Bitwig Release 26.03.2014

[JohannesTress]

299€/399$
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/01/b ... itll-cost/
What do you think is it a fair offer? I'm really curious about it.

Yours Johannes

[AnthonyCFox]

It looks like they set the price at a point where they could put out "sale" prices at various times of the year. August is traditionally the toughest time for retail sales and when you are likely to see the lowest prices on any music gear.

That being said, with Reaper always available for $60...

[sysrqer]

I would love so much to use it but I certainly won't be paying that amount for it, especially when the website says that lv2 won't be supported for a while. I was hoping in vain that it would be free on Linux


To answer the question, actually no I don't think it is a fair price at all. I know they probably have wages to cover, perhaps backdated, but this seems to be an obscene amount of money. I hope they don't follow the same model where you have to pay another X amount of hundreds of dollars for an upgrade each year as well.

[JohannesTress]

I hope they don't follow the same model where you have to pay another X amount of hundreds of dollars for an upgrade each year as well

Yes that's what I'm afraid of the most!
On the other handside, I think there's no real alternative on linux out there at the moment. I gave giada a try and luppp as well, but it's not possible to do any serious live recording/editing for me with these apps right now. As I'm more the professional musician than the professional Computeruser I tend to use software that helps me to transfer my ideas into music and not to decide by means of the possibilities (or limitations) the software offers me. To have a working (simple) loopstation is the one thing, but to implement more complex live Setups (not only four to the floor DnB with prerecorded Stuff) is what I want to do with a Linuxworkstation as well, so maybe I'll test Bitwig...

[aprzekaz]

This is exciting but I also wonder what makes that price justifiable. I've tried a quite a few DAWs now and I'm not sure why there is such a price discrepency. Reaper, Ardour, Tracktion(for windows at least) and others seem to be pretty full featured and usable programs. I'm still not convinced that Protools, Ableton, Cubase really offer that much more. Especially considering they can cost 5 times as much.

[ssj71]

I've never tried the proprietary DAW softwares, but I'm glad to now have an option for those many people asking for an ableton live alternative on linux. Meanwhile I'm pretty darn happy using and creating purely FLOSS tools.

[tatch]

299€/399$
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/01/b ... itll-cost/
What do you think is it a fair offer? I'm really curious about it.

Yours Johannes

It's about much as Live is, and if bitwig is what they say it is then it probably is as fair as Live's cost. To put it into perspective, Ableton sells their Push controller for around $500, Livid sells the Base for around $430 and a new NI Maschine goes for around $600. These are hardware controllers so they do have production costs, but I would think that DAWs take more resources to develop, maintain and polish.

That said, Renoise seems just as competent as Live and Bitwig and it costs 4x less. There are VSTs that cost $100, it's strange to me that a plugin can cost as much as a DAW (perhaps they took just as much work to develop as the DAW?). I wonder how devs decide their prices.

[GraysonPeddie]

Even if Bitwig has per-note automation of filters, that's just something I can do per MIDI channel instead for free. Setup 1 channel per note with the same instrument. So if you have 8 channels with the same instrument, you can automate filter per channel with each note having its own timbre. It is tedious, but doable. Of course, it would be nice to break the 127-value controller limitation like for filter cutoff and resonance. MIDI really needs upgrading but I don't want to pay $400 for Bitwig Studio. Fat chance.

[stanlea]

In my view, the price is fair. Of course an open source bitwig would be a must, but... huuuu.... no way, actually. This said, I wonder if I would need such a so great toy.

[raboof]

What do you think is it a fair offer? I'm really curious about it.

Difficult question. What is a 'fair offer'?

Personally I'm probably not going to buy it, because I don't have a strong need for it - certainly not an EUR300 need.

But that doesn't seem to be your question: it sounds like you're aksing whether we consider it "morally wrong" to offer this software for sale for this price. Generally I think this is almost never the case: I think it's great the creator of a work gets to decide what recipients are allowed to do with it, including making it proprietary and asking a fee, or releasing it under a "with-strings-attached" license like the GPL (or, even, both). And just to be clear: I personally *like* the "strings attached" of the GPL, so it's been my license of choice for a couple of projects.

So they get to decide which price to sell it for, and everyone gets to decide whether they think it's worth it. Fair in my book.

The only exceptions I can think of where an offer might be "morally wrong": abusing a monopoly/vendor-lock-in position (i.e. charging an inflated price because you know your customers don't have a choice anyway) or taking credit for other peoples' work (i.e. selling a re-branded version of an open source project as if it's your own).

Notably absent from this list: charging much more than it cost you to build. I think that's absolutely fine, provided that there's no barrier for your competition to, well, compete. If it's worth a certain amount of money to someone, regardless of what it cost to make, why not let them pay it?

Even though I wouldn't find it an 'unfair offer' when they're asking customer much more than it cost to make, in this case I don't think they're doing this. Professional software development is expensive. PR is expensive. Giving support is expensive. There was (and is) a very real risk they won't sell a lot of copies. They don't seem to be charging much more than some of the other proprietary offerings. I don't see a problem at all.

[ssj71]

If it's worth a certain amount of money to someone, regardless of what it cost to make, why not let them pay it?

+1 Its not worth it to me, but I think its a fine price to offer.

Also I like that such an expensive piece of software would care to support linux. Regardless of its performance compared to other software, such a price sends a message that it is intended for professional level work.

[Garmonbozia]

299€/399$
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/01/b ... itll-cost/
What do you think is it a fair offer? I'm really curious about it.

Yours Johannes

It's about much as Live is, and if bitwig is what they say it is then it probably is as fair as Live's cost. To put it into perspective, Ableton sells their Push controller for around $500, Livid sells the Base for around $430 and a new NI Maschine goes for around $600. These are hardware controllers so they do have production costs, but I would think that DAWs take more resources to develop, maintain and polish.

That said, Renoise seems just as competent as Live and Bitwig and it costs 4x less. There are VSTs that cost $100, it's strange to me that a plugin can cost as much as a DAW (perhaps they took just as much work to develop as the DAW?). I wonder how devs decide their prices.

Totally disagree. Love Renoise to death. I use it everyday and it's one of my favorite programs. But to say that it's just as competent as Live or any other DAW (including Bitwig) is ridiculous. First, Renoise has no audio tracks. It treats everything as a sample. This makes working with actual instruments a pain in the ass. Second, there is no real side chaining or decent midi and audio routing in Renoise (they admit this themselves as something that needs to change). And for a DAW that's mostly geared towards electronic music, this makes no sense. Better audio and midi routing is a MUST in Renoise. This was my biggest disappointment with Renoise 3. Third, there are no included instruments outside of it's native Sampler. Granted that the sampler is the heart and soul of Renoise, and the new features in the Renoise 3 Sampler are freaking amazing. It's incredibly inspiring and really allows you to dive into your sound design. It's on par with a synth, but I'm just pointing out that there's a big difference between what you are getting with Live and Bitwig. Now does that justify the $799 price point with Live 9? I don't personally think so. I think it's a bit pricey.

Lets just be honest here, there are a lot of things that REAPER and Renoise just don't have. They're great programs. And I admit that pro DAWs are a bit overpriced. But when you look at the fact that Bitwig comes packaged with 50 devices, this prices is not bad at all. REAPER cannot make this claim. I'm sorry but REAPER's included effects suck bad. They're interface's are ugly, and they feel clunky and hard to use. Something like Reverb and delay should not be such a pain. The problem with this is, that when it really comes down to it, at some point if you want to get serious about your production, you're going to have to plunk down a ton of cash on external effects and instruments, because REAPER doesn't supply you with them. Now granted, I get their policy on this. It allows you choice in terms of what effects you want. But the hard truth is, that if I was to pay for all the effects and mastering tools that I get with something like Studio One, I would end up spending more money buying REAPER than I did buying S1. This is just how I see it. The same is true for Renoise.

What Bitwig is offering is an all in one solution, and one that's available on Linux! While maybe many current Linux users don't want to pay this much for software, the fact is, there are many out there who want to move to Linux, but can't justify it as a creative platform because of a lack of a decent audio platform. This could be a great first step for bring better audio support to Linux. If users start saying, "Hey, Windows 8 pisses me off, and all I need is Bitwig, I think I might try out Linux," then other audio developers might start porting there software to Linux as well (I'm mostly thinking about hardware, like recording interfaces, but some plugin developers as well). Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to suggest that Bitwig is going to bring an influx of new users to Linux. But it does make Linux look like a more viable creative platform for music creation. I think Bitwig having Linux support if AWESOME. The fact that Tracktion might come to Linux too is also a good thing. But even better with Bitwig. Bitwig is a serious creation tool. With Tracktion or REAPER and even Renoise, you're going to need some external tools. Not so with Bitwig (especially when the modular support comes). The fact that commercial DAWs are starting to develop for Linux means that developers are taking Linux more seriously as a viable platform for music creation. This can only mean good things for audio in Linux.

Now if Native Instruments start making devices for Linux, then things are really going to change. But I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Sorry for the rant, just my 2 cents.

[tatch]

Totally disagree. Love Renoise to death. I use it everyday and it's one of my favorite programs. But to say that it's just as competent as Live or any other DAW (including Bitwig) is ridiculous...

Thanks for clarifying. I've never used Renoise before so I was only pointing it out based on its appearance and what I've read. Your other points are definitely valid as well. It's software like this and steam for linux that gets me excited--not necessarily about the proprietary software itself (though bitwig does seem like a killer DAW) but for what could be greater acceptance and (hardware) support for Linux.

[sysrqer]

Garmonbozia, you definitely have a point. I would've moved to Linux years ago if it weren't for Ableton Live and my impression (or ignorance) that there wasn't much in the way of audio production. It will certainly be interesting to see how many more people move over, definitely an interesting time with Bitwig coming and WIndows getting worse and worse.

[sysrqer]

If I could spare the cash I would buy Bitwig the minute it is released. It's going to make me sick with envy to know that people will be using it in Linux.

(raboof: redacted comment that was well-intended but could be taken the wrong way)