Bitwig has announced that Bitwig Studio 3 – a major new release for their DAW – is now available as a beta release.
The update opens up the modular core of the application:
Modularity has been at the core of Bitwig Studio from the beginning. Devices can be nested, clips are containers, modulators exist everywhere, and practically anything can be dragged anywhere. But with Bitwig Studio 3, we are zooming out so you can push in.
The Grid is an open modular environment that powers a family of new devices in Bitwig Studio 3: Poly Grid and FX Grid. With a vast library of modules and a supersonic workflow, you’ll be creating your own unique sounds immediately, and in high-fidelity. Simply add a Grid device to your project and start patching. It’s fun.
The Grid includes:
- Fully-modular sound design
- 140+ modules
- Any signal, anywhere
- Fast workflow
- 4x-oversampled, stereo signal path
The Grid is accessible in many ways:
- Grid devices can be nested or layered along with other devices and plug-ins, and they are controllable via MIDI mapping and from the Open Controller API.
- Song position is available as a sample-accurate signal, locking a patch in The Grid to the project’s timeline. And since Bitwig Studio can sync with various techniques including Ableton Link, so can The Grid.
- Arranger or clip-based automation can be added for any parameter in grid patches, even in combination with Bitwig Studio’s existing modulators.
- Grid modules like envelopes, LFOs, and sequencers all have modulator outputs as well. And just as Bitwig Studio’s modulators can control any parameter in The Grid, any grid signal can be used to modulate child devices.
- With dedicated grid modules for sending any control, trigger, or pitch signal as CV Out and receiving any CV In, hardware can be seamlessly integrated with The Grid.
Here’s what is going on under the hood with The Grid:
- In The Grid, all signals are created equal — and 4x-oversampled for the highest sound quality. All signals are interchangeable so any out port can be connected to any in port.
- Every signal is stereo. That includes control signals, which indirectly affect audio. And plenty of modules can Stereo-ize signals, adding variety where needed.
- With The Grid’s quick workflow gestures, new modules can be dropped directly onto ports, automatically wiring them into your patch. And for signals that are needed regularly, we have the option of pre-cords. These clickable icons appear beside in ports, allowing common connections to be made wirelessly.
- Phase is the place. After pitch, timbre, and loudness, phase is the essential element of sound, capable of driving basic time functions, complex modulation synthesis, and so much more. With a dedicated category of phase modules, we have made these concepts freshly accessible and newly relevant for modern music production.
Details on the Bitwig Studio 3.0 beta are available at the Bitwig site.
I’ve tried it and must say that this is mind blowing! Wanted to only take a look since this is beta, but I was lost for hours. Thanks for this Bitwig!
With no prior interest or know how I found myself down a modular rabbit hole two days later. I’ve just now come up to breath since it came out. I’m going to fill up the tank and get back in there. It’s so intuitive anyone can get into it . . . and it’s just . . . just beautiful.
The most exciting update to any DAW for a very long time, Bitwig is taking it next level, I haven’t been this excited about software for a very long time (in fact I was mainly using bitwig to drive modular with CV) – this is a gamechanger blending the DAW/Instrument/Music Production System paradigm even closer. If you predominantly make electronics music (ITB) and/or sequence midi/cv (pretty much anything other than recording orchestras/bands) then this is now one of the very best options available and mot likely to make you smile!
Been waiting for this beta with bated breath since they announced it in January. I was even getting cranky, as they were still pushing beta versions of point releases. (We went through five “release candidates” for BWS 2.5.1 during this time…) My guess is that they were having issues with VST3 support, since the release notes had a lot of stuff about that. Since it’s a small dev team, they had to focus on these things. All fair and good but their messaging wasn’t clear. They could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by updating us, crowdfunding-style. “We wanted to ship this by this date but we ran into issues so we’ll have to push things back.”
Thing is, it was worth the wait.
People probably want to compare with Cycling ‘74 Max 8, Native Instruments Reaktor, and Puredata (not to mention modular features from Tracktion, VCV, Softube, Cherry Audio, etc.). I may not be an expert in all of these, but I’ve been playing with most of them since There’s quite a bit that’s special about Bitwig’s implementation and it makes a huge difference in the end.
It really feels like “getting under the hood” instead of “building something in a workshop”.
The obvious part is that it’s fully integrated in a DAW which was meant for this from the start. Since Ableton bought C74, they’ve been working at a deeper integration. But BWS3 brings in the pieces of the puzzle that the company was promising even before the release of BWS1. Which means that things like deep modulation and support for hardware CV are already part of the workflow. Bitwig got us used to several of these things so The Grid really feels like an organic extension of the existing platform. But the possibilities The Grid opens are really something else.
Then, there’s the set of workflow niceties which make the whole experience pretty delightful. The company brags about its approach to hot-swapping modules and it’s a pretty neat “party trick” (or “tradeshow trick”). Same thing with “pre-cords” and such. But what’s more interesting is how all of these little features fit together.
I’m primarily a Mac user and I spent my first hour of testing the app on my MacBook Pro with external monitor, mouse & keyboard, audio interface… Was having quite a bit of fun creating simple patches or modifying existing ones. It felt a bit like being in a security booth with access to quite a few things without being overwhelmed.
Then tried The Grid on a touchscreen Lenovo. That’s when things really opened up. Even something as simple as twiddling a knob for cutoff frequency while playing polyphonically (and expressively) on the virtual keyboard was a moment of joy. Sure, you can have the same experience with hardware devices once they’re properly set up. But this didn’t require any particular setup. In fact, Bitwig Studio 3 really blurs “the line between fiddling and noodling”. The way you can “repatch” while you’re in “Play” mode sounds like something you can do with other software modular systems but it feels like something special, closer to hardware modulars in some ways.
Polyphony tends to be rather difficult on most modular systems. It’s always supported in some way, but it’s added to an overall concept which is mostly monophonic. BWS3 turns that around. Obviously, you can create monophonic patches (in fact, the demos at NAMM had a special Grid device for monophonic patches). But polyphony is the default mode. And we’re talking full polyphony with voice stacking and deep MPE support. Sure, you could do similar things in other systems, with a bit of tweaking. In BWS3, you don’t even have to think about it.
One of the sweetest features of BWS 2.4 was the sampler, which can also be used as a granular or wavetable synth. Thankfully, though unsurprisingly, that sampler is available as an Oscillator module in The Grid. I can only imagine what I’ll do with this and it’s already fun to use, with all the modulation available. Same thing with Phase-1. The Swarm unison oscillator was actually a pleasant surprise. It sounds pretty good and is just really fun to tweak.
The fact that BWS3 runs well on Linux is far from trivial. I dualboot my touchscreen Lenovo with Windows 10 and Ubuntu MATE. I’ve tried as much music stuff on the Linux side as I could and the situation has improved a lot. There are some DAW options and pretty decent plugins. Obviously, there are numerous ways to get into the nitty-gritty of programming cool music stuff in Puredata, Sonic Pi, Supercollider, Processing, ChucK, etc. As far as I can tell, VCV”s Andrew Belt primarily develops Rack on Linux. So it’s really not a “music desert”, especially if you’re ok with tweaking stuff.
What’s been missing, for me, was precisely the kind of integrated environment BWS3 brings to the platform. You can still use third-party plugins, of course. But, with The Grid, I feel like I have much less of a need for those. It’s kind of the opposite of Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Instead of getting the tingling sensation of “oh, I need more”, I get the soothing feeling that “y’know, this is probably all I need at this point”. Having said that, I’m starting to think that, maybe, I should buy a Surface Pro as a dedicated machine BWS3 running on Linux. I wouldn’t need much storage (even for samples). And it could feel pretty complete and fun.
Of course, nothing is perfect. The Grid can be resource-hungry and things can get glitchy pretty fast in this beta version of BWS3, even at a low sample rate and with a high buffer. (This is on older machines, but BWS 2.5 runs pretty well on them.) That’s typically what happens with beta versions, since thorough optimization often happens later. My guess is that the release version will have pretty good performance, even on my older machines. But it’s still important to think about BWS3 as a more demanding DAW than before.
Great summary. It seems like Bitwig have taken the relative simplicity and intuitiveness of the Nord Modular system and successfully married it with a powerful sequencing architecture. This is what I’ve been hoping to see for a long time – pretty exciting!
Go to be one of the best implementations of modular design I have seen.
Yeah, I’m pretty invested in Live and I’ve used max4live and Reaktor for quite a few years but they both have a hard learning curve to climb. This UI is really impressive.
I love this sentence: “Phase is the place.”
I’ve only used it for a while, but it seems phenomenal! The interface is well thought out and designed, as is the whole DAW. Only big issue is that there are no containers inside the Grid, which makes complex patches messy. Performance seems to be very good, even on my old Thinkpad laptop I can run a lot more stuff than what Reaktor ever could. So code optimization seems good, and traditionally final releases have been faster than the betas.
glad to hear it is as awesome as it seemed it would be..
combining this with a cutting edge surface pro for all the touch control would be ideal
I see three posts on the modular update to Bitwig (version 3), but no announcements on the major update to MuLab (version 8!) which has been modular for 10-15 years. Fair is fair….