Bitwig Studio Announced

by Clint on January 13th 2012

The Ableton Forums and blogosphere are full of discussion as of late on the recent announcement by Ableton spin-off company, Bitwig.

Announcing Bitwig Studio

What is exciting about it:

1) It could influence Ableton to announce what's next for Ableton LIve. And let's face it, anticipation is fun and all but, new stuff!

2) Ok so I am one of the users who have always wanted to be able to record automation for all devices in session view into the clip itself. Seems like you can do that in the Bitwig product.

3) I'm also one of the users who never got used to the placement of the track controls in Arrangement view being on the right. Too many years in Cubase for me I guess.

But thats pretty much it for me. There are still 100 things about Ableton Live that make it my tool of choice.

What's not so exciting:

1) I do not want yet another modular programing environment to learn. I want to have a standard environment with a vast user community to learn from with proven and advanced capabilities across audio and video. In other words I want Max for Live, not "reaktor lite".

2) Linux version? Sorry open source friends, this makes no sense OTHER than to throw sand at other vendors. This software may run on Linux, but none of the VST/VSTi devices people demand will... Audio interface drivers? Controller support? To have a startup that would waste any cycles at all on this would be ridiculous. You'd likely end up with some version that runs on linux but I doubt you'd have feature parity, even if you take the driver/vst augment aside. Either that, or they got some serious VC funding.

3) You only have to be one small step ahead of your competitors. The Bitwig announcement tips the hat to Ableton. If Ableton ever was concerned about what Bitwig was up to, they no longer have to be. They can focus on making sure the next version of Live remains ahead of the game and leverage a vast existing install base.

4) Rumors abound that Bitwig is actually Ableton and that "Bitwig Studio" is actually "Live 9". Um. lol.

Disclaimer: Because of my work on maxforlive.com I know many people at Ableton and am an officially sponsored artist by Ableton. However I have NEVER once discussed Bitwig with anyone at Ableton. Any opinion expressed here is my own and does not reflect any knowledge of Ableton strategy or roadmap. I'm just a regular user reading the forums like anyone else.


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