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Not OP, but my workflow for composition is to sing a new melody, flesh out an arrangement on my Montage, and bring it into my DAW for adding layers, effect chains, etc. I don't think I've ever used a reference track in the 20 odd years I've been making music.

Personally I'd prefer Bitwig focus on core DAW features rather than something like stem separation for which there are already many decent dedicated tools (demucs, spleeter, etc.)

I used reference tracks for mastering before, once or twice for mixing, but outside of that, not so much. And when I've used them, I haven't thought once I needed to separate out the instruments, but I guess that's because of what I used them for. Most of the production I do is outside of Ableton, so maybe I'm not considered a "serious" Ableton user :)

> I assume that anyone seriously using a DAW does.

Ah, the classic "you use it different, you are not serious" argument.