The new additions might not look like very much on paper but, as Si Truss explains, the more you explore Bitwig 5, the more radical it begins to look

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Bitwig Studio is nearly ten and, at this fifth iteration, has shed its reputation as an upstart Abletonalike. Relative user base numbers aside, as an application it certainly warrants being considered up there with the top-tier DAWs; perhaps unlikely to unseat the truly big names, but sat alongside the likes of Cubase, FL Studio or Reason.

More so than many rival DAWs, Bitwig Studio is an application with a very distinct personality. Detractors may argue that much of that personality is based on that of Ableton Live, given their shared history, but from its second iteration onwards Bitwig has been heading in its own distinct direction. Think of the two like a pair of twins, one who has joined the police force and lives a lawful life, one sucked into a life of crime – two different sides of a coin.

Bitwig in 2023 puts a major emphasis on the interplay of its various systems, the flexibility of its modular devices and its ability to be tailored to a wide variety of platforms and use cases. As well as Ableton Live, the likes of Reaktor, Max and the hardware modular realm are equally obvious points of comparison. The headline new feature for Bitwig 5 is the addition of MSEGs, or multi-stage envelope generators. In typical Bitwig fashion, these don’t look like much at first glance, but become far more interesting once you consider how they interact with Bitwig Studio’s other systems.