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Add to SafariWhen comparing Bitwig Studio vs Harrison Consoles Mixbus, the Slant community recommends Bitwig Studio for most people. In the question“What are the best DAWs for UNIX-like systems?” Bitwig Studio is ranked 5th while Harrison Consoles Mixbus is ranked 10th.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Great modulation system
Pro Supports expressive MIDI - MPE
Makes use of the Seaboard, Linnstrument, Continuum and other modern expressive controllers.
Pro Easy automation
The easiest DAW to do automation in. All you have to do is press record and start moving knobs, and that's it.
Pro Dual sequencer
The ability to run two sequencers at the same time, while swapping out sounds gives you great flexibility to complete a song.
Pro Touch screen support
This software has big, responsive, easy-to-handle controls that work really well on a touchscreen. Additionally, it has a tablet mode that re-organizes the UI to make it much simpler and perfect for smaller screen devices. This is both a mobile touchscreen app and a DAW at the same time! It even has a built-in keyboard/drumpad.
Pro Open multiple projects
Pro Highly modular
Pro Cross platform and highly compatible
The Bitwig DAW runs on Mac, PC, and, Linux. This DAW also has the distinction of being one of the only DAWs that can run 32 bit and 64 bit plugins at the same time.
Pro Ableton link support
Pro Supports multiple midi instruments on one track
Being able to add multiple midi instruments on the same track is a nice feature. It allows for much easier setup for VSTs like Cthulhu. It's also nice to be able to have multiple instruments setup that can be toggled.
Pro Very intuitive/user-friendly
Pro Very good integration with Eurorack
Pro Many high quality free sound packs
Pro Supports sf2 samples out of the box
There is an instrument called Sampler which can correctly load sf2 instruments as a multisample preserving all individual sub sample settings and zoning. You do NOT need a VST to play soundfonts and you don't need to extract the sf2 samples! This is unique among all popular DAWs.
Pro Create custom Synths/FX in the Grid
Create any style synth, wavetable, fm, analog, and fx in the grid.
Pro Very powerful voice stacking mechanism
Pro Very active development
Pro Plugin crash protection
Plugins can be sandboxed.
Pro You can write your own controller support in Java
Pro Powerful devices/presets/sample browser
Pro State of the art time stretching
Pro Very efficient preset browser
Pro Easy to learn
This DAW has an intuitive layout that is quite easy to grasp and learn.
Pro Great mixer
works great as a mixer for stems exported from another DAW; this is arguably one of it's best uses. Otherwise, the general UI is a vast improvement over vanilla Ardour.
Pro Based on Ardour
All of the best parts of Ardour, with the great included plugins, plus improved UI for track routing and EQ, along with built in analog summing. This does add some proprietary code to the otherwise open-source foundation, though.
Pro Great customer support
Their customers support is fast and personal, absolutely unmatched in the industry. They also listne to their customers, take feature suggestions which really make it into one of the next versions (if feasible).
Pro Detailed manuals including video links
Pro Emulation of their award winning physical, analog consoles in software
Great built in summing on mixbusses and final output bus. Use with an actual console for the double whammy, if you can afford it.
Pro Sound
Pro Supports plugin AU
Cons
Con No native video playback monitoring
Doesn't have video playback monitoring for film / Tv and Gaming video audio.
But can use MTC with 3rd Party Video Monitors or other DAW with video monitor capabilities.
Con Unreliable for professional production
Full of random bugs. Bad performance when using many tracks.
Con Very bad performance when working with several tracks
Con Pricey
Pricey in comparison with other major DAWs.
Con Not open source
Con No LV2
Has no support for LV2 plugins.
Con UI gets frozen, VSTs crash all the time
Very frustrating to work with.
Con Unpredictable behaviour when stacking many building blocks (e.g. selectors, layers)
There is too much focus on adding new features. Instead, it would be better to fix the vast amount of bugs that cause the software to glitch and crash repeatedly.
Con No Dolby Atmos / surround
Con Very bad marketing team
Very recently Bitwig changed the agreement for updates (one year subscription) without any communication prior doing that. Now they only include bug fixes and workflow improvements into one year subscription plan. Everything else like new instruments and effects and sound libraries will be sold as add on.
Con No ARA (audio communication e.g. with Melodyne / VocAlign)
Con Not free
Not free, and not open source.
Con Can be a bit resource heavy
Adding more tracks and plugins is surprisingly easy on the RAM, but the base system usage is a tad high. 8 GB of RAM as a minimum is a very stern recommendation.
Con Crashed system
