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Comment by 80hd | Hacker News Reader

After using Ableton for years and previously Logic, I've never used music software that evolves as fast as Bitwig. The rate at which they improve it is pretty mind-blowing in comparison.

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When the founders are also the lead engineers, incentives are aligned. I asked the Ableton CEO at multiple events and expos to fix repeatable bugs, and add proper PDC, and he mocked me.

He mocked you? Well, I am sure we would like to know more. In another comment someone said "at least developers have thought of others" because they dump their stuff in plaintext, but then you come out with such a story which makes me want to stay away from anything related to Ableton.

Seconded, I think even one such a story on HN for this specific topic, where big tech incentives aren’t that high, is a high quality signal of company rot.

I’m staying away from Ableton.

sure, base your software decisions on random anecdotes on HN, from people who might had been rude themselves, misreading the response they got, or worse...

I see what you’re saying but I have noticed that random anecdotes on HN are worth quite a bit more than on other similar sites such as Reddit

>but then you come out with such a story which makes me want to stay away from anything related to Ableton.

Knee-jerk responding like that to a random anecdotes by a random person on the internet, who might as well be total bullshit, is not exactly the most prudent software evaluation path.

Perhaps the "mocking" was just the CEO not placing the importance that the person thinks their request should. Or the CEO responded to rude incessant tone. Or the CEO had a bad day, and the parent was like the 10th person nagging their balls with their pet peeves at that show.

The amount of information to that comment is almost zero, and we don't know tons of context.

Hence my request for elaboration.

I did not like Ableton to begin with anyways.

If anything, it is confirmation bias.

Oh geez, wonder what was wrong out of these 3 sentences.

1st: Bad?

2nd: Bad?

3rd: Bad?

Please bots, help me clear this up. :)

Down-vote afterwards, or I am sorry, is the down-vote for the 2nd? Cry me a river, then, for not liking Ableton. sighs. I prefer FL Studio.

I swear these down-votes are utterly useless. I will apply the previously mentioned uBlock rules so I will not see these pointless (!) down-votes.

God forbid I do not like the software you like. God forbid I am aware enough to realize it might be a bias. God forbid I ask for elaboration. God forbid I voice any of this.

Admission of "confirmation bias" doesn't make the comments about the software more valuable, it makes them less. Probably that's what drove the downvotes.

> doesn't make the comments about the software more valuable

I admitted to having confirmation bias, which influence my decisions. I think it is valuable to recognize and to admit to one's biases, regardless of the subject matter.

I never liked Ableton, and I still do not know if I should believe the guy, I would really like some details.

>Hence my request for elaboration

From a single source, hearing only their side, anecdotically, wont be much better...

I believe I read once that Bitwigs engineers were ex ablteton engineers. Anyone have more on this?

Yeah, I think four of the founders/initial employees were ex-Ableton people, it was a thing that was highlighted when Bitwig first launched (around 2014 maybe?), together with that they were also Berlin-based (because that matters...) and it had Linux support from day one :)

I'm not finding any first-hand sources about it, but remember that most articles at the time mentioned it one way or another.

If my memory is correct both headquarters are just a short walk appart, on 2 different streets that cross each other.

Wow, that’s a very different experience to what I had with the CEO. Haven’t met a nicer, more honest and supportive CEO.

Not saying your experience wasn’t as you describe it, just want to say that I personally rate him highly and was surprised to read it.

On the other hand I once opened a ticket for Ableton Live 9 asking to fix an extremely annoying windows-only race condition when using midi at the same time from a Komplete Kontrol Instance and a regular track session session using an M-series Native Instruments keyboard, and they fixed it after a few weeks.

I did the same with Bitwig in 2022 and the bug it's still there.

Not sure. 6 looks nice, but the past 3-4 versions just had this modularity improvements, which I don't particularly care for, and much smaller workflow, sequencing, audio editing, fx and audio vst improvements (which I do care for)

> I've never used music software that evolves as fast as Bitwig

I've been curious about Bitwig, played around with it a bit, but never made the switch from Ableton. After reading this, which I think was intended as a positive, I'm now less curious about Bitwig...

I get your meaning, but I associate changes to DAWs more positively than changes to other software. Ableton famously had a horrific bug with its plugin delay compensation for multiple versions. You deal with that long enough, you appreciate an attentive developer.

Also love FL Studio. They've made amazing changes over the years. Now they're... Experimenting more with AI. Not a big fan.

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