bitwig studio 4

Bitwig Studio has always been an innovative and impressive DAW, but will version 4 bring it the audience it richly deserves?

It’s seven years since Bitwig Studio first appeared, bringing with it a fresh approach to audio and clip arrangement that made many of the established DAWs feel sluggish and, quite frankly, a bit old-fashioned by comparison. In the intervening years a program of regular updates and full version upgrades have enhanced its features, expanded the bundled content and generally finessed its offering. Nevertheless, the underlying concept, which combines linear clip arrangement and performance style clip launching has remained the same.

Same difference

Where Bitwig Studio differs from many of its competitors is by providing its two key concepts (Launcher and Arrange Timeline) side by side in the same tracks. This is not only easy to understand but also aids with drag-and-drop functionality, better integrating the creative, performance and arrangement aspects of music production. In fact, drag-and-drop is featured throughout Bitwig, as is a deeply integrated modulation system with 36 Modulators. This is further developed via The Grid and its ‘any signal connected anywhere’ methodology. Here either synthesis (Poly Grid) or effects (FX Grid) are patched together from the 175 available modules.