ableton Live - it is very smooth - and i can focus on making music or whatever - not on displaying the midi clip properly
solo feature in ableton stock eq also matters to me (in Bitwig workflow of eq+ is a bit more complex) - there is no auto-focus option (when you click on band, eq soloes that band) - it’s great…
but sandboxing is crucial in my case… u-he integration - preset browser… are things why i choose bitwig when working on something more complex than simple instrumental.
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Interesting. I couldn’t run ableton on my (older) machine at all, it would crash at starting. Bitwig runs smoothly without any problems.
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Bitwig droning
