Ableton Live has long been the the major player in DAWs that allow for use in both production and live contexts, but this morning Berlin-based Bitwig has announced their premiere software that aims to directly compete with Ableton as a solution for performance, studio work, and DJing – Bitwig Studio. After the jump, we’ve got the details on what’s different, and explanation why some fresh competition can only be a good thing.
Features That Make Bitwig Studio Stand Out
As with any new software launch, there are tons of features to note, but we got excited by the following features that Ableton users have been clamoring for at least the last two major releases of Live.
- 64-bit compatible
- Native Linux support
- Dual monitor support
- Split view between Arrangement and Session views
- A resizable clip matrix
- Overlaid automation on clips
- Automation on a per-note basis in the piano roll
Bitwig Team and What Competition Means
According to the Ableton forums, four members of the Bitwig Team are ex-Ableton employees, meaning that this release won’t be something to be taken lightly. We’re not entirely sure of the background here and what their current relationship is, but it’s certain to be an interesting story.
It’s also worth noting that Ableton prices don’t seem to be currently dictated by price accessibility or to compete with other industry alternatives, so a competitor like Bitwig Studio that’s bound to put a lower price on their software will only help breed innovation in the Ableton camp. That being said, everyone’s expecting something big from Ableton at NAMM – stay tuned next week as our coverage goes into full swing starting Wednesday!
Updated: One of our writers and friends, Hedgehog, called Bitwig this morning and got a chance to get a few more details from them.
He got a chance to speak with Bitwig CEO Placidus Schelbert for a couple of minutes – thanks for talking with us, Placidus!
When asked about their relationship with Ableton, he said that they (Bitwig) admire Ableton a lot, and want rebuild some good parts of it and extend upon them. Live is a big chunk of software nowadays, and Bitwig wants to create a more focused experience and added features they consider important. They’ve been working on Bitwig Studio for two and a half years already, having invested their own money and being partially backed by a Berlin-based investment bank.
When asked asked if they’re concerned about legal issues arising with Ableton, Placidus assured us that the Bitwig Studio team wrote all the code themselves and that they don’t think they’ll be sued- but he was careful to note that he couldn’t tell for sure that it won’t happen.
Hedgehog also asked about the promised feature of working together via LAN or internet, and learned that while on LAN you all use the same audio-output, collaborating on internet every user will have his own audio settings. That means while your friend has one channel muted you can have totally different settings. Seems like a great way to not have to be emailing project files back and forth, though!
As of right now, there’s no firm release date, but Beta testing will begin in a few weeks. Try as he might, Hedgehog wasn’t able to get any information regarding the price (not even hints!).
For more information on Bitwig Studio, including a full feature list and a beta signup, visit their website here!
Excited about a bit of DAW competition, or vastly underwhelmed? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Here’s what I think:
After taking a very careful look into this, trying to download a torrent of it (with no success), look at every article I can find on it, checking the sites main page, sending an email and looking on other forums, this program looks to be fucking insane.
One of the biggest things I’m not even seeing in the comments (and I can’t quite figure out why it’s being overlooked) is the fact that you can connect to multiple users over the internet, including just using a LAN cable in a studio and using one computer for the audio. I’m not sure if anyone here so far can understand the power that holds. Stop looking at just the interface.
Think about what that can do for music, someone could create an instrumental and send it directly to an artist on another side of the planet for vocals or a quick remix and you could release an EP in half the time you normally would need to. Things can be tweaked and altered almost in real time.
AND it’s cross platform!
Windows can work with Mac which can work with Linux, installing Linux on a Mac is a cake walk (using Disk Utility) so if you wanted to maximize your resources, you could just do that or hell, run Linux off a thunderbolt or USB 3.0 EXHDD and have writing speeds almost as fast as something that is hardwired.
Oh and did i mention, DUAL MONITOR SUPPORT, right there, epic!
I’m just pissed I barely learned about this and missed the damn beta sign up, I would’ve loved to be on that 5|-|1+.
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Would the Linux version support 3rd party plugins? Like VSTs, AUs, RTASs?
any1 on release date?
Check out the new Bitwig Beats Community just launched if you’re into Bitwig: http://www.bitwigbeats.com
it is has a style traktor ???.–it is great..
I don’t understand why Presonus and Steinberg do not insert this in there versions. They had the chance for years. If you look to there forums especially to S1V2 the clip/classic view is always one of the most wanted features. They just ignore it.
I am looking forward to that DAW. @ the moment I have Logic, Cubase, Live, LMMS.
@e2045ab7bfeed1892e12ebb791f301ff:disqus
Maybe in future only Bitwig Studio
I hope that the mediabrowser will work better than MB in Cubase. The meta information will be a good feature. I hope they will add .caf file support and a autotranspose function as Cubase and logic has
in my eyes this looks almost 100% like i would imagine a daw from native instruments. the colors theknobs … everything looks like it is from traktor or machine. i bet native colabs with bitwig. 4 members from bitwig are from ableton and some of the founders of ableton came from native so the circle is closing….
in my eyes this looks almost 100% like i would imagine a daw from native instruments. the colors theknobs … everything looks like it is from traktor or machine. i bet native colabs with bitwig. 4 members from bitwig are from ableton and some of the founders of ableton came from native so the circle is closing….
omg its like TUX and ableton had sex…
a new DAW for linux omnomnom
This could be a real god send to those of us with limited budgets. Linux would allow a relatively lackluster PC to be recycled and used as a studio comp pushing as much power as possible out of the OS… for too long you have either had to be a Windows geek or a rich kid with a mac… now maybe I can reuse some of this old technology laying around as a dedicated music machine!
64 Bit Support and it is going to make it easier to collab with my friend half way across the world. CANT WAIT!
WE WANT ABLETON 9 🙂
seems that the former sales manager from ableton knows exactly what he wants from bitwig studio.
there is much more to come in the future for a much better price…
Is this a reused, regurgitated and reduced CDM article again? Looking forward to the new DAW anyway 🙂
cheers to the metadata based library, will the library be able to view itunes playlists? I also still wish there would be a daw that allows viewing of two waveforms simultaneously.
Linux support! /m/,
I lived for months near Ableton office and i don’t noticed that :S
This is such a great development for those of us who use ableton and run up again out of memory issues. There are so many things that long users have been begging for and ableton said that many
Bit wig advantages are clip automation, multi screen, sharing via net, rewrite of bloated buggy code, per-note automation, Linux, new instruments done by people with 20 years experience making great ones, and I personally like the modular concept that will be native which will offer less issues since they don’t have to deal with outside issues created by merging software, but will be less capable than MFL) So I could just buy MAX
I am mainly excited because I love live but with live 8 many of us were left unhappy as they begun to concentrate on things that did not matter to the majority. MFL, thirdy party garbage instruments (why would we not get VST’s), the bridge (which has so much potential but at the moment is a failure.) Which left us with software that was unusable (even according to ableton CEO)I have faith that ableton is going to come back with a hell of a game changer to answer this challenge. But I am very interested to see what the long time ableton employees will do differently
Exciting times if this is your thing
Sign up for beta testing if ya want but I’m guessing that it is full, that’s why I signed up 2 years ago when live 8 was garbage 😉
Who needs Max For Life or even MAX, when there is PureData. Totally Free and created by the same minds that brought us MAX
I’m currently playing with minial Debian distribution (Crunchbang Linux) booting off flash memory for my performance setup. You guys are right on spot, linux kernel out of the box (without Ingo’s real-time patch) is able to kill any latency with real cheap usb sound cards.
As for linux ready DAW, you should notive that there’s already real mature products out there. I bought Renoise 2.6 when they made the Linux port 2 years ago, it’s just fantastic coupled native VSTs like the newly open-sourced linux port of Togu Audio Line NoiseMaker soft-synth. I prone quality over quantity when it comes to VSTs.For all the people talking about Digital Vinyl System integration to DAWs, get your eyes to xwax.co.uk. Version 1.0 just came out, and this is the real vinyl touch emulation thing ! Down to 3 ms latency it’s just magic. I’m sure that a good developper could slap a new patch to xwax so it exports the velocity and position of timecode thru MIDI or OSC. This would enable any one to use timecoded vinyls control in any music software !
Linux music is getting there! I’m an open source advocate but projects like Renoise or Reaper are getting it right with there real-life price for their licences.
Bitwise seems REALLY beautifully executed from the screenshots I see, hope the licences won’t be something like 1000$. This is impossible for bedroom DJS to buy that kind of software.
xwax is excellent and I assure you, you can push it to 2ms or maybe lower 😉
xwax code is available to hook into Pd or MAX, I’ve done it!
Looks like Ableton and Logic had a love child in the arrange window. It shows you which clips are playing too? Very cool. Love the color schemes. I hope they get everything right that Logic and Ableton missed or got wrong.
Looks like a merger between Ableton and FLStudio
They are also not more than about 1000meters away from the ableton office… So maybe they are still working together? 🙂
http://g.co/maps/e28jm
I talked to the CEO today. No they aren’t related to Ableton in any way. They just created what they imagined Live could be.
I’ll stick to Ableton, have a shitload of work to do before I run out of options there. And I doubt that they’ll let these annoyances you’re talking about stay in Ableton, now that competition is trying to grasp their market share.
Awesome with with Linux support. The ability to actually make your own distro/live-cd/usb would make this so killer. I can’t wait for the day when clubs finally gets rid of just having CDJs and start having a rock solid PC running the most used software.
NI and other devs should take note. Windows and Mac systems are to unreliable and too tightly controlled by Apple and MS to make this happen.
Looks like Ableton with metal-skin. A truly unique concept would be a hexagonal grid, move away from the Cartesian X-Y thing. This isn’t “new” just “newish”.
A hexagonal grid makes no sense. It’s a series of timelines- A multitude of lines. How can you add an extra dimension into that?
Linux support is very very new.
you can add a dimension when taking conscience-altering substances! 😀 no need for a software concept no-one can use! 😉
iPhones never look that much newer than their predecessors either; whats your point?
looks almost like a direct rip of ableton! not such a bad thing, especially since if you know ableton already then the learning curve would be seemingly small.
the linux support would be a great feature as others have mentioned.
looks almost like a direct rip of ableton! not such a bad thing, especially since if you know ableton already then the learning curve would be seemingly small.
the linux support would be a great feature as others have mentioned.
Still I was expecting to see vinyl emulation software as an addition, though I supposed this always requires a hardware solution that is simply too costly to supply, but I would have liked to see vinyl emulation–something that transcends the limitations of Serato/Ableton’s bridge, which could be integrated into a single program.
check out ms pinky
mspinky.com/
I expect collab between them and NI to fight against The Bridge. In other hand Ms. Pinky (as said Bastian) is an option but it could be really interesting linux port and integration in “the feature like m4l” of bitwig)
oh Sh*t… I think somebody finally got it right.
Multi monitor support is huge. If they made it so you could view more than one waveform at once, that would be huge for djing (for me at least.)
wouldn’t be funny if Bitwig WAS Ableton 9?
I meant wouldn’t it.
the one feature that currently is in abletons favor is the controller aspect, atleast for now… seen how it allready has some controllers dedicated for it, like the apc, a few from novation aswell… just clicking on an effect or an instrument on live (you dont even have to click it with the mouse) and automaticly all parameters will be mapped to the knobs of those controllers… wich is a huge thing for a lot of people…
Why do you think Bitwig can’t support these controllers natively as well?
i’m not saying it cant suport it… im saying it hasn’t been said yet!!!
Ex ableton employees!? Sign me up!
Looks like an Ableton More Colorful
But Seems Interesting
waiting for the beta 🙂
finally! something to push Ableton in the right path!
Well obviously ableton knew about this prior to this release so they have to be planning either the exact same tweaks to their system or something new and better. Yay, a competitor was needed.
Live 8 celebrates it’s 3rd birthday in 4 days. It’s about time that they come up with something new. This may be the push they needed.
About time 😀 a DAW that supports Linux :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D no more sudothis sudothat or virtual box that’s a PLUS!!!!!
Native Linux support _could_ be a killer feature for live performance. It’s fairly easy to tailor your own minimal Linux with barely more than X, low-latency sound-server, realtime-/low-latency kernel, MIDI and networking. No automated updates, no annoying AV, almost no system services. You could even boot it from SD-card and have your live set on a thumbdrive. Too good to be true. _If_ you get all your VSTs to run under Linux, that is. Most soundcards and controllers should work already.
no a linux user but I was told that the reason everydoes not do it is because soundcards etc don’t have the drivers? Is this myth or fact.
thanks for any info cause I’d be on it if it works well
From my experience, there are work-arounds for a lot of things, but the biggest problem is VST-support. My old laptop eventually came to the point where a Linux-system was about the only thing it would accept. (I used Ubuntu, since it’s pretty simple and flipping awesome). Brave and inexperienced, I decided to try to open a few of my favourite VSTs. Nope. So I tried to open it in WINE. Oh hell no.
If you mainly use VSTs without native Linux-support, it won’t be that practical, but if you mainly stick to playing samples/full tracks live, or if the included instruments are freakin’ awesome, it should be one hell of a great way to have your gig-laptop optimized.
In my experience soundcards are simply plug and play with ALSA and work flawlessly.
Linux support !!! That’s a very very good point !!!
It should be noted that the features they highlight address many of the big annoyances in ableton. If ableton doesn’t come through with all we expect I will switch.
Plus the online collab tools sound promising
What I find really interesting here is the native Linux-support. The dual monitor-option and automation on a per-note basis are added bonuses, but I have to admit it’s not the biggest selling-point for me.
If it will compete with Ableton on the other hand, I’m not really that sure. Time will tell, and besides, a little competition couldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) hurt. If this turns out to be better than Ableton, then that’s good. If Ableton decides to end up as crap when trying to compete, we still have the current version.
Worst case scenario; Nothing changes.I am very interested in how this will all end up.
New NI hardware looks equally colourful…
kontrol_teaser.jpg
Not sure how to attach the photo, can be seen @ skratchworx.com
I thought exactly the same thing.
Bitwig + Traktor support coming soon? :]
I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw that this is by ex-ableton employees.
Call it ‘tunnel’, punish Serato for not giving controllerists the Bridge for Itch.
or maybe “overpass”
Ms Pinky could work with all (no linux ouch) due to midi, osc, full api included in the package. You could use Maxipatch with any osc connection but it is not so simple… I hope bitwig release full api internal control and then implement xwax (as someone says earlier) or komika or any dvs library could be easy fitted but… we want it? I remember the post about “how do you bigger want your platter sir” and it seems that djtt consider it (support to big platters) “unrellevant”. Why mess with dvs algorithms if I can make my turntable true digital (without lose analog side and no issue about audio signal and so…)?
well from what I saw in NI’s video today it seems like it is Traktor + Bitwig or it may be completely something in house. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGxd1Cm2_Sc
Ms Pinky could work with all (no linux ouch) due to midi, osc, full api included in the package. You could use Maxipatch with any osc connection but it is not so simple… I hope bitwig release full api internal control and then implement xwax (as someone says earlier) or komika or any dvs library could be easy fitted but… we want it? I remember the post about “how do you bigger want your platter sir” and it seems that djtt consider it (support to big platters) “unrellevant”. Why mess with dvs algorithms if I can make my turntable true digital (without lose analog side and no issue about audio signal and so…)?
Ms Pinky could work with all (no linux ouch) due to midi, osc, full api included in the package. You could use Maxipatch with any osc connection but it is not so simple… I hope bitwig release full api internal control and then implement xwax (as someone says earlier) or komika or any dvs library could be easy fitted but… we want it? I remember the post about “how do you bigger want your platter sir” and it seems that djtt consider it (support to big platters) “unrellevant”. Why mess with dvs algorithms if I can make my turntable true digital (without lose analog side and no issue about audio signal and so…)?
Ms Pinky could work with all (no linux ouch) due to midi, osc, full api included in the package. You could use Maxipatch with any osc connection but it is not so simple… I hope bitwig release full api internal control and then implement xwax (as someone says earlier) or komika or any dvs library could be easy fitted but… we want it? I remember the post about “how do you bigger want your platter sir” and it seems that djtt consider it (support to big platters) “unrellevant”. Why mess with dvs algorithms if I can make my turntable true digital (without lose analog side and no issue about audio signal and so…)?
OHH SNAP!
It’s funny. The layout and look of Bitwig is like if you take Traktor’s look and made the layout an Ableton layout.