Bitwig Pricing & Availability Coming At 2014 NAMM Show

happy-holidays-from-bitwigBitwig Studio – the new uber-DAW from some of the original developers of Ableton Live – may actually see the light of day soon.

As they say, it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings – but their latest newsletter says that they are wrapping up the last phase of beta testing, and that details on pricing and availability will be announced at the 2014 NAMM Show.

Here is their announcement:

Greetings from the Bitwig Headquarters!

We hope you’ve had a sensational 2013 and would like to take the opportunity to wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

We’re currently approaching the last beta phase stages for our upcoming Bitwig Studio and want to send out a big thank you to all who helped with beta testing, sent in wishes and suggestions, or otherwise helped to improve and shape what we’re working on.

It has been amazing to see so many people from all parts of the world and so many different walks of life contributing to bringing a new music-creation tool to life. We couldn’t be more thankful for the sheer amount of anticipation and interest we have experienced in the past 12 months! That said, our thanks also go out to those who have silently kept their fingers crossed for us while eagerly awaiting the Bitwig Studio 1.0 release.

If you have been following our project for some time now, you might already know that we originally planned to ship Bitwig Studio before the end of this year. Alas, we won’t make it and would like to apologize for having to shift this time frame now to the beginning of 2014.

However, the wait is nearly over: We will kick it up a notch again after the holidays and are looking forward to attending NAMM in January, where we will announce the upcoming release date and pricing information for Bitwig Studio 1.0!

We hope you’ll enjoy the upcoming holidays and wish you a happy, prosperous, and creative 2014!

Your Bitwig Team

If you need a refresher on what makes Bitwig interesting, here’s our interview with Bitwig’s Dominik Wilms from this year’s NAMM Show:

Check it out and let us know what questions you have about Bitwig Studio and what you want to know from the Bitwig team. We’ll try to get concrete answers to your questions as part of our NAMM coverage.

via The Mad Arab

36 thoughts on “Bitwig Pricing & Availability Coming At 2014 NAMM Show”

  1. I still only have eye for a daw/app where I set the length, bpm of a loop.

    And then I hit record, and play along to the loop
    Each loop is saved as a new track,
    I switch instruments, the loop keeps going and so I like a loop pedal I can hear the layers I’m making

    But unlike a loop pedal, I can go back to each track, delete the duds, arrange the loops into a composition (stretch out to loop 5 times) copy loops to play again later in the composition

    Etc.

    I don’t want to fiddle either scripts and midi hardware trying to get the whole thing to work. I just want it to work. Much like an app on an iPad.

    If bit wig has a mode where it could work like this without latency issues, I’d be in like Flynn.

        2. it also has a plugin called POLAR (performance oriented loop something something 🙂 ) that i bet you’d like even more!

          really underrated, i think.

          they have a cross grade price if you own other DAWs. I own a bunch of DAWs too, if there’s a mac version and it doesn’t need a dongle 🙂 . for the most part i’d rather buy DAWs and have a complete environment instead of plugins.

          anyway, it has a 30 day demo.

      1. With push you have to keep a hand free to designate and change loops. I just want to hit start, and sort out the loops later. Plus a full daw is overkill and confusing yo deal with, where I’d like this to be the sole activity.

        I’ve also tried this with a foot pedal but it takes away from the performance to have to keep assigning the beginning or end of each loop.

        1. Sounds like what you want is something very custom and specific to your one need, and so I doubt you’ll ever find something made by someone else that will fit the bill. There are ways to simulate what you are talking about with Ableton and Reaper, and probably just about any other DAW, but it’ll be up to you to put the time in and learn how to do it.

      1. Logic, like pro tools keeps takes of a loop, but you can’t keep them all in individual tracks and hear them layered together.

        See in my ideal daw I could hit record, start playing the drums, switch to the guitar, then keys… There’d be dud loops in between as I switch instruments, but I could delete those and keep all others.

        Layers.
        Multiple tracks…

        This is what I find so lacking and frustrating in logic and pro tools.

          1. Yes, Logic WILL do that. The thing is, you have to do some sweating, planning ahead and cleaning up afterwards. No matter what, you still have to pick your best takes and then commit them to a mixdown. I suspect you could build a simple macro in most DAWs that would switch to a new track with a single button/footswitch-press, but no matter what you do, you’ll face a few have-tos. It sounds to me as if you are asking for a middle ground between loopers and full DAWs. AFAIK, you have to build a pathway to that for yourself, with things like Logic’s Environment and its drag-&-drop routing of components such as arpeggiators. The means are there, but there’s no auto-play function that configures by telepathy. If there was, I’d already have that Star Trek synth I could talk to.

            1. Just a few DAWs that can do exactly as described…Logic, Pro Tools, Renoise, Reaper, and Live…not to mention just good ol’ max/MSP, which I may add is not a nightmare to build the functions at all. 30 Minutes in the forums and you could build this in Max in multiple fashions.

    4. As written in all the answers following. most of DAWs and music softwares fit certain workflows, some are more elastic, some less. but always, almost in the same way when you’re learning a traditional instrument, you need to study “some theory” there must be some kind of commitment to customize the tool you’re using to your will… otherwise you have to design and/or realize the tool.

      anyway, does anyone have a vague idea how much could bitwig cost us? will it be a 200/300 kind of price, hoping to bring a lot (and i mean a lot) to their shores? will it be 800/900 scaring the most that will gladly remain with their original DAW?

  2. i wonder if this’ll bring the price of live (suite) down?

    i own live and through some tricky selling off of bonus instruments and then my license and upgrading from the free sound cloud live, i was able to get suite for the same price as most of the other DAWs, but it shouldn’t be that complex.

  3. What’s with all the impatient people that are so naive to think that a complete daw written from scratch with so many new innovative things shouldn’t take less then 5 years?

    Now buckle up for the best daw on the market and enjoy your spoonful of omg my daw sucks!

    1. I don’t care if this DAW is better (than mine) as I just do my best to be a better musician and there’s still a huge gap between what my softwares allow and what I can play-program-mix…..what about you ?

    3. I think you are wrong. 5 years is a lot of time to deliver a product. People complain because they announced a beta when it was actually an alpha. It’s pretty obvious they had some organizational problems. How the hell you announce a release date 2 months before? People complain because they felt mislead and frustrated. Bitwig has some very cool features but their communication towards users was so incredibly retarded that a lot of potential users got sick of it. They clearly missed the bandwagon and now it feels they have to release their shit as is.

  4. I really hope it will get out this year. The sooner the better. Allthough, I fully understand it takes time to write a proper functioning innovative DAW. Still looking foreward to test it, and still a tad sad I was to late to be able to be a beta tester.

  5. Yes, it will def be at NAMM ’14. Just look for the crowded booth with
    the real Bigfoot signing autographs.
    Just joking. Should be a good DAW. If it isn’t too buggy, that is.

  7. The one thing that has me really exited is the per track back to arrangement button. It means you can take control of a part of your session and then go back to something prearranged when you switch to control something else.

  9. I hope they include a nice sound library. Ableton’s stock sounds kinda suck. I feel like they should include more for what the charge for suite.

    When you compare DAWs/production environments live charges the most but offers the less. The most bang for your buck is logic. And if money is not a problem then a maschine studio w/ komplete ultimate is the way to go. Don’t get my wrong, I love Live for it’s audio capabilities, but for an original composition I usually turn to logic.

    1. I disagree on the sounds. I hope that sounds and software instruments are secondary and that Bitwig has spent the bulk of their energy on Bitwig’s sound engine, warping, modulation, and midi editing capabilities.
      I feel that Live went of course and just started adding more and more sounds/FX to its releases just to cover all the bases.

  10. Bitwig has some neat features for sure, but I don’t see it differentiating itself enough from Live to warrant a shift. If some new feature there really takes hold, it will come down to a fight between Bitwig marketing dollars vs Ableton development dollars, with the price of each and the huge back catalog of content for Live as the modulators. In other words, if Bitwig isn’t really, really inexpensive, I expect they will have a hell of a time gaining market share.

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