Bitwig Studio 1.3 Full in depth Review - Part 1

The first half of my review of Bitwig Studio 1.3 features an overview of all the coolest and most interesting aspects of this amazing DAW. If you are not familiar with what Bitwig can do then start here. Part 2 will focus on the multi-touch features on a Microsoft Surface which is available here:

[take.off.]

I've never seen such an interesting and informative Review of a DAW. I just switched to Bitwig yesterday, and you Sir helped me a lot. Subscribed so hard.

[troylange]

Thank you for the excellent video and getting me up to speed on all the newer features. Bitwig adds little touches so often, sometimes stuff slips by me.

[lordcolor]

Great, great introduction / review, Robin! I'm getting quite sold on this package, much in thanks to your video right here. Hope Bitwig takes a peek and heed your calls for improvements as well.

[ownedbymykitty]

Awesome review / tutorial. I've had Bitwig for quite some time and was seriously thinking of selling it, but realized after watching this that I've been using it for the wrong purposes. This is more of a creativity tool and I'll use it purely for that and use Studio One for mixing. Bitwig will be a keeper for me. Thanks!

[InaBalloon]

Thanks again for a superb review! Bitwig truely got my attention, especially because of it's dedicated tablet layout. I followed several reviews of you, i think this is the one, cheers Robin!

[KozmykJ]

I know this is a few years old now but this review gives a very good and clear perspective of Bitwig, what it's about and how it's strengths and weaknesses compare to other DAWs
Thanks Robin
I wonder how many of the improvements you asked for have made it into the later versions ?

[troylange]

You can Group Clips together in the clip launcher! One action can then cause several clips to play without triggering an entire scene. It's like triggering a scene within a scene in a way. This could completely alter the way you perform live. For instance, you could group each song in a set together into group clips and fold-unfold them as needed during the set, instead of scrolling endlessly sideways like you do in Ableton.

You could also use this idea as an arrangement tool - group all the tracks in your project together, bounce each of the song's sections to a grouped clip, drag and drop the clips around into different scenes (with their automations remaining intact) to try out various arrangments on-the-fly without disturbing your original arrangement view.

[HooverBeast]

19:03 the way he says 'thats awesome' reminds me of how i talked about my new favorite toys as a kid. and it really is awesome!!!

[poiseinchaos]

As a long, long, long time Logic user and an occasional Ableton dabbler I wanted a DAW to complement Logic that was better for bashing stuff out live and for experimentation as I was moving away from playing in bands and getting back into more electronic music.

Logic has everything you could want in a high quality DAW but it's not really a springboard to creativity, more a place to realise ideas already at least part-formed. I used to find my MPC great for creating great grooves out of nothing and FX's Geist plugin put a lot of that into Logic but wasn't as flexible as Live's session view. .

The early bitwig demos were encouraging and being an 'all new' product it allows the developer to cut the fat and focus on brand-new ideas, but then you'd soon find things like no support for multi-output plug-ins, no grouping of tracks, no choke groups in the drum sampler and other show stoppers.

All this is now present and so bitwig has everything I need and I haven't been frustrated by missing features that I can think of. I didn't want to spend £470 on Ableton Suite so bitwig studio at under £200 street boxed seemed like a very good deal - does everything I'd want from Ableton but with loads of completely new features to explore. bitwig is still very much on a fast development curve so there's bound to be plenty of new goodies coming soon.

I agree that the browsers look a bit primitive and unappealing but I have no trouble selecting what I need and the software seems snappy and efficient on my SSD-equipped 2011 Mac.

[gkillmaster]

thank you! very good points and great succinct overview of the plusses and minuses. Lots of good tips in there too!

[LittleFoilFish]

That midi/ audio overlay editor is genius

[UnnamedPlayer]

I really liked your review, and had a nice time listening to it. I'd love to see some videos about favorite vsts in a future.
btw. nice mothership I can almost hear a call

[misssurname]

You may have already discovered, but you can change the height of the automation lanes under the clips in the arranger view. Just drag the botton of the lane under the track name :)

[lrproductions]

Finally got it downloaded. If you own a Mac, use GarageBand, you can later upgrade seamlessly to Logic and even if you don't, it's still better and FREE.

[marcuswilespage]

You must have not used Ableton much to think that using a clip launcher to build an arrangement is anything innovative lol. Good review though, all the midi editing features are impressive.

[wisewerethewords]

You should really try out the full 'Edit' mode for the "everything all together" thing you are talking about WRT to automations on the arrange page. I didn't mess with the Edit mode for a long time, but it delivers everything people want in terms of complaints about the arranger view (at least the ones that I have heard, like your comments or resizable track heights).

[djbabyboi]

hey dude, your shirt has a Bitwig look to it!

[shitmandood]

I'm just now noticing your shirt looks like the Bitwig box cover...hahaha!

[Shoto]

You should also talken about the signal flow. Ableton only passes through audio. Bitwig passes through audio and midi. Which is superb. You can therefor use drum software with programable midi in software and then put drum machine after and the midi will transfer to that without any routing. bitwig is crazy fast

[WebMatros]

22:05 that music! 😅😂🤣


Good review though. I enjoyed your 2.1 review so much I decided to watch this one as well;)