I first heard of Bitwig Studio back in January 2012 while going through my daily list of blogs. Being a long time Ableton user (everything started with Live 7 and a PadKontrol), I was interested to see what it offered in comparison. Not halfway down the page I saw something I didn't expect, Linux Support.
From that moment I followed the updates near religiously, scouring every source I could find. daily.
The next update had me sold, an open javascript API (with documentation!) for control scripts.
At this stage I was running a modified version of a custom remote script for my APC40 in Live. I never really got my head around the object model and interfaces though, so I kept mainly to soft banks and some basic MIDI control. When Max4Live was announced I thought this might be what I wanted, but I never clicked with the data flow programming system.
So the two features I was most exited for weren't exactly music related...
I'm guessing I'm not the only one though. These are two game-changers for nerds like me. To be fair, BWS isn't the first or only Linux DAW with a serious API, but its familiarity to an existing Live user and the promising feature list definitely had my attention.
After an anxious wait (and some cursing about my timezone) the links finally appeared. I grabbed packages and installed first on Windows to make sure my hardware was all picked up ok, then on the clean Ubuntu 12.04 install I had waiting, with no issues on either.
In the short time I've spent with BWS so far, my initial impressions have been extremely positive. Though the forums over at KVR are a buzz with the usual release teething issues, the team seems responsive and genuine in trying to help people get up and running (shout out to Dom who I noticed has been busy since release). Especially considering this is a 1.0 release I think they should be hugely proud of what they've put out.
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