Bitwig Studio 1.35

Bitwig Studio automatically indexes the first six content types, allowing plug–ins, samples and so on to be found quickly via a text search field. But if you don’t know what you’re searching for by name, various other live sorting features are ever ready to assist you.

To illustrate the way it all works in reality, here’s how you might find a reverb plug–in. Click on the devices icon, and if you know the name of the reverb, you can begin typing in the search field. Bitwig instantly assembles a list of all plug–ins beginning with the same letters, and once you’ve found the one you want, you simply drag and drop it from the list to somewhere else in the user interface, such as on to an existing track, or to a specific channel plug–in slot, or a track’s Device Panel.

What if you don’t want to precisely search, though, but browse more loosely? This is where various sorting criteria (properly called ‘Filter Sections’) come into play. For example, click on the Category divider and plug–ins appear (for me, at least) grouped into 18 folders. From here, when I click on the Delay/Reverb folder I see Bitwig’s bundled delays and reverbs, as well as VST versions of various third–party plug–ins I own. Likewise, clicking the Creator heading shows plug–ins grouped by manufacturer. From there, clicking on a developer name causes only their plug–ins to be shown in the list.

Even more flexibility comes if you opt to display a Tag filter section, which keys into metadata associated with Presets, Multisamples and Clips. This way you can search by adjective, so to speak! Much factory content is provided in a tagged form, but it’s dead easy to edit it and also establish your own tags. Going a different route again, entire user–created groups of content can be assembled by putting it into what Bitwig calls a Collection. A ‘Favorites’ collection is ready to go, and simply clicking a little star icon next to pretty much anything you can find in the browser will start to build that up. But you can build your own too, either manually using drag and drop, or in a ‘smart’ fashion using programmer–ish text strings.

This description doesn’t perhaps communicate how quick and intuitive the browser is to use in reality, but I can only say it’s one of the best I’ve ever used. Much of it is down to Bitwig Studio’s indexing and instantaneous real–time sorting. And there’s some clever stuff going on there, because in the case of that Delay/Reverb folder I mentioned a moment ago, it was Bitwig Studio itself that had decided (correctly) to group some of my third–party reverb plug–ins together with its own. OK, it hadn’t managed all of them, but it’s a good start! Text searching is also helpful, in that when I searched for my installed Arturia CS–80 v2 synth, Bitwig Studio got it whether I typed ‘CS 80’ with a space or ‘CS–80’ with a hyphen. There was occasional weirdness, like GForce’s impOSCAR synth being found when ‘imp’ was typed, but disappearing if I went on with either ‘impo’ or ‘impO’, but the overall experience is overwhelmingly positive, and impressive.

In the case of audio content, the browser includes auditioning facilities, showing a waveform and file information for any selected loop or sample, along with basic transport features and a cute little level meter and playback volume fader.

If that all weren’t enough, complementing the sidebar browser in v1.3 is a new pop–up browser. It appears any time you click a plus sign in the application; these can be found beneath the lowermost track in the Arrange view track list, to the right of the rightmost mixer channel in Mix view, and between all devices in the Devices panel. The pop–up browser can also be called up with a keyboard shortcut when you have a device or track selected, and it appears automatically when you browse presets or other content to load into one of the bundled effects or instruments.

This new browser has lots in common with its side–panel counterpart — all the essential concepts are exactly the same — but it’s arguably more context aware. For example, when you click a plus icon in the Arrange or Mix views, Bitwig will first create a new track for you, and then open the browser as a floating window, so you can still simultaneously browse and access the rest of the Bitwig environment. When it’s used to create something from fresh, like instantiating a new instrument, the browser is labelled “Select content to insert into device chain”. But if you call it up after selecting a pre–existing plug–in, say, it gets the label “Select content to hotswap with device”.

This hotswap ability is perhaps the pop–up browser’s party piece. Let’s say you have a reverb on a vocal, but you want to try different options. Conventionally, your first thought might be to bring up the plug–in’s interface and tweak parameters. But now you can open the pop–up browser, select the Devices tab and click on any other Bitwig or VST reverb to instantiate it — hotswap it — in place of your existing one. This can be done while the song is playing, and then, with the browser still visible, the new plug–in’s interface can be opened, allowing any further tweaking or preset loading to take place.

A pop–up browser is entirely new, and complements the existing sidebar panel. It’s particularly good for ‘hotswapping’ presets or even entire devices, letting you try out different sounds while your project plays back. This view also shows how much of the content Bitwig provides has tag metadata, further refining search and filtering operations.

Bit Of All Right

It seems there are two ways developers can go with a DAW: aim to produce the most complete, powerful, all–singing product, and end up with a Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools or DP — or accept that some users positively embrace ‘alternative’, plough your own furrow, and create a tool that offers a unique blend of capabilities.

Bitwig Studio is the absolute epitome of the latter approach. So much so, in fact, that you don’t achieve much by comparing it to a behemoth DAW. Focus on what it can’t do, and the list is surprisingly long: it has no video playback or timecode features, no surround–format track handling or mixing, no pitch correction or Melodyne–like mainpultion at audio track level, and no notation facilities. Its time ruler is stuck displaying bars and beats, with no option to switch to minutes and seconds, for example, and you can’t change time signatures within a song. It has no comping facilities or straightforward audio-clip crossfade functionality, and you can’t vary the height of individual tracks within the Arrange page. I also found that its audio time–stretch algorithms, though capable of good results, fell some way short of the likes of zPlane’s Elastique, for example. Producers who need a DAW that can turn its hand to anything, who are editing audio one minute, composing the next, then mixing and mastering a project before the day is out, will struggle to do it all in this version of Bitwig Studio.

However, not all of us are doing all those things. In fact many users from the more ‘creative’ end of the spectrum, especially those working exclusively on their own material in the dance and electronic music field, or coming from a DJ’ing background, might feel Bitwig is the perfect tool for them. The number one draw is of course the Live–like Clip Launcher, and the seamless way it integrates with a more conventional linear arrangement. It’s hard to imagine a better tool for jamming, manipulating loops and exploring arrangement ideas. In some musical genres I don’t doubt it’ll let you work 10 times faster, and get better–sounding results in the process, than linear–only DAWs.

Other unique features also speak for themselves. First is that sandboxed 32– and 64–bit VST plug–in support. Yes, the majority of serious production plug–ins have already transitioned to 64–bit, but not some quirky freeware, and not several wonderful tools like Audio Ease’s RiverRun, long since discontinued. If you want to work with these, and prefer not to involve another third–party wrapper utility, Bitwig Studio is your friend.

Then there’s those unusual ‘container’ plug–ins that can themselves host other plug–ins. They’re a little outward sign of Bitwig’s underlying modular architecture, which, the company say, is eventually going to be completely exposed and up for user modification. It’s never wise to take unreleased features into one’s buying considerations of course, but it’s easy to imagine Bitwig Studio turning into a platform that rivals the Ableton/Cycling 74 Live plus Max for Live combo, which has been so enthusiastically adopted by both experimental producers and serious electro–acoustic composers. Other things in the pipeline include transport sync (and possibly network audio transfer) between multiple computers running Bitwig Studio on a local network, and remote real–time collaboration on single projects.

There are other unexpectedly well–rounded aspects of the application. One is the beautifully clear scheme for allocating audio input and output buses for multi–channel audio interfaces. Along with generic mono or stereo channel allocations, there’s specific provision for speaker and headphone pairs, which makes setting up and using studio, live room and headphone cue feeds remarkably straightforward. There’s also now very flexible mapping of application commands to MIDI messages and computer keys. These mappings are retained on a per–project basis, and at the same time there’s a separate programmable shortcut system that includes MIDI control facilities, but works on a global level, persisting between projects.

Wig Out!

I began as a newcomer to Bitwig Studio, but throughout the test period, I got to like it and its ethos more and more. It’s quick and fun to use, and runs smoothly and reliably, but it’s not dumbed–down in any way. Quite the opposite in fact: many features are positively esoteric, and should appeal to hardcore experimentalists and programmer–types alike. Would I abandon other software tools for it? Well, not for many jobs, including heavyweight multitrack audio or music–for–picture editing, because of the missing features I’ve already mentioned. But for pop–oriented writing projects, where I might purposely want to interact with some new production concepts, and revel in that much less deterministic non–linear sequencing environment, it’s a different matter. For those, I have to say Bitwig Studio might well be a ‘go–to’ choice.

Ultimately, it’s clear that Bitwig Studio isn’t trying to be all things to all producers. Instead it’s characterised by a feature set that is decidedly unorthodox, and it can pull off a few tricks that its competitors can only dream of. If you’re into dance or electronica you’d be mad to overlook it, and I could see it appealing to a much broader user base when a few gaps in its core functionality are filled. This is great software with a maverick spirit, and it deserves to be much better known than it already is.