#Bitwig studio windows

The highlight of Bitwig's instrument clip implementation is per-note automation, enabling polyphonic manipulation of pitch, pan, velocity, gain and the assignable Timbre parameter.

This makes for a fantastically fluid workflow when crafting loops. The quality of the stretching is of a similar standard - in our tests, Live handled extreme retiming and warping a little better, but the difference isn't massive.īitwig's main improvement over Live, however, is that a single clip can host multiple audio files, meaning that disparate slices of audio can be rearranged, manipulated and automated within the confines of a single clip. That's a great feature, and although it's difficult to get out of the habit of heading straight for regular audio or instrument tracks, they can be switched to Hybrid mode at any time, so there's no need to plan ahead.And stretchīitwig's audio clips are, by and large, similar to Live's, being automatically warped to fit the project tempo and retimed via 'elastic'-style warp markers. The main benefit of Hybrid tracks is the ability to bounce instrument clips to audio in place and edit that audio while leaving the rest of the track as programmed notes. Unusually, Bitwig Studio offers four track types: Audio, Instrument, Effect (send/return tracks) and Hybrid, which can host audio and instrument clips at the same time. Once you're used to it, it always feels like you've got ready access to, well, everything. There's a ton of other options for hiding and revealing UI elements, too, making Bitwig's interface feel far more customisable than Live's. To the left is the Inspector window (which can also be folded into the Browser's tabbed space for small-monitor setups), offering access to a host of clip parameters, while the bottom panel, as with Live, hosts each track's device chain and clip editor - which can be expanded to fill the whole window - as well as a mixer. The metadata-based browser to the right provides access to instruments, effects and files, although it occasionally takes a long time to preview and load one-shot samples (we expect this issue will be resolved before too long, though, and indeed, Bitwig was very quick to fix the few other minor issues we came across).

#Bitwig studio windows

While - commendably - Ableton has always stuck to its guns in keeping Live clutter-free at the expense of making certain functions harder to get at than they perhaps could be, Bitwig is happy to let the interface get a little busier.Ĭonceptually, Bitwig Studio may centre on a dual-view setup like Live - the Arrange and Mix windows - but it breaks out of this paradigm by introducing various sub-windows, pop-ups and, of course, that Arrange view Clip Launcher. In fact, Bitwig's GUI in general feels slightly more user-friendly than Live's. Still, for one-monitor musos, Bitwig's Clip Launcher trumps Live's comparatively clunky two-window solution. Bitwig also supports up to three monitors, enabling even more expansive use of both views - although since Live finally introduced dual monitor support in version 9.1, this isn't quite the talking point it would have been a few months ago.

While it might seem trivial at first glance, arguably Bitwig's biggest innovation is its ability to display the Mix view's Clip Launcher and Arranger side-by-side in one window, making it possible to lay out the arrangement of a track in a traditional, linear manner and experiment with clips at the same time, with the ability to drag clips between the two and keep a constant eye on what's going on in both views.įor those working on a single monitor, this is a fantastic workflow improvement over Live 9.1's two separate windows. Sure, the two have enough similarities, both obvious and subtle, that we could fill this entire review discussing them, but to do so would be to miss the point that Bitwig is packed with plenty of its own well-thought-out features. Crucially, however, Bitwig Studio doesn't just feel like it's aping Live for the sake of it.