Why you still with Livw when we have Bitwig?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Machinesworking
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Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: Why you still with Livw when we have Bitwig?

Post by Machinesworking » Mon Nov 21, 2016 8:46 am

Bitwig doesn't offer enough to differentiate from Live, and seems less oriented towards live performance than Live is.
DP is mostly a studio tool, and maybe arguably better at being a track playback machine for acts like Beyonce etc. so it offers a different approach.
It does SysEx, Bitwig and Live still bite animal mating parts in that area.

Bitwig had this promise of being a new approach to Live's strong points and failed IMO. It offers less integration with other DAWs than Live does, more CPU consumption, less performance oriented features, and at least in terms of MIDI controllers, a total BS javascript 'fuck you write your own' approach. <That little tidbit there sunk them for me, how about 'fuck you code some basic controllers you lazy shits!' :x :x :x :x

Apparently Pro Tools is gearing up to be a total collaboration via internet platform here soon, so I would rather learn an industry standard that's going to be hardcore trying to make this work than wait on five guys in Berlin to get around to it...

ash1
Posts: 195
Joined: Mon Oct 09, 2006 9:11 am

Re: Why you still with Livw when we have Bitwig?

Post by ash1 » Mon Nov 21, 2016 10:26 am

i dont think there is much more left to say ableton and push will work
as will bitwig and push with the push script
its all about workflow and choice and what gets the job done
both are good daws

Machinesworking
Posts: 11421
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: Why you still with Livw when we have Bitwig?

Post by Machinesworking » Mon Nov 21, 2016 8:25 pm

ash1 wrote:i dont think there is much more left to say ableton and push will work
as will bitwig and push with the push script
its all about workflow and choice and what gets the job done
both are good daws
I'm far from a fanboy of Ableton, my days of loyalty to a company have long passed.
DAWs have good version numbers and bad ones. No set of developers is ever constant at Ableton or any DAW maker, it's like investing in a mediocre funded sport team, bad years and good years.

That said, Bitwig simply doesn't live up to it's promise, development has slowed to a crawl, and it's still not at Live's level yet.
You can like the few things it has over Live, but the sheer amount missing means you're liking it's 'newness' which by now has to have worn off.
I don't trust they will be around ten years from now, the difference with Live on introduction is easily apparent, no one was offering a DAW/DJ Sampler solution; Bitwig come in on Live's coattails and because of that have to offer a vastly different approach or vastly improved user experience, neither of those things is true.

Had they offered collaboration out of the box from the start, or even a simplified version of their integrated modular system I would feel different but we're coming up on two years now aren't we? and so far it's basic shit.

dna598
Posts: 886
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2008 3:42 am

Re: Why you still with Livw when we have Bitwig?

Post by dna598 » Mon Nov 21, 2016 11:21 pm

braduro wrote:A dream for producers, one might argue. But still not a dream for performers.
Nor is Live + push.
ctrl + left/right = select transient

ctrl + shift + left/right = select between transients

ctrl + space = play selection

jlgrimes
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Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:55 am
Location: Atlanta, Ga

Re: Why you still with Livw when we have Bitwig?

Post by jlgrimes » Tue Nov 22, 2016 2:19 am

I guess a question many Ableton users are asking, why go to Bitwig when we still have Live?

I read up a lot on Bitwig but I guess I'm still happy with Ableton and I invested a lot of money (and more importantly) time into learning and getting comfortable with Ableton.

I came to Live in either version 5 or 6 (can't really remember). I was a former Sonar user who invested a lot of time in that but I felt like I was missing out in other DAWS and wasn't 100% happy with the direction Sonar was going. My main reasons for going with Live was:

1. It had Auto Quantize (Sonar didn't).
2. Being a former MPC user loving the MPC pattern style workflow, the Session View interested me (Sonar had nothing like this at the time and they had a sister project called Project 5 which was kind of an Ableton like program but was "severely" under featured compared to Ableton. Only thing it really had over Sonar was "gapless" audio and other than that Sonar ate Project 5 for breakfast. Its pattern based sequencing was nothing like how I was used to on the MPC. It was discontinued awhile ago).

I tried out the demo and there was some things I loved (first two features + warping, streamlined workflow, simple but effective piano roll, Simpler, "gapless" audio engine (Sonar was horrendous back then)) and some things I hated (CPU hog especially when working with large projects, Clunky in certain areas namely when working with large projects, and certain clunkiness workflows with SessionView and having to arm tracks manually). At one point I was ready to give up on Live and go back to Sonar and ironically when I opened Sonar up and tried to make a track I couldn't. I went back to Live and from the next several years after that I would jump between Live and Reason and do mixing/audio recording in Sonar. Over the years I started using Reason less (wasn't 100% happy with the direction they were going), converted from Sonar to Reaper, then from Reaper to Studio One. Over the time I found that many of Live's early shortcomings were fixed in updates or by me getting a more powerful computer to handle this beast (Ableton works best with a lot of RAM and a SSD and a Quad Core CPU).

Over time though Ableton made a lot of big and small improvements that kept me happy (Drum Racks, latency delay compensation, Auto arming features, Midi clip editing). Its gotten to the point now that Live (other than Reason) is the only sequencer I feel comfortable composing mainly because I know where everything is and can do most stuff I want with ease. Live also has a lot of good Youtube tutorials put together by a lot of random users where I often find new ways to do things. Ableton also while they don't update their software the most frequently comes out with many free minor releases that add big features that a lot of other DAW companies seem to wait to put in a major update. So IMO Ableton is still remaining competitive in the DAW game.

Overall I'm too happy with Live to leave.

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