Nah, I vastly prefer Ableton over Bitwig. I gave Bitwig a fair shot – even up to the current beta of 3 with the Grid, but Live is much smoother and faster for me. And since I already do a ton of modular design in Voltage Modular (which is fantastic, btw) the Grid is just sort of a fancy bell and whistle that I don’t need. Plus, there are simply many things in Bitwig that are, imho, inferior to Ableton – automation, for example. The sluggishness of moving nodes / creating envelopes is just ghastly. Live, especially now in 10.1 but even before then, is rapid-fire for automation editing. I’ve never understood why Bitwig has such sluggish graphics in many areas, and the automation envelopes are the absolute worst. That’s deal-breaker stuff for me. Also, the browser is concept-over-function. To me it’s a lot of noise and clutter, not a useful / fast tool for loading stuff. And don’t get me started on the ‘collections’ system, what a joke. You spend all day clicking little stars everywhere and forgetting to “set as target focus” on the folder you want, ahhhh it’s horrible. Live’s browser, I just go to User Library and I can create / move / copy / delete folders and files immediately, and drag and drop anything I want into and out of them. That’s all I need, yet most DAWs don’t allow it, at least not in such a streamlined manner. Let’s see, I also think the UI of the included instruments are lame. phase 4 is a horrorshow, graphically. it does not invite me to want to program it. Oh, and there’s the fact that Bitwig’s warping still has shit poor transient detection. live’s is so much better. I could go on. But, you see, I spent enough time with it to really get to know it, both what I like and what it’s failings are. The one thing I truly love is the side-by-side grid + arrangement, that’s what I always wanted with Live, but nope. I also dig the modulation system, of course; that is well done, for sure, and is superior to using Max 4 Live LFO’s, etc. But again, I do most of my modular building in Voltage and use Live as a composing / mixing / editing DAW, so I don’t really make a ton of use of synth-style modulators on the DAW level.
I’m rambling now. short version: no thanks on Bitwig. It’s cool but not for me.
