27 thoughts on “Bitwig Studio Review”

1. Bigwig has some cool and useful features. I’m really hoping ableton adds some comparable functionality in the next iteration.

   1. Who cares?

2. Remember how Studio-One was suddenly the next big thing?
   It seems to have vanished as quickly as it appeared.
   What motivates companies to introduce yet another DAW?

   1. Competition
      DAW users are loyal, always people wanting a piece of that pie

   2. I use Studio One and have upgraded from v1 to v2. They’re now on v2.6 and each update has been useful features and fixes. It’s a great, user friendly DAW. When I was getting back into music a few years back I downloaded and tried pretty much every one on the market and it was the only one that immediately clicked.

      It’s funny you say that you think it’s gone out of fashion. I’ve seen more and more tutorials appear on youtube recently where the person is using it to illustrate some VST and was just thinking to myself the other day that maybe it’s gaining traction.

      1. Yup, Studio One is still a big hit. More and more artists and producers use it. And as stated above, every update has been usefull and just given an allready very intuitive DAW more usefullness (great word 😛 ). For one, its the only DAW with a dedicated mastering section.
         I use both Studio One and Ableton. S1 mostly for mastering now, and Ableton for composing. Allthough, if I have to edit audio files, I usually do that in S1. Ableton is an awsome instrument and livetool, but not the best DAW imho.
         I have tried Bitwig, but unfortunatly find it has to much bugs still. So I have decided to wait for version 2 when I hope the bugs are fixed, and when the modular environment is implemented. Just hope the latter wont get postponed as much as version 1 though.

3. From purely commercial point of view, I do not think that Bitwig has much of a chance. Most people stick to the gear that works for them, whether it is hardware or software. Very few, if any, would even consider changing their DAW suddenly, just because there is lots of hype. So, their only potential customers are those beginners who have not yet established their work routines, or who are disappointed in their current DAW. I strongly doubt that people who have invested time and money on Ableton Live, Pro Tools, FL Studio, Logic etc. would abandon their workhorse on the whim.

   Besides, from technological point of view, Bitwig is far from revolutionary. Evolutionary, yes, but not radically. It has some nice new features, but it is very probable that other DAWs will see those same features in the near future.

   Also, their pricing scheme is weird – 400 bucks/300 euros. That is a really high price for a basic DAW that does not include extravagant sound libraries or software instruments. Compare that price to Logic X which includes some really good stuff, and it costs half of that. FL Studio is also a lot cheaper as is Studio One. And there are even cheaper, but good quality alternatives like Reaper are Renoise 3.0.

   Don’t get me wrong, I wish good luck for them, and hope that they have really good financial backing. Competition is always good and brings benefits for everyone, eventually.

   1. I have to agree, I was keen to back them with buying a licence at launch, but 399 was just too much for me to commit since I own reason7, ableton9, flstudio11, and studiooneV2. I got flstudio on a Black Friday promo, I upgraded studio one from a basic version also on a promo. I upgraded ableton basic when they did their promo launch for 9 and got that cheap (I got the basic disc with a keyboard or something). The only one I use regularly is reason,and I loved the bitwig demo but 399 is a bit rich for me.

      1. I’m on the same page as Brofist,
         Ableton9Suite being my main daw, i use Reason7 rewired to it for sound design (synths in general), and had to get Logic for a class I took (at a great edu discount) I do lot of my final mixes in Logic.

         $399 is too much for the minor ‘changes + additions’ i will gain, and the demo wasn’t blowing me away – though i did feel it wouldn’t be that hard to transition my workflow.
         the modular system still holds interest as i haven’t seen it in action, but thats about it.

   2. Yeah, I own Ableton, Cubase, Reason, Sonar and Sibelius, each bought because at the time it filled a need that none of the others filled. I would have probably grabbed Bitwig to play with if it was half the price, or if Ableton hadn’t finally put out a 64-bit version with (albeit primitive) multi-monitor support.

   3. Completely agree. From the commercial point of view, if they stay in business will be only because newbies and amaterus will buy their product. Those don’t know much about the flaws and always like to have “the new shit”. Aside from a couple of gimmicks here and there, I personally I don’t see anything innovative or revolutionary about this software. And it doesn’t even work properly.

      1. Seems like a lot of Ableton users are ignoring reality.

         There are reasons why the Bitwig developers were able to create Bitwig Studio from scratch in the time that it took Ableton to do a minor version upgrade. They were the best developers at Ableton and they’re doing great work with Bitwig.

         If they stay in business – it will be because they were smart enough to be well funded, have a good business plan and are able to execute on that plan.

         1. “Bitwig guys the best developers at Ableton” Where did you get that from? LOL, They barely worked there, just a couple of years.

   4. comparing it to logic that effectively prices out any daw on purpose is quite shortsighted and unfair and is one of the reasons we are constantly getting bent by corporations.

      apple have the funds to sell it for 10 bucks, and seeing them as some sort of benchmark is severely misguided. imagine the scenario when indeed apple weeds out all of the competition and combine that with the arrogance they demonstrated in the case of final cut. the logic x seems to follow the pattern nicely.

      i would suggest supporting independent companies and individuals because having corporations as the only alternative is a road to a very bleak future. not that it matters since we are heading that way anyway.

      the pricing on bitwig is not set out of greed – every business needs and wants to be as competitive as possible. i do agree the price could be lower but the sort of critique on display here comes off as disrespectful.

      1. I don’t think complaining about the price is disrespectful. If you consider that they released their software in a completely unfinished state and charge you 400 bucks to be their beta tester, THAT is disrespectul.

4. Bitwig will become bite the dust wig. But, if they put some pressure on Ableton and make them work harder to improve, add features, and be more cost friendly I hope they’re around for a while. Thanks Bitwig!

5. I think that Bitwig looks cool and interesting. There are just some important things missing (like multitimbral AU/VST support) – which makes it hard to use for Virus TI owners (like me). Ableton doesn’t really interest me, but I would replace Logic with Bitwig.

6. They need to slash the price to get this program into peoples hands and generate some buzz and talk about it. It’s been very quiet for them.

7. Bitwig may have some liftoff, mainly because its native support of Linux. But like said, people don’t tend to change their go-to DAW’s fairly easy.

8. maybe ableton will buy off bitwig and they can all be friends again.

9. I like the idea of Bitwig, but at the intro price, it was too expensive to take a chance on it. If they would have had cheaper pricing or something like that, then I might have bit. It’s a new Daw, and you always have teething issues at first, so i imagine the app will keep getting better with updates, and by version 2 it might be well on it’s way to being a hit.

   They need to do something about that pricing though, it’s too close to the others out there, and it would be great to put some pressure on Ableton and have them lower the price as well.

10. I think Bitwig has adopted a pretty self-destructive attitude: they’ve hyped their product non-stop, had a beta period of 2 years, building up a big promise to later find out they release a product that is half-backed, still in beta phase, buggy to the point of being unusable and they charge money for it! (and 400 bucks??? LOL). They must be living in another reality, or maybe they think their potential users are very stupid.

    Regarding the product, it has some cool stuff, like any other software, but nothing truly revolutionary. Nobody who has invested years and work in software that truly works is gonna change for a product which doesn’t work out of the box. Maybe amateurs will adopted, but I don’t think serious producers will.

11. god forbid someone follows a dream and tries to create something new.
    so many armchair analyst slobs just waiting to judge and dismiss without a second thought.
    fuk the internet crowd.

    1. What’s really new about Bitwig? I don’t see it

12. I use Bitwig and I love it since my first use! 🙂

13. Bitwig user here and I love it

    Lots of deep thought has gone into it – way beyond the current state of Live

    No real problems on mac or windows, but you can tell it’s a 1.0 version.

    I have not tried it on Linux but who really users Linux for music? lol

14. Bitwig has 2 users!!!