2014/03/26

Bitwig-Review: My kinda "Rant-Review" on the release day...

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Revision Sunday 30th of March 2014:

Mute regions inside of Clip:

Mute regions is actually possible. You have to open the Audio Event Inspector and press the "M" Button there. Well, not very convenient, but at least it's possible.

Same goes for fades, but actually I knew that fades where somehow possible, thats why I didnt include them in my "rant"

The Pencil-In-Bug is resolved. By the way, we are already 1.0.3, that means two updates in two days.
I hope they keep the pace so that we can actually see the full potential of the software quite soon.

But still more rant: It looks like there is no Midi-Out, even if they use VST as their standart and
there also is NO support for multitimbral instruments and also NO support for multi-outs! 

 That means "Hello Bitwig, goodbye Kontakt, Maschine and the likes../"

Have phun...


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Original post starts here:

Oh man. I was freaking out today when I actually got Bitwig in my hands.
The first hour or two were so awesome that I was blind to a lot (!) of things.

Then there came the first letdown. Then the next one. 
I ended up being kinda disappointed, because my expectations were so high. 

But hey, we are talking a 1.0 release, aren' t we?
So it's really a very nice piece of software we have here, however,
there are some things that are plainly disappointing.

Sooo...  this is what I wrote as a comment on youtube (Yeah, waaay too much, that's why I decided to put it in here as well....

We are talking version 1.0.2 here:


My 2ct: Very very nice peace of software, a lot of really good stuff in there already.

*however* , just to let some of you guys know,
so you don't get too much overhyped:


- No autosave. No project backups. You better use save-as from time to time.

- No Folders/Nested folders.

- No grouping function. (Neither clips, tracks or faders)

- Modular Stuff not implemented yet. So forget about that for a while as well.

- No previous/next sample buttons in the sampler or drum rack.

- No EXS Import. None. No import at all so far as I can see.

- No Rewire

- No Audio Units

- No Groovetemplates

- *No* input quantize?! Really? Must miss something.
   Tell me where it is please....

- Looks like there is no dedicated "hot swap" mode or something similar. 
 You need to delete stuff and add stuff again. Pretty time-consuming.

- For first timers: Good luck finding your device-presets.. :D

- Key-commands and general mouse behavior very strange sometimes.
  For example: Doubleclicking resets (!) value. alt-click (which is usually reset    everywhere else)  is for entering values.  

- Looks like no skinning of the basic look.
  The look that you see is what you get. Would be very sad indeed.

- Very limited (and really too funky colors)  to choose from for your clips    and/or tracks

- No keyboard shortcut to rename or right-click context menu to rename clips, only    tracks. You have to click the clip, go to the inspector and do it from there.

- No mute/solo keyboard shortcuts.

- No mute/solo of audio regions/audio events/any regions/events (!!)

- Double clicking on a loop/sample in the browser will do nothing btu play it.
   It wont create a new track and adds the loop/sample. .
  Dropping it right next to the browser also doesnt work.
  You have to drop it on the *left half* of your screen so that actually
  a new track gets created and the loop gets added. Whoa.

- In general operating BW requires a lot of mouse hovering and back-and-forth   over  the whole screen,  which is time-consuming and *very*  straining on your  mouse-hand (!!)

- (add to that) Very limited keyboard-commands. Oh man. Again.

- pg up/down doesn't work in the browser.
  Its locked to track selection... (Huh ???)
  So have fun grabbing those way too tiny scroll-bars.

- Metadata-Browser basically useless.
 (That was a real frustrating experience   for me in particular!) 
 Looks like you can't add your own tags can only choose from a very limited selection AND it works only for devices and  presets AND *NOT*  for  your  100GB sample library (which would make TONS of more sense theese days, i.e. look how ace cubase handles that.)

- Hitpoint detection sometimes waaaay off, when zoomed in.

- Looks like FX menu on rightclick includes only bigwig devices. you want your vst on right click? Seems like you have to pedal all to the right to the browser and get it there.

- Looks like no fast way to "pencil in" stuff in the piano roll. Double-Click galore all over the place. Not sure though,  (hopefully) might miss something here.

- Looks like we have a (to some users of another application) well known PDC    problem on the sends also, not really sure right now though, because on the first run I had (in a row): 

 1)  Hard Crashed on Soundtoys Echoboy Duplication on send (every time, so   bug,   despite "Sandbox"!) 
  2) Audio Engine Crash on PSP608 Multidelay on deleting that one from the     send.
  3) Audio Engine Crash on Nomad Factory Liquid Delays.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Bitwig seems to be the first DAW where you (at least on OSX) can't drag n drop audio files from the finder into the application! Now, what the hell?!

Also the VST plug-in list is a HUUUGE MESS! So hopefully you do not have too many plugins like I have....


And at last: Parts of the manual are a joke.
For example, thats what is written in there about the sampler:

" Sampler: A sampler that can handle single or multiple samples (with a
  resizable mapping editor) and has a seven-mode filter and numerous
  modulation sources. "

That's it.Really. No sh*t. :)

But besides all of this. Honestly: I *STILL* believe, its a very nice 1.0 release
and a great upcoming software package.

But Ableton killer right out of the box?
(I expected that like a lot of other people as well)

Noooooo way :D
.
And if someone figures out how to *change* a freaking keycommand, please leave a comment here, because it looks like right now you *can not* :p


So happy (double) clicking, because believe me, you *will* click *a lot*. 

Cheers,

tL.

2014/03/21

Exclusive track for Toolrooms WMC Miami Compilation

Exclusive Track for this years Toolroom Miami Compilation for the Miami Winter Music Conference.


2014/03/05

New Remix coming up.

New Remixpreview on SC, this time something quite different than usual. Did that for some guys in Los Angeles.. The Remix will be released 24th of March.