Bitwig Browser thoughts
Added 2024-01-02 18:30:21 +0000 UTCIn this video, I discuss my views on the Bitwig Studio browser, particularly after its 5.0 update. Here are my key points:
Favorite Features:
- Synonym Search: I appreciate the browser's ability to search for terms like "compressor" and show related terms like "dynamics."
- Combined Device and Preset Results: I like that devices and presets are now displayed together, unlike the previous version where they were in separate tabs.
- Ordering Results by Date
Criticisms:
- Visual Clutter: I find categories, creators, and tags to be visually cluttering and mostly irrelevant to my workflow. I suggest an option to hide these elements for a cleaner look.
- Tagging System: I'm critical of the tagging system as it feels subjective and context-dependent, making it inefficient for my workflow.
- Automatic Classification: I prefer automatic classification over manual tagging for presets and samples. I use tools like Sononym for samples and suggest Bitwig could benefit from a similar approach, reducing time and cognitive load.
- Random Name Feature: I recommend implementing a feature to automatically generate random names for new presets, speeding up the saving process.
Conclusion:While I consider the Bitwig Studio browser the best among DAWs, I see significant room for improvement. I advocate for a shift towards automatic classification and tagging, along with simplifying the preset saving process. This would enhance usability and let users focus more on creativity rather than administrative tasks.
Comments
In terms of solutions to the painpoints, we could probably find them together, as a broad group of user. Interoperability with features which already exist would really help. And tracing which sounds go together could benefit from tracking who uses them together. BandLab has an advantage, there.
Alexandre Enkerli
2024-01-02 22:47:34 +0000 UTCLet’s take this as a user story. Hope Bitwig GmbH can do more User Research in the future. There’s a huge potential in sample and preset management. To this day, DAW makers have done fairly little to make things easier. Something to keep in mind is that there are diverse usage patterns for a DAW like Bitwig. What best suits your needs might make things much harder for somebody else. Especially as our favourite DAW sheds some of its reputation as a genre-focused tool. We can also split down the situation into several parts. In this rant, you mostly talk about samples. The browser is also where we find other things, many of which don’t have much to do with a specific sound. When you want to access a certain type of note-based processing or a certain compressor, you might not use the same strategy as when you’re trying to match samples to make a “drumkit”. In fact, finding a curve to use for modulation can be quite a different process from using the same curve as an oscillator. The Bitwig browser, combining everything together, pushes an innovative approach. For it to work, some principles from Library Science might help. So, you mentioned directories several times. That’s fairly similar to classification systems meant for physical items (like periodicals and books). To be honest, I never think about them in a BWS context so I’m not sure why they’re a problem in your case. (I’m not denying that they’re an issue. I just don’t realize what impact they have.) In such a case, a tree-like taxonomy probably makes most sense and that’s how filesystems typically work. Maybe something can be done to improve BWS’s taxonomy. Then, you talk about tags. While some of these could be part of a “controlled vocabulary”, most of them are closer to what we’d call a “folksonomy”. And that’s part of the situation you’re describing. “Dark” can mean many different things in many different contexts. Which makes things difficult. Some descriptors become stable while others keep changing all the time. In social media, there are some hashtags which have been quite effective at identifying certain elements, mostly through usage. So, it’s clear that there’s an issue with tagging. You don’t want to do it yourself. And that’s probably an accurate reflex. Some people are really good at creating metadata. At this point, computers are mostly good at doing this automatically within a narrow domain. There’s a reason Atlas and XO focus on drumkits. There’s an associated reason why there are trends in music through which people end up using similar sounds. So, applying the same logic to other sounds might have unexpected consequences on the way people use BWS. It’s actually a similar issue to what happens when people keep using the same presets.
Alexandre Enkerli
2024-01-02 22:45:29 +0000 UTCIs it just me that has trouble finding presets after saving them? where do they go? normally i have to search Everything for the file name, then favourite it so it's a bit easier to find in future.
Mr_Smellnice
2024-01-02 22:18:17 +0000 UTC
