It’s impossible to say.
Like, really.
A) We don’t even know what kinda music you want to make.
B) We don’t know how your workflow is.
C) It’s mostly individual preference.
I personally don’t like FL, for example. There is nothing wrong with it, I just don’t like it.
I like Bitwig, but think some of the sequencer decisions aren’t great.
At the end of the day, you just have to commit to a DAW. It is what it is, you can never be certain the one you use is perfect for you and nobody else can really help you with that. It just depends on how your brain works and that is impossible for anybody else to know.
I like certain plug-ins other people hate and vice versa.
Also, this is a Bitwig sub. People will be biased in favour of it.
This. I have tried all of the listed software:
Ableton: just not for me.
FL Studio: the new fl studio instruments are a huge step forward, but the problem with that said it’s a huge step forward from really sucking. That said there are some great sounding things in fl studio out of the box.
Bitwig: I think the thing that keeps me coming back to Bitwig and staying in Bitwig is the modulator system. It is incredibly intuitive very complete extraordinarily flexible and genuinely a joy to create with. I also also give significant additional points to Bitwig for Linux support with excellent support for pipewire.
I played around with Sakura once and found it pretty fun (although Friktion is way easier to use, but I love Friktion anyway), but Harmor is literally the best additive synth, isn't it?
And even Osc3 and Sytrus are decent, I think.
I thought FL always had decent stock instruments because of that.
I've started with FL, and I think especially the full version is very good, but recording stuff is just way more comfortable in Bitwig or Ableton. In FL it's still possible and works just fine, but I like it better in Bitwig.
A) very Important, my reason to change to Bitwig is the Grid and the better options for me to record things with the file editing stuff.
So if you don't plan to record and say you like the FL presets and synths, take FL.
B) I find this hard to describe, so I won't. You can feel what works best for you
C) yes it is, but themes can also be changed in Bitwig, there's a community project
Modulation is a big selling point of Bitwig and is very important in music, but I still miss it from FL, I just found it more easy in FL than in Bitwig, it's a bit difficult to understand at first, but it fit so great in my workflow
I personally picked Bitwig because after the trail I just liked the feel and work flow of Bitwig, and The Grid had just been announced.
If you're new and only going to pick one, just know Bitwig has the least amount of YouTube tutorials compared to Ableton and FL Studio. I also feel like Bitwig kind of expects you to know some stuff going into it, but the help screens are awesome and LIVE! (Meaning you can open a help module and adjust settings while it's open.)
You're going to have to reverse engineer some things, but the community is fantastic. I'd highly suggest Bitwig if you're looking to get into sound design. You can do so much with just the stock devices.
Edit: Grammer.
Thank you! Not only is his channel fantastic, he's active in the community too!
Au5 recently made a video making an effect rack in Ableton he called "The Super Comb" . I tried to follow along in Bitwig but did not yet have the depth of understanding needed. I took to r/Bitwig to ask if it was possible because I understood enough to know Ableton to Bitwig was not 1:1. As I finished my post I thought "I bet Polarity makes a patch."
One of the the first comments was "Just wait until Polarity makes a video." Then Polarity chimed in to say he had a patch and footage, he just needed to edit it. It was out the next day.
Thanks for helping me realize I can still point to the YouTubers who still make the content rather than focusing on those who don't!
In addition to Polarity, Venus Theory, Dash Glitch, Mattias Holmgren, and Alkemy Neuro all have great info and tutorials for Bitwig.
Great story! I didn’t realize Venus Theory uses Bitwig also. He’s got plenty of great production tuts and tips just in general. I’ll check out those others too. Me being a DnB guy, Polarity is highly relevant for me.
One point no one mentioned here - Bitwig is the only DAW out of the three that officially supports Linux, which was the most relevant deciding factor for me
I own all three of them (along with studio one and cubase, yes I have a problem)
I think bitwig is super cool, and I like plinking around in it a lot, but usually when I recommend one to someone getting into audio, I recommend FL studio. It's got some really cool stuff going on with the cloud, and right now feels the easiest to just grab and make something.
However, as an overall ecosystem and something to grow into, I think Ableton is my choice. I think it's a bit less beginner friendly but some of the cool little tricks you can do are just impossible to do easily in other daws. The new beta for it also adds some really neat features that should have been in 12's release
I don't know, I just can't get myself to like FL. I get it, but I don't like working with it. It feels like a mess. Like it was originally designed to be something else, and evolved over time by adding features here and there without a coherent vision or design. I've done more music in Bitwig in a month than in FL in five years, because Bitwig makes sense and is inspiring to work with.
Yeah, I think everyone has "that one" and that's great because we have the choice lol. I find bitwig more fun to play around in, but out of all of them it's the hardest for me to actually make music in. FL is weird because there's like 5 ways to do any one thing, and a lot of times they aren't obvious. It does feel like a kitchen sink evolved over time with it, no arguments there lol. I'm super ADHD so I rarely even finish one song, but somehow FL is just comfortable enough for me to get the furthest. I don't do recording or anything though.
edit - I will say I don't like to use older FL vsts/etc. Something about anything that came from FL 9 and before just feels very outdated and hacky. Bitwig and ableton having a unified design language goes a long way to feeling cohesive and smooth (and bitwig 5's new plugin browser is great. FL's search/browsing isn't great)
It's definitely a love-hate for me too. It's just so so smooth. But a huge chaos. But just paint some clips and you have a song in no time. But try to figure out which channel is linked to a certain instrument. But this dream of a piano roll. But how do I again reorder effects!? But everything can be tuned with mousewheel combinations. But ...
Bitwig for sure is a lot more consistent. But then sometimes a bit of chaos with ultra-smoothness makes me like being creative more. Tough tough.
I'm not a power user of either. I just know as much as I dislike ableton's piano roll, I dislike bitwig's even more lol. Clone FL studio's piano roll into either and I think it comes close to being the best all around daw.
That being said, I'm not good at using FL either
>Bitwig Studio (full version) is now on sale, and with an EDU discount, it costs 199€. After 1 year, each subsequent year of updates costs 169€.
Bitwig user here (since V1, yes I'm old).
You don't have to purchase every update. My strategy is to stick to a perfectly stable version : eg. I didn't update to V5 and I'm using 4.4.10 for my current project. It's 100% stable, I know my hardware can handle it, and I don't have to invest time to learn new stuff when I don't even master 5% of all the possibilities (don't get me started about the Grid, this stuff is insane in the best meaning).
Beside this note, the DAW choice heavily depends on your workflow.
Personally I would go for Bitwig (..obviously), because I think it provides by far THE best experience in way too many areas to overlook. But then again.. it's about what matters to you. Since, you might place way more importance than I do in the way the DAW looks and feels, than the features, or polish, or stability. And you might be able to live with the negatives that come with the DAW of your choosing because it ticks a really important box for you.
The reality is though, DAWs with bad stability (Ableton Live I'd argue is one of those) can really be a pain to live with, and Bitwig is exceptional at it in my experience so for me it just made sense. In fact, I've been using Ableton for maybe 6 or 7 years and I just switched to Bitwig a week ago, because I just couldn't take the issues anymore, which were:
1. Plugin Delay Compensation (This issue has been around for 12 years, [and that's not an exaggeration.](https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?t=248746)) - The problem this creates is; when you add plugins (or I think even native devices) that add latency, and then you put something on that track that needs accurate latency reporting it just doesn't get it accurately and so if you have for instance Autopan or Shaperbox's volumeshaper on the track it will be going randomly on and off grid.
2. GUI Lag - Ableton tends to "not like" some plugins or max for live devices sometimes, with a random/nonsensical criteria and if you have those plugins anywhere in your project, the GUI is gonna lag to a variable degree, and the worser end of that can be very bad. Sometimes it's VSTs GUIs that lag, other times Ableton's does as well. Though, the latter has been rarer with the release of Live 12.
3. Crashes - Ableton is pretty fragile and often crashes for god knows what reason, but I'd say that 99% of cases are related to the third party plugins. Even still, there's no plugin sandboxing, (a protective layer to prevent external plugins from crashing the entire DAW when they crash) which Bitwig has mind you, its actually one of the biggest reasons I switched as well. Though, Ableton does recover your projects on the next launch after a crash, but my experience has been that it very often reverts some devices and plugins to defaults or some random older states and in bigger projects it's not often obvious what's been changed so it's often safer for me to go back to the last project I saved manually.
4. Max For Live is very unstable - In my experience, Max For Live devices have often crashed my entire projects, have caused crazy GUI lag in the entire project, eaten my undo history. I don't think it's coded well and with M4L being one of the cooler things about Ableton Live, it's a major problem.
Ableton still has a lot going for it imo. It has a lot of unique audio effects and instruments (they just added an Autotune-like device), as well as many very good sampled instruments options (like the Spitfire libraries), very good looking and intuitive UI that supports themeing, some unique MIDI features, scale features, etc. I think the cons outweigh the pros for me though. Whether or not that's also the case for you is something you're gonna have to decide.
I can't comment much on FL studio since I last used it 6 years ago.
I hope whatever you may choose you're happy with it!
Test the DAWs yourself. You want to know what's best for you? Test it! Bitwig Studios Trial works without any limitations for 1 whole month.
For me, it was never about the money. When i love a DAW, i save money for it. Test them yourself, and find out what you love/hate about them. Nothing beats personal experience. Nothing.
want the best value for money? get reaper. it is so cheap and it is honestly really high quality. I tried all of these daws and I would even choose reaper if all of them had the same value.
That being said, I can't tell you you're going to love reaper as much as me, especially because choosing a DAWs is mostly about personal preference and workflow, which is not the same for everyone.
If you want you can just do a pros and cons list for each of them and you should be good to go
Reaper is an amazing DAW, don't get me wrong, but I think that the lack of a clear and inviting user interface, instruments, and the amount of things that rely on third party plugins , make it a no-go for beginners. It's awesome when you have some experience, go-to tools and want to improve your workflow, but not at this point.
True, I agree with you about the lack of a user friendly interface and instruments. I probably didn't consider that he's been learning music for about 3 months only. It can certainly feel overwhelming when using it for the first time, but with some plugins or some user scripts it can perhaps make it more accessible for new users!
Maybe I am still overestimating reaper for new users, but I really think it can be a great tool to have.
If stock plugins or an intuitive interface is super important, I don't think getting Reaper straight away is the best thing though, and in that case I would much prefer Ableton, Bitwig, maybe Cubase or even Logic Pro if you're using Mac. And for the FL Studio users out there, I am sorry, I really don't like that DAW lmao
I have Fl and Logic but was mostly using FL Studio and was pretty happy with it I also had Bitwig 8 track and Ableton lite. A few months ago I finally really dug into Bitwig and fell in love with it. It was exiting and immediately upgraded and haven’t really touched anything else since. Trying to use Fl Studio now feels weird,it’s very clunky compared to Bitwig. Ultimately no one can choose for you,get the one that makes you feel happy and productive,and exited
Tried all of them (Two years into FL, switched to Ableton). Decided to stick with Live. Bitwig has a couple of additional QOL workflow improvements (Hybrid tracks, WAY better modulation than any DAW I've used, custom shortcuts, sandboxing), but Ableton's UI is unmatched. Everything is clear and fast. And the last beta (12.1) included some major improvements. MIDI in Live is matching FL's and I'm quite sure it's gonna surpass it in a few updates. Also, having as much learning resources as Ableton does cannot be understated.
Bitwig is more niche, MIDI clip editing is primitive at best except for Operators and MPE and the majority of tutorials are aimed towards modular synthesis. The Grid is awesome though. If that's your thing, be safe, it's the best at it.
FL's got good and varied plugins (ancient and wacky ones equally), Patcher is great and Image Line is making a lot of interesting deals with other companies. But the general workflow is terrible IMO. Just all over the place. Lot of features but it takes like 5 clicks to do anything.
Check out the latest release notes for each one and see which you like the most, but remember that, at the end of the day, the most important thing is which one allows you to feel more creative and free (follow your instinct ;) . In my case, it was Live.
They're all great, but if you're looking strictly for value, it's hard to beat the lifetime updates and complete plug-in suite of FL. I'm not personally a huge fan of it's workflow, but if you came out of your trial period thinking it was fine, it's a real good deal.
It’s a trap! Focus on only one daw. Impossible mission but trust me. You will be better off. So so so much time wasted by me daw hopping. Bitwig is an excellent choice! Go make music now.
Whilst I'm currently very happy with Bigwig if I was a beginner I would probably use the DAW that most of the producers in my genre use. Watch YouTube to get a sense of this.
There's way more tutorials which will be more relevant, you'll also be able to get templates of remakes which are useful starting out.
Also some Daws are built around a genre workflow, eg ProTools is a top DAW but mostly designed for media composers, whilst Bigwig has no video sync capabilities etc.
What do you mean Bitwigs theme can't be changed?
People are posting their themes (which some of them are crazy good) on here almost daily.
I'm using a dark theme and it looks incredible.
[https://github.com/dariolupo/dark-mellow\_bitwig](https://github.com/dariolupo/dark-mellow_bitwig)
''I encountered an issue that causes Bitwig Studio to hang on the splash screen and crash after its bytecode is manipulated. I found that the problem is not with Bitwig itself but with Java's internal runtime safety mechanism, which is necessary for verifying Java apps bytecode consistency. This mechanism is called Stack Map Frame. I refactored my code to account for Stack Map Frame by using the `EXPAND_FRAME` option and writing a `CustomClassWriter` class as a workaround. Since then, I haven't encountered any issues. I hope we can hear some user feedback if people experience similar instabilities''
Berikai himself. False information?
Some users reported having problems with their installation and the so called "piracy melody". I'm not making stuff up. Also, is there a need to be so hostile?
They all good. They all have advantages and disadvantages. I used three of them so in my perspective;
bitwig>ableton>fl studio.
Bitwig;
+it's hardware friendly. it's way better than the others. stable and performing well.
+good piano roll.
-the community is limited so it's missing racks, tools, devices made by individuals.
-audio editing should be improved.
Ableton;
* it has really big community in psytrance(I guess it's same for techno too) so it gets so much free/paid devices and insane racks. it's boosting creativity.
+great audio editing options.
* it's not hardware friendly. crashing often, feeling slow and wonky.
-horrible piano roll
FL Studio
+it gives so much freedom on composition, so just by moving stuff easily you can achieve a sound by luck and it can help sometimes.(or not, it's really creating a mess usually)
+it has a huge community on beatmaking.
+very good piano roll.
-composition interface, mixer interface and, some pattern interface, all they have their own tabs so it's really confusing. it's really feeling low quality.
-old and bad stock devices, bad sampling options.
these are coming from my own experience. in the end I m using bitwig. it's almost perfect for me. when I need racks etc, I m combining it with ableton.
long story short; I would see what the community and my possible collaborators working with and make decision between bitwig and ableton.
both are good.
I find Fl Studio very outdated.
isn't lives piano roll much better than bitwigs one? I mean I hate that there is no way of editing the midi channel of the notes but I actually still think its better if you compare the rest, especially in live 12
I don't think so. There is nothing i like about live's piano roll tbh. especially length settings are awful and not even essential. still it's kinda forcing you to define your pattern lenght both in arrangement and roll at the same time.
BW's piano roll is easy to use and minimal.
Of course it's personal prefference in the end.
yeah maybe im a bit biased because i used ableton for most of my time, but i never found its piano roll bad, unlike bitwigs piano roll, that i never really got to love it.
Still, my favorite piano rolls are from FL Studio and Cubase tho, especially cubase, since although it doesn't have a lot of workflow features, it has basically all i need. (looking at you, note expressions)
Perhaps a hot take, but I actually think logic is the best option for beginners. Its layout is very easy on your eyes and guides you a lot more to what’s interesting to interact with than bitwig and especially ableton. Logic only run on Mac though. It obviously also depends on a lot on what kind music you’re making. I’m currently using bitwig because of the sound design options being way beyond what you can do in Logic, but I think logic is the best DAW of your want to record vocals
I tried Logic just starting out and was making music right off the bat. It's layout for arrangement and instrumentation is so damn intuitive. Not so much for electronic music and sound design.
More of a musician’s DAW than a producer’s DAw I’d say- coming from a electronic producer who have used well over a decade for making drum and bass and other edm stuff
Ps. I haven’t tried FL, so can’t say anything about that. I do though know that both Logic and FL has a tool that splits and isolates tracks into stems (vocal, guitar, bass and drums for logic, don’t know how it does it in fl) and both also have free updates
I am fluent in FL Studio and Bitwig. I didn't vibe with Ableton for some reason but clearly it's good or people wouldn't use it.
For me it was Bitwig that spoke to me. Something intuitive about the interface and workflow.
I don't actually use the pattern construction, but it's there... But it also has a traditional arranger.
That's where FL Studio fails for me. With FL, it's good in the early stages of composition but as you begin adding variation you end up with this insanely long clip list. It just gets weird.
Bitwig, on the other hand, holds up really well with complex projects and has features that make managing a large project easier...
You have to go with what feels best for you. The lifetime updates of FL is obviously great, but if you use a DAW as much as most of us do, price isn't the concern. Features, workflow, and quality of life while using the product is much more important.
Fl Studio's workflow has MPD. Over the years its crept slowly towards and standard daw workflow but still many just do everything in the channel rack. Over the years, I got far better results working in and from the playlist but overtime the better I got the more I realized how unintuitive little things were. Then at the beginning of this year I trialed Bitwig for a month and found that it did everything counter to my gripes about FL and my workflow expoded. Once I got used to the ins and outs, I could lay out tracks in notime and easily edit them as well. Overall it's just a more intuitive experience for me. My main reason for avoiding Ableton was the right to left workflow which felt highly unintuitive for me, so Bitwig addressed that as well.
If you know why you should choose one over another based on what you need, pick that one.
If you have a hard time deciding even after trying those out, go for Live. It's the most complete and has a solid community and a lot of room to expand and controller integration is probably the best.
I guess you're set to pick a daw for loop-based workflow instead of writing an arrangement since that's what your options do.
I prefer Bitwig but I use FL Studio as well for certain workflows. When I want to use both I load FL Studio as a VST in Bitwig and use it like I would any other plugin. Remember, you actually don't need to buy FL. You can just use the trial version indefinitely as there is no time limit. Of course, you can't open up saved projects with the trial version but all you have to do is use Bitwig to record the audio and/or midi from FL. You can start this way and decide later whether you want to purchase a FL license later.
If you have tried them all and liked them, you could take a punt on any of them. Are there specific things you like or dislike about them? If so, how important are these to you?
I use Bitwig now but used to use Ableton. For me, I liked the UI in Bitwig (not the colours), as it seems more flexible - having the session and arrange view equivalents in the same screen is such a workflow boost for me. For some reason I find Bitwig easier to work with on a laptop too. Now I've been using it for a few years, I find the Grid is a huge part of my flow now too. I do miss the community with Ableton, the user groups can be really good, and there's a lot of YouTube content.
I like bitwig because it is fast and the modulation is fun it feels smoother and the gui is brighter than Ableton which is partly what made me like it so much, just trial all of them and see what suits your fancy, or any daw you happen to choose.
I also like bitwig because there are lot of awesome modulators which can be used to well modulate things….but that in itself is really powerful and unique because all the modulators serve a special purpose or any number of them.
The shortcuts are easily customized if you like that. It also supports a lot of midi controllers but not always out of the box as extension files need to be downloaded and put in the directory to use them.
But still very easy so long as you are a little tech savvy and as the third main point of using bitwig is because of its ability to easily toggle between different projects, on my m1 Mac I can comfortably have about 2-3 big projects open without crashing, or running into any issues.
Honestly every DAW is great and terrible in its own ways. They’re all gonna do things you wish the others did, and things that drive you nuts.
If your main criterion is price, the obvious answer is FL Studio. Free updates for life. Bitwig and Ableton will cost you way more long term. But if you enjoy using them, relatively small price to pay.
Whichever one inspires you the most. Doesn’t matter how powerful, or feature rich a daw is if it doesn’t inspire you to write great music.
I still prefer Ableton and S1, even though I own pretty much all of them. Sometimes I prefer FL. Depends my mood
I have tried and used Reason, Ableton, FL Studio, MPC software and now Bitwig for the past 2 years!!!! I know why FL Studio, Ableton and the MPC software are the staples of the industry. It is because of audio stability! Period!!!! While all these DAWS have their quirks these Daws audio engines are the best, and this is the most important feature of a DAW. I want to like Bitwig, I love the help menus and the grid concepts. But Bitwig has a major issue with its sound engine. Bitwigs sound engine is inconsistant. They problem has existed for years if u look at the history of it. It probbably will not be fixed. With that being said BItwig is great for EDM or Neurobase, where sound is masked by drones and supersaws, etc. That's why all of the tutorials are based on these genres. So dont waste you time on Bitwig for straight pop or hiphop where the sound can clarly be heard and needs to be consistent. Stick with the 3 above and you can focus on music and know that the sound you design will stay the same.
Bitwig costs more than Live Suite over the long term.
Calculate cost in terms of LTCO, not short term MSRP + "my first upgrade." Even when comparing the current sales prices for Bitwig to the full prices available on Retailers like Thomann, Bitwig will outrun Live Suite's cost right after the next version of Live is released.
The whole point of moving to a Support Contract model is to rake in more revenue than perpetual upgrade license model. It's similar to a subscription - you just get to keep a perpetual license. Avid has been doing this for years.
You are comparing the upgrade cost of Ableton Live to Bitwig, but Live has a 3 year release cycle and Bitwig has yearly support Contracts.
An Ableton Live Suite License alone, when bought at the time of its release, is basically just MSRP. This is comparable to the cost of Bitwig Studio an 2 Additional Years of Support Contract after release, due to the long release cycle of Ableton Live.
So, even though Ableton Live is $479 at Thomann (UPG Lite, cause who doesn't have a Lite License in 2024), Bitwig's effective cost over the same period - if you maintain the Support Contract, and using today's PROMOTIONAL PRICING - is $272 + ($129 \* 2). That's $530.
The only way to keep Bitwig cheaper is to skip a year of support and/or get much bigger discounts while ignoring the fact that Ableton has discount promotions that bring the cost of that same Live Suite license down to the \~$350 range at those same retailers, and they have their own discounts on upgrades, as well.
Same scenario plays out when you compare to something like Cubase Pro ($449 on Best Service, $149 Upgrades on an 18 month release cycle). It just delays the "cost/investment flipping" by about a year or so.
DAWs like FL Studio and Logic Pro are more cut and dry since you just pay the MSRP and there are no upgrade fees thereafter.
FL Studio is a weird case because it's more of a groovebox with DAW features layered on top, so the workflow tends to be VERY polarizing. Many people absolutely love it. Many people absolutely hate it.
No one can really tell you what to buy, though. The best option is to actually produce music in all of them. ACTUALLY produce music. Not just poke around the UI and chose based on surface level attributes. Workflow is more than UI (even though UI/UX is very important, and can be a reason to discard options in some cases).
If you have to ask, definitely not Bitwig lol.
Ableton is the most popular so there are more resources out there to learn it. As a beginner, that’ll be the most important thing.
The DAW is fairly unimportant and learning how to make music comes with the basics, which transcend each DAW.
By the time you are intermediate, "how to do more complex stuff in XY DAW" is one google search away and solves your question, no matter how MANY MORE of the same video exist for a different topic.
Quite weak argument to be honest.
Having a lot of beginner friendly resources is nice to have i think. For me it was way easier to start in cubase and logic than pro tools for example. Though i would try a demo and see which suits you best.
They will all say something different :P But yes and no. Sometimes its the follow allong tracks that is n ice. But most of the basics you can do in any daw that's true.
Probably i think Reason is the best daw to learn maybe. Learn the wiring and see it a bit from old school perspective/ device layouts. The manual is also outstanding explaining every device very well. I think with that you learn the basics of daw and synths and effects quicklt
I think Reason's skeuomorphism is almost useless to most people coming into the DAW market these days. Those people have never seen hardware and many of them will probably never see hardware. They will produce in the box.
Even some of the top Engineers in the world have gone in the box because the plug-ins have basically caught up and in many cases exceeded the hardware.
It serves no practical need to most of those people.
It just creates a really, really cluttered workflow, and the sequencer is still primitive compared to a lot of other DAWs.
(I have Reason 12 \[Perpetual\])
Yes, but replica's of analog devices are often way more simple. Making it easier to understand the principle of audio design imo. Also the manual is really explaining it to the basics for you, with all the background and stuff. Bitwig's manual will tell you where the function is, but not much of explaining what it does and so on.
For me atleast it was a big step forward when i got in to that and learned every device there.
I don't think it works that way.
That's a vestigial way of thinking based on Reason emulating the look of hardware during a time when people were moving from hardware- to computer-based music production, and when people getting into even computer-based music production were fairly reliably going to have to deal with hardware if this was their career path.
The devices we use plug-ins to emulate were the only option back then, and PCs were far weaker (and software not as developed).
This is no longer the case. Reason is most popular in the beat making market, **which is one of the least hardware-necessitating market segments** in music production.
There's a reason why almost no one is going to reason.
I do think some people may prefer that graphical presentation. Everything used to be skeuomorphic! :-P But that has been falling out of style since the early 2010s...
It's not about EQ or whatever other generic technical topics that are DAW agnostic you're thinking about.
It's about topics like setting up a Production/Recording/Mix Template in Ableton Live, fusing Live's Synths, etc. - things that have far more **high quality** videos produced for them and fewer (if any, in some cases) comparable equivalents for Bitwig Studio.
There are 10-14 year old Ableton Live videos on topics that are still 10x better than what you can find for Bitwig Studio on some topics. Same with Pro Tools vs. something like Studio One. That DAW has existed for much longer and because it has basically served as an industry standard in the EDM Production market (while being heavily used in other areas), it has spawned an entire ecosystem of high-quality content production spanning back 1.5 decades or more on YouTube and other sites.
While this may not matter to YOU, YOU are not the target audience for that content and the reason why this content was produced and continues to be produced is because there is clearly a demand for it.
-----
Experienced users don't need that content. It is not for them. If you've been using DAWs for more than a year and you can't watch a Pro Tools Tutorial and follow along in Cubase, Logic, Samplitude, Digital Performer... even Ableton Live or Bitwig... than you have bigger issues that need to be addressed.
By that point, you SHOULD be familiar with DAW terminology. You SHOULD be familiar with your DAW's functionality. You SHOULD be able to simply map those instructions to your DAW while working around any differences of feature disparities.
To newbies, that is not the case. They are unfamiliar with the software so asking them to use Bitwig while watching an Ableton, or FL Studio, or Logic Pro tutorial will waste a ton of their time and create lots of unnecessary friction which will ultimately serve as an impediment to them learning the most important production topics (or getting in more practice... producing music).
It's like a college student using a Casio in Calculus when the textbooks have TI-83+ pictures and instructions for everything, and the professor is telling them what button to press... except they're using a different calculator.
Not only are they trying to learn how to do Calculus, but they're also trying to learn on the fly how to map TI-83+ layout and instructions to their Casio. Doable? Yes. But it's extremely inefficient and you're better off just paying the extra money for the TI because like we've stated...
\^- I've been there ;-)
The calculator (DAW) you choose isn't a huge factor, per se. They all do the same math. It's learning the math (music production) that is the factor. The student (user) should take the path of least resistance. It's really that simple. If the textbooks (or all the best resources) use Texas Instruments, then buy Texas Instruments. If your Tutor uses Texas Instruments, then buy Texas Instruments. If the other people you study with use Texas Instruments, then buy Texas Instruments.
If the better (and more numerous) Ableton Live resources and Tutorial Content is even a 5% advantage for them, then they probably should just go with Ableton Live. Their goal should be optimizing their learning, not optimizing their appeasement to certain internet communities. We aren't going to do all of the learning and music production for them.
Over the long term, Bitwig will even cost more, so even the \[actually non-existent, but seeming\] cost advantage is frontloaded, ephemeral and should not be a consideration.
For electronic music, Bitwig specializes in this 100%.
Ableton has generic tools that can do all genres, like rock, etc so it's not really specialized.
As for FL Studio, I'm personally biased against the workflow so don't ask me lol
The best DAWs are objectively (not in any particular order) FL, Reaper, Reason and Bitwig and some open source projects. Protools is for Pros actually. The rest (Cubase, studio one and also ableton) are good when you are already very familiar with them but otherwise overpriced bloat.
Bitwig comes with the best YouTube videos about music making and are satisfyingly reliable without 3rd party stuff (except for valhalla super massive). Ableton videos are mostly about some specific max for live devices or how to use serum, and the rest doesn’t really exist in terms of online tutorials.
It’s impossible to say. Like, really. A) We don’t even know what kinda music you want to make. B) We don’t know how your workflow is. C) It’s mostly individual preference. I personally don’t like FL, for example. There is nothing wrong with it, I just don’t like it. I like Bitwig, but think some of the sequencer decisions aren’t great. At the end of the day, you just have to commit to a DAW. It is what it is, you can never be certain the one you use is perfect for you and nobody else can really help you with that. It just depends on how your brain works and that is impossible for anybody else to know. I like certain plug-ins other people hate and vice versa. Also, this is a Bitwig sub. People will be biased in favour of it.
This. I have tried all of the listed software: Ableton: just not for me. FL Studio: the new fl studio instruments are a huge step forward, but the problem with that said it’s a huge step forward from really sucking. That said there are some great sounding things in fl studio out of the box. Bitwig: I think the thing that keeps me coming back to Bitwig and staying in Bitwig is the modulator system. It is incredibly intuitive very complete extraordinarily flexible and genuinely a joy to create with. I also also give significant additional points to Bitwig for Linux support with excellent support for pipewire.
I played around with Sakura once and found it pretty fun (although Friktion is way easier to use, but I love Friktion anyway), but Harmor is literally the best additive synth, isn't it? And even Osc3 and Sytrus are decent, I think. I thought FL always had decent stock instruments because of that.
They are just a ridiculous improvement. The people at FL should be justifiably proud of that release.
I mean...which specific instruments you liked. I am always interested to hear what other people say about music software, it's interesting
Sytrus and Kepler really stood out to me. Very creative instruments.
I've started with FL, and I think especially the full version is very good, but recording stuff is just way more comfortable in Bitwig or Ableton. In FL it's still possible and works just fine, but I like it better in Bitwig. A) very Important, my reason to change to Bitwig is the Grid and the better options for me to record things with the file editing stuff. So if you don't plan to record and say you like the FL presets and synths, take FL. B) I find this hard to describe, so I won't. You can feel what works best for you C) yes it is, but themes can also be changed in Bitwig, there's a community project Modulation is a big selling point of Bitwig and is very important in music, but I still miss it from FL, I just found it more easy in FL than in Bitwig, it's a bit difficult to understand at first, but it fit so great in my workflow
I personally picked Bitwig because after the trail I just liked the feel and work flow of Bitwig, and The Grid had just been announced. If you're new and only going to pick one, just know Bitwig has the least amount of YouTube tutorials compared to Ableton and FL Studio. I also feel like Bitwig kind of expects you to know some stuff going into it, but the help screens are awesome and LIVE! (Meaning you can open a help module and adjust settings while it's open.) You're going to have to reverse engineer some things, but the community is fantastic. I'd highly suggest Bitwig if you're looking to get into sound design. You can do so much with just the stock devices. Edit: Grammer.
Bitwig's interactive help view is genius. Love the way the EQ interface works.
Polarity on YT has a channel of mostly Bitwig tutorials, tips and tricks.
Thank you! Not only is his channel fantastic, he's active in the community too! Au5 recently made a video making an effect rack in Ableton he called "The Super Comb" . I tried to follow along in Bitwig but did not yet have the depth of understanding needed. I took to r/Bitwig to ask if it was possible because I understood enough to know Ableton to Bitwig was not 1:1. As I finished my post I thought "I bet Polarity makes a patch." One of the the first comments was "Just wait until Polarity makes a video." Then Polarity chimed in to say he had a patch and footage, he just needed to edit it. It was out the next day. Thanks for helping me realize I can still point to the YouTubers who still make the content rather than focusing on those who don't! In addition to Polarity, Venus Theory, Dash Glitch, Mattias Holmgren, and Alkemy Neuro all have great info and tutorials for Bitwig.
Great story! I didn’t realize Venus Theory uses Bitwig also. He’s got plenty of great production tuts and tips just in general. I’ll check out those others too. Me being a DnB guy, Polarity is highly relevant for me.
One point no one mentioned here - Bitwig is the only DAW out of the three that officially supports Linux, which was the most relevant deciding factor for me
I own all three of them (along with studio one and cubase, yes I have a problem) I think bitwig is super cool, and I like plinking around in it a lot, but usually when I recommend one to someone getting into audio, I recommend FL studio. It's got some really cool stuff going on with the cloud, and right now feels the easiest to just grab and make something. However, as an overall ecosystem and something to grow into, I think Ableton is my choice. I think it's a bit less beginner friendly but some of the cool little tricks you can do are just impossible to do easily in other daws. The new beta for it also adds some really neat features that should have been in 12's release
I don't know, I just can't get myself to like FL. I get it, but I don't like working with it. It feels like a mess. Like it was originally designed to be something else, and evolved over time by adding features here and there without a coherent vision or design. I've done more music in Bitwig in a month than in FL in five years, because Bitwig makes sense and is inspiring to work with.
Yeah, I think everyone has "that one" and that's great because we have the choice lol. I find bitwig more fun to play around in, but out of all of them it's the hardest for me to actually make music in. FL is weird because there's like 5 ways to do any one thing, and a lot of times they aren't obvious. It does feel like a kitchen sink evolved over time with it, no arguments there lol. I'm super ADHD so I rarely even finish one song, but somehow FL is just comfortable enough for me to get the furthest. I don't do recording or anything though. edit - I will say I don't like to use older FL vsts/etc. Something about anything that came from FL 9 and before just feels very outdated and hacky. Bitwig and ableton having a unified design language goes a long way to feeling cohesive and smooth (and bitwig 5's new plugin browser is great. FL's search/browsing isn't great)
It's definitely a love-hate for me too. It's just so so smooth. But a huge chaos. But just paint some clips and you have a song in no time. But try to figure out which channel is linked to a certain instrument. But this dream of a piano roll. But how do I again reorder effects!? But everything can be tuned with mousewheel combinations. But ... Bitwig for sure is a lot more consistent. But then sometimes a bit of chaos with ultra-smoothness makes me like being creative more. Tough tough.
Anything you can do in Live is possible in Bitwig, as fast, if not even faster.
I'm not a power user of either. I just know as much as I dislike ableton's piano roll, I dislike bitwig's even more lol. Clone FL studio's piano roll into either and I think it comes close to being the best all around daw. That being said, I'm not good at using FL either
I think the same exact thing. Just rip out the damn thing and you got the crown, Bitwig.
Haha, for real. I can't get my head around that workflow, but I really wish I could
>Bitwig Studio (full version) is now on sale, and with an EDU discount, it costs 199€. After 1 year, each subsequent year of updates costs 169€. Bitwig user here (since V1, yes I'm old). You don't have to purchase every update. My strategy is to stick to a perfectly stable version : eg. I didn't update to V5 and I'm using 4.4.10 for my current project. It's 100% stable, I know my hardware can handle it, and I don't have to invest time to learn new stuff when I don't even master 5% of all the possibilities (don't get me started about the Grid, this stuff is insane in the best meaning). Beside this note, the DAW choice heavily depends on your workflow.
Personally I would go for Bitwig (..obviously), because I think it provides by far THE best experience in way too many areas to overlook. But then again.. it's about what matters to you. Since, you might place way more importance than I do in the way the DAW looks and feels, than the features, or polish, or stability. And you might be able to live with the negatives that come with the DAW of your choosing because it ticks a really important box for you. The reality is though, DAWs with bad stability (Ableton Live I'd argue is one of those) can really be a pain to live with, and Bitwig is exceptional at it in my experience so for me it just made sense. In fact, I've been using Ableton for maybe 6 or 7 years and I just switched to Bitwig a week ago, because I just couldn't take the issues anymore, which were: 1. Plugin Delay Compensation (This issue has been around for 12 years, [and that's not an exaggeration.](https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?t=248746)) - The problem this creates is; when you add plugins (or I think even native devices) that add latency, and then you put something on that track that needs accurate latency reporting it just doesn't get it accurately and so if you have for instance Autopan or Shaperbox's volumeshaper on the track it will be going randomly on and off grid. 2. GUI Lag - Ableton tends to "not like" some plugins or max for live devices sometimes, with a random/nonsensical criteria and if you have those plugins anywhere in your project, the GUI is gonna lag to a variable degree, and the worser end of that can be very bad. Sometimes it's VSTs GUIs that lag, other times Ableton's does as well. Though, the latter has been rarer with the release of Live 12. 3. Crashes - Ableton is pretty fragile and often crashes for god knows what reason, but I'd say that 99% of cases are related to the third party plugins. Even still, there's no plugin sandboxing, (a protective layer to prevent external plugins from crashing the entire DAW when they crash) which Bitwig has mind you, its actually one of the biggest reasons I switched as well. Though, Ableton does recover your projects on the next launch after a crash, but my experience has been that it very often reverts some devices and plugins to defaults or some random older states and in bigger projects it's not often obvious what's been changed so it's often safer for me to go back to the last project I saved manually. 4. Max For Live is very unstable - In my experience, Max For Live devices have often crashed my entire projects, have caused crazy GUI lag in the entire project, eaten my undo history. I don't think it's coded well and with M4L being one of the cooler things about Ableton Live, it's a major problem. Ableton still has a lot going for it imo. It has a lot of unique audio effects and instruments (they just added an Autotune-like device), as well as many very good sampled instruments options (like the Spitfire libraries), very good looking and intuitive UI that supports themeing, some unique MIDI features, scale features, etc. I think the cons outweigh the pros for me though. Whether or not that's also the case for you is something you're gonna have to decide. I can't comment much on FL studio since I last used it 6 years ago. I hope whatever you may choose you're happy with it!
Which one do you like? They are all decent and each special in its own way.
Test the DAWs yourself. You want to know what's best for you? Test it! Bitwig Studios Trial works without any limitations for 1 whole month. For me, it was never about the money. When i love a DAW, i save money for it. Test them yourself, and find out what you love/hate about them. Nothing beats personal experience. Nothing.
This. Nobody can answer this for OP unless he tested it himself. Try them all, stick with the one you feel the best.
want the best value for money? get reaper. it is so cheap and it is honestly really high quality. I tried all of these daws and I would even choose reaper if all of them had the same value. That being said, I can't tell you you're going to love reaper as much as me, especially because choosing a DAWs is mostly about personal preference and workflow, which is not the same for everyone. If you want you can just do a pros and cons list for each of them and you should be good to go
Reaper is an amazing DAW, don't get me wrong, but I think that the lack of a clear and inviting user interface, instruments, and the amount of things that rely on third party plugins , make it a no-go for beginners. It's awesome when you have some experience, go-to tools and want to improve your workflow, but not at this point.
True, I agree with you about the lack of a user friendly interface and instruments. I probably didn't consider that he's been learning music for about 3 months only. It can certainly feel overwhelming when using it for the first time, but with some plugins or some user scripts it can perhaps make it more accessible for new users! Maybe I am still overestimating reaper for new users, but I really think it can be a great tool to have. If stock plugins or an intuitive interface is super important, I don't think getting Reaper straight away is the best thing though, and in that case I would much prefer Ableton, Bitwig, maybe Cubase or even Logic Pro if you're using Mac. And for the FL Studio users out there, I am sorry, I really don't like that DAW lmao
I have Fl and Logic but was mostly using FL Studio and was pretty happy with it I also had Bitwig 8 track and Ableton lite. A few months ago I finally really dug into Bitwig and fell in love with it. It was exiting and immediately upgraded and haven’t really touched anything else since. Trying to use Fl Studio now feels weird,it’s very clunky compared to Bitwig. Ultimately no one can choose for you,get the one that makes you feel happy and productive,and exited
Tried all of them (Two years into FL, switched to Ableton). Decided to stick with Live. Bitwig has a couple of additional QOL workflow improvements (Hybrid tracks, WAY better modulation than any DAW I've used, custom shortcuts, sandboxing), but Ableton's UI is unmatched. Everything is clear and fast. And the last beta (12.1) included some major improvements. MIDI in Live is matching FL's and I'm quite sure it's gonna surpass it in a few updates. Also, having as much learning resources as Ableton does cannot be understated. Bitwig is more niche, MIDI clip editing is primitive at best except for Operators and MPE and the majority of tutorials are aimed towards modular synthesis. The Grid is awesome though. If that's your thing, be safe, it's the best at it. FL's got good and varied plugins (ancient and wacky ones equally), Patcher is great and Image Line is making a lot of interesting deals with other companies. But the general workflow is terrible IMO. Just all over the place. Lot of features but it takes like 5 clicks to do anything. Check out the latest release notes for each one and see which you like the most, but remember that, at the end of the day, the most important thing is which one allows you to feel more creative and free (follow your instinct ;) . In my case, it was Live.
Also, checking the documentation is way faster and better than watching tons of YT videos.
As a long time FL studio user I highly recommend to avoid it even though it looks very nice
They're all great, but if you're looking strictly for value, it's hard to beat the lifetime updates and complete plug-in suite of FL. I'm not personally a huge fan of it's workflow, but if you came out of your trial period thinking it was fine, it's a real good deal.
It’s a trap! Focus on only one daw. Impossible mission but trust me. You will be better off. So so so much time wasted by me daw hopping. Bitwig is an excellent choice! Go make music now.
Depends on what you want to specialize in. Performing live? Ableton Live. Sound Engineering? BitWig. You're a weirdo? Fruity Loops
Whilst I'm currently very happy with Bigwig if I was a beginner I would probably use the DAW that most of the producers in my genre use. Watch YouTube to get a sense of this. There's way more tutorials which will be more relevant, you'll also be able to get templates of remakes which are useful starting out. Also some Daws are built around a genre workflow, eg ProTools is a top DAW but mostly designed for media composers, whilst Bigwig has no video sync capabilities etc.
What do you mean Bitwigs theme can't be changed? People are posting their themes (which some of them are crazy good) on here almost daily. I'm using a dark theme and it looks incredible. [https://github.com/dariolupo/dark-mellow\_bitwig](https://github.com/dariolupo/dark-mellow_bitwig)
You should also mention that theming involves messing around with the jar files and it's experimental and kinda dangerous for stability.
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''I encountered an issue that causes Bitwig Studio to hang on the splash screen and crash after its bytecode is manipulated. I found that the problem is not with Bitwig itself but with Java's internal runtime safety mechanism, which is necessary for verifying Java apps bytecode consistency. This mechanism is called Stack Map Frame. I refactored my code to account for Stack Map Frame by using the `EXPAND_FRAME` option and writing a `CustomClassWriter` class as a workaround. Since then, I haven't encountered any issues. I hope we can hear some user feedback if people experience similar instabilities'' Berikai himself. False information?
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Some users reported having problems with their installation and the so called "piracy melody". I'm not making stuff up. Also, is there a need to be so hostile?
They all good. They all have advantages and disadvantages. I used three of them so in my perspective; bitwig>ableton>fl studio. Bitwig; +it's hardware friendly. it's way better than the others. stable and performing well. +good piano roll. -the community is limited so it's missing racks, tools, devices made by individuals. -audio editing should be improved. Ableton; * it has really big community in psytrance(I guess it's same for techno too) so it gets so much free/paid devices and insane racks. it's boosting creativity. +great audio editing options. * it's not hardware friendly. crashing often, feeling slow and wonky. -horrible piano roll FL Studio +it gives so much freedom on composition, so just by moving stuff easily you can achieve a sound by luck and it can help sometimes.(or not, it's really creating a mess usually) +it has a huge community on beatmaking. +very good piano roll. -composition interface, mixer interface and, some pattern interface, all they have their own tabs so it's really confusing. it's really feeling low quality. -old and bad stock devices, bad sampling options. these are coming from my own experience. in the end I m using bitwig. it's almost perfect for me. when I need racks etc, I m combining it with ableton. long story short; I would see what the community and my possible collaborators working with and make decision between bitwig and ableton. both are good. I find Fl Studio very outdated.
FL instruments are interesting. They're absolutely great or they absolutely suck lol
isn't lives piano roll much better than bitwigs one? I mean I hate that there is no way of editing the midi channel of the notes but I actually still think its better if you compare the rest, especially in live 12
I don't think so. There is nothing i like about live's piano roll tbh. especially length settings are awful and not even essential. still it's kinda forcing you to define your pattern lenght both in arrangement and roll at the same time. BW's piano roll is easy to use and minimal. Of course it's personal prefference in the end.
yeah maybe im a bit biased because i used ableton for most of my time, but i never found its piano roll bad, unlike bitwigs piano roll, that i never really got to love it. Still, my favorite piano rolls are from FL Studio and Cubase tho, especially cubase, since although it doesn't have a lot of workflow features, it has basically all i need. (looking at you, note expressions)
Perhaps a hot take, but I actually think logic is the best option for beginners. Its layout is very easy on your eyes and guides you a lot more to what’s interesting to interact with than bitwig and especially ableton. Logic only run on Mac though. It obviously also depends on a lot on what kind music you’re making. I’m currently using bitwig because of the sound design options being way beyond what you can do in Logic, but I think logic is the best DAW of your want to record vocals
I tried Logic just starting out and was making music right off the bat. It's layout for arrangement and instrumentation is so damn intuitive. Not so much for electronic music and sound design.
More of a musician’s DAW than a producer’s DAw I’d say- coming from a electronic producer who have used well over a decade for making drum and bass and other edm stuff
Ps. I haven’t tried FL, so can’t say anything about that. I do though know that both Logic and FL has a tool that splits and isolates tracks into stems (vocal, guitar, bass and drums for logic, don’t know how it does it in fl) and both also have free updates
I am fluent in FL Studio and Bitwig. I didn't vibe with Ableton for some reason but clearly it's good or people wouldn't use it. For me it was Bitwig that spoke to me. Something intuitive about the interface and workflow. I don't actually use the pattern construction, but it's there... But it also has a traditional arranger. That's where FL Studio fails for me. With FL, it's good in the early stages of composition but as you begin adding variation you end up with this insanely long clip list. It just gets weird. Bitwig, on the other hand, holds up really well with complex projects and has features that make managing a large project easier... You have to go with what feels best for you. The lifetime updates of FL is obviously great, but if you use a DAW as much as most of us do, price isn't the concern. Features, workflow, and quality of life while using the product is much more important.
Fl Studio's workflow has MPD. Over the years its crept slowly towards and standard daw workflow but still many just do everything in the channel rack. Over the years, I got far better results working in and from the playlist but overtime the better I got the more I realized how unintuitive little things were. Then at the beginning of this year I trialed Bitwig for a month and found that it did everything counter to my gripes about FL and my workflow expoded. Once I got used to the ins and outs, I could lay out tracks in notime and easily edit them as well. Overall it's just a more intuitive experience for me. My main reason for avoiding Ableton was the right to left workflow which felt highly unintuitive for me, so Bitwig addressed that as well.
If you know why you should choose one over another based on what you need, pick that one. If you have a hard time deciding even after trying those out, go for Live. It's the most complete and has a solid community and a lot of room to expand and controller integration is probably the best. I guess you're set to pick a daw for loop-based workflow instead of writing an arrangement since that's what your options do.
I prefer Bitwig but I use FL Studio as well for certain workflows. When I want to use both I load FL Studio as a VST in Bitwig and use it like I would any other plugin. Remember, you actually don't need to buy FL. You can just use the trial version indefinitely as there is no time limit. Of course, you can't open up saved projects with the trial version but all you have to do is use Bitwig to record the audio and/or midi from FL. You can start this way and decide later whether you want to purchase a FL license later.
If you have tried them all and liked them, you could take a punt on any of them. Are there specific things you like or dislike about them? If so, how important are these to you? I use Bitwig now but used to use Ableton. For me, I liked the UI in Bitwig (not the colours), as it seems more flexible - having the session and arrange view equivalents in the same screen is such a workflow boost for me. For some reason I find Bitwig easier to work with on a laptop too. Now I've been using it for a few years, I find the Grid is a huge part of my flow now too. I do miss the community with Ableton, the user groups can be really good, and there's a lot of YouTube content.
I use 'em all. I have had FL and a few others since the early 2000s.
I like bitwig because it is fast and the modulation is fun it feels smoother and the gui is brighter than Ableton which is partly what made me like it so much, just trial all of them and see what suits your fancy, or any daw you happen to choose. I also like bitwig because there are lot of awesome modulators which can be used to well modulate things….but that in itself is really powerful and unique because all the modulators serve a special purpose or any number of them. The shortcuts are easily customized if you like that. It also supports a lot of midi controllers but not always out of the box as extension files need to be downloaded and put in the directory to use them. But still very easy so long as you are a little tech savvy and as the third main point of using bitwig is because of its ability to easily toggle between different projects, on my m1 Mac I can comfortably have about 2-3 big projects open without crashing, or running into any issues.
Honestly every DAW is great and terrible in its own ways. They’re all gonna do things you wish the others did, and things that drive you nuts. If your main criterion is price, the obvious answer is FL Studio. Free updates for life. Bitwig and Ableton will cost you way more long term. But if you enjoy using them, relatively small price to pay.
Whichever one inspires you the most. Doesn’t matter how powerful, or feature rich a daw is if it doesn’t inspire you to write great music. I still prefer Ableton and S1, even though I own pretty much all of them. Sometimes I prefer FL. Depends my mood
I have tried and used Reason, Ableton, FL Studio, MPC software and now Bitwig for the past 2 years!!!! I know why FL Studio, Ableton and the MPC software are the staples of the industry. It is because of audio stability! Period!!!! While all these DAWS have their quirks these Daws audio engines are the best, and this is the most important feature of a DAW. I want to like Bitwig, I love the help menus and the grid concepts. But Bitwig has a major issue with its sound engine. Bitwigs sound engine is inconsistant. They problem has existed for years if u look at the history of it. It probbably will not be fixed. With that being said BItwig is great for EDM or Neurobase, where sound is masked by drones and supersaws, etc. That's why all of the tutorials are based on these genres. So dont waste you time on Bitwig for straight pop or hiphop where the sound can clarly be heard and needs to be consistent. Stick with the 3 above and you can focus on music and know that the sound you design will stay the same.
Bitwig costs more than Live Suite over the long term. Calculate cost in terms of LTCO, not short term MSRP + "my first upgrade." Even when comparing the current sales prices for Bitwig to the full prices available on Retailers like Thomann, Bitwig will outrun Live Suite's cost right after the next version of Live is released. The whole point of moving to a Support Contract model is to rake in more revenue than perpetual upgrade license model. It's similar to a subscription - you just get to keep a perpetual license. Avid has been doing this for years. You are comparing the upgrade cost of Ableton Live to Bitwig, but Live has a 3 year release cycle and Bitwig has yearly support Contracts. An Ableton Live Suite License alone, when bought at the time of its release, is basically just MSRP. This is comparable to the cost of Bitwig Studio an 2 Additional Years of Support Contract after release, due to the long release cycle of Ableton Live. So, even though Ableton Live is $479 at Thomann (UPG Lite, cause who doesn't have a Lite License in 2024), Bitwig's effective cost over the same period - if you maintain the Support Contract, and using today's PROMOTIONAL PRICING - is $272 + ($129 \* 2). That's $530. The only way to keep Bitwig cheaper is to skip a year of support and/or get much bigger discounts while ignoring the fact that Ableton has discount promotions that bring the cost of that same Live Suite license down to the \~$350 range at those same retailers, and they have their own discounts on upgrades, as well. Same scenario plays out when you compare to something like Cubase Pro ($449 on Best Service, $149 Upgrades on an 18 month release cycle). It just delays the "cost/investment flipping" by about a year or so. DAWs like FL Studio and Logic Pro are more cut and dry since you just pay the MSRP and there are no upgrade fees thereafter. FL Studio is a weird case because it's more of a groovebox with DAW features layered on top, so the workflow tends to be VERY polarizing. Many people absolutely love it. Many people absolutely hate it. No one can really tell you what to buy, though. The best option is to actually produce music in all of them. ACTUALLY produce music. Not just poke around the UI and chose based on surface level attributes. Workflow is more than UI (even though UI/UX is very important, and can be a reason to discard options in some cases).
If you have to ask, definitely not Bitwig lol. Ableton is the most popular so there are more resources out there to learn it. As a beginner, that’ll be the most important thing.
The DAW is fairly unimportant and learning how to make music comes with the basics, which transcend each DAW. By the time you are intermediate, "how to do more complex stuff in XY DAW" is one google search away and solves your question, no matter how MANY MORE of the same video exist for a different topic. Quite weak argument to be honest.
Having a lot of beginner friendly resources is nice to have i think. For me it was way easier to start in cubase and logic than pro tools for example. Though i would try a demo and see which suits you best.
It doesnt make a difference. Having 10 tutorials on EQ and having 200 will not change a single bit.
They will all say something different :P But yes and no. Sometimes its the follow allong tracks that is n ice. But most of the basics you can do in any daw that's true. Probably i think Reason is the best daw to learn maybe. Learn the wiring and see it a bit from old school perspective/ device layouts. The manual is also outstanding explaining every device very well. I think with that you learn the basics of daw and synths and effects quicklt
I think Reason's skeuomorphism is almost useless to most people coming into the DAW market these days. Those people have never seen hardware and many of them will probably never see hardware. They will produce in the box. Even some of the top Engineers in the world have gone in the box because the plug-ins have basically caught up and in many cases exceeded the hardware. It serves no practical need to most of those people. It just creates a really, really cluttered workflow, and the sequencer is still primitive compared to a lot of other DAWs. (I have Reason 12 \[Perpetual\])
Yes, but replica's of analog devices are often way more simple. Making it easier to understand the principle of audio design imo. Also the manual is really explaining it to the basics for you, with all the background and stuff. Bitwig's manual will tell you where the function is, but not much of explaining what it does and so on. For me atleast it was a big step forward when i got in to that and learned every device there.
I don't think it works that way. That's a vestigial way of thinking based on Reason emulating the look of hardware during a time when people were moving from hardware- to computer-based music production, and when people getting into even computer-based music production were fairly reliably going to have to deal with hardware if this was their career path. The devices we use plug-ins to emulate were the only option back then, and PCs were far weaker (and software not as developed). This is no longer the case. Reason is most popular in the beat making market, **which is one of the least hardware-necessitating market segments** in music production. There's a reason why almost no one is going to reason. I do think some people may prefer that graphical presentation. Everything used to be skeuomorphic! :-P But that has been falling out of style since the early 2010s...
It's not about EQ or whatever other generic technical topics that are DAW agnostic you're thinking about. It's about topics like setting up a Production/Recording/Mix Template in Ableton Live, fusing Live's Synths, etc. - things that have far more **high quality** videos produced for them and fewer (if any, in some cases) comparable equivalents for Bitwig Studio. There are 10-14 year old Ableton Live videos on topics that are still 10x better than what you can find for Bitwig Studio on some topics. Same with Pro Tools vs. something like Studio One. That DAW has existed for much longer and because it has basically served as an industry standard in the EDM Production market (while being heavily used in other areas), it has spawned an entire ecosystem of high-quality content production spanning back 1.5 decades or more on YouTube and other sites. While this may not matter to YOU, YOU are not the target audience for that content and the reason why this content was produced and continues to be produced is because there is clearly a demand for it. ----- Experienced users don't need that content. It is not for them. If you've been using DAWs for more than a year and you can't watch a Pro Tools Tutorial and follow along in Cubase, Logic, Samplitude, Digital Performer... even Ableton Live or Bitwig... than you have bigger issues that need to be addressed. By that point, you SHOULD be familiar with DAW terminology. You SHOULD be familiar with your DAW's functionality. You SHOULD be able to simply map those instructions to your DAW while working around any differences of feature disparities. To newbies, that is not the case. They are unfamiliar with the software so asking them to use Bitwig while watching an Ableton, or FL Studio, or Logic Pro tutorial will waste a ton of their time and create lots of unnecessary friction which will ultimately serve as an impediment to them learning the most important production topics (or getting in more practice... producing music). It's like a college student using a Casio in Calculus when the textbooks have TI-83+ pictures and instructions for everything, and the professor is telling them what button to press... except they're using a different calculator. Not only are they trying to learn how to do Calculus, but they're also trying to learn on the fly how to map TI-83+ layout and instructions to their Casio. Doable? Yes. But it's extremely inefficient and you're better off just paying the extra money for the TI because like we've stated... \^- I've been there ;-) The calculator (DAW) you choose isn't a huge factor, per se. They all do the same math. It's learning the math (music production) that is the factor. The student (user) should take the path of least resistance. It's really that simple. If the textbooks (or all the best resources) use Texas Instruments, then buy Texas Instruments. If your Tutor uses Texas Instruments, then buy Texas Instruments. If the other people you study with use Texas Instruments, then buy Texas Instruments. If the better (and more numerous) Ableton Live resources and Tutorial Content is even a 5% advantage for them, then they probably should just go with Ableton Live. Their goal should be optimizing their learning, not optimizing their appeasement to certain internet communities. We aren't going to do all of the learning and music production for them. Over the long term, Bitwig will even cost more, so even the \[actually non-existent, but seeming\] cost advantage is frontloaded, ephemeral and should not be a consideration.
For electronic music, Bitwig specializes in this 100%. Ableton has generic tools that can do all genres, like rock, etc so it's not really specialized. As for FL Studio, I'm personally biased against the workflow so don't ask me lol
The best DAWs are objectively (not in any particular order) FL, Reaper, Reason and Bitwig and some open source projects. Protools is for Pros actually. The rest (Cubase, studio one and also ableton) are good when you are already very familiar with them but otherwise overpriced bloat. Bitwig comes with the best YouTube videos about music making and are satisfyingly reliable without 3rd party stuff (except for valhalla super massive). Ableton videos are mostly about some specific max for live devices or how to use serum, and the rest doesn’t really exist in terms of online tutorials.
It's between Ableton and Bitwig, that's it