Bitwig Pitfalls of Audio Import

Tutorial | Sep 04, 2024

In this video, I discuss the frustrating issues I encountered while trying to import and seamlessly loop wave files in Bitwig Studio. Specifically, the software automatically offsets the start point and defaults to a stretch mode that introduces unwanted artifacts when the BPM is changed. Although there are ways to circumvent these issues, such as holding down the control key during import, these solutions are not well-communicated and make the process overly complicated.

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Summary #

Maybe you don't watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

Hey folks, welcome back to another video. Unfortunately, this is a rather sad one, as it's about some issues I've encountered with Bitwig Studio. In my previous videos, I've often emphasized that I'm not just here to give positive reviews; I want to highlight problems and bugs as well. Here are my main reasons for doing this:

1. So that the bugs get fixed over time, especially since some developers watch my videos.
2. I want to give you the opportunity to correct me in the comments if I'm using Bitwig Studio wrong.
3. To prove that I'm not just shilling for Bitwig Studio; I’m a regular user with my own problems and frustrations.
4. I prefer making videos over forum posts to show my exact steps and discuss issues more clearly.

Today, I'm in the right mood to discuss a specific frustration. I was working with some wave files that loop seamlessly. When I opened these files in an external player, they looped perfectly. However, importing them into Bitwig revealed multiple issues.

Firstly, Bitwig offsets the start of the wave file even though it is supposed to loop seamlessly from beginning to end. It also puts the audio clip in a stretch mode by default, with Bitwig guessing the original BPM of the file, which might be incorrect.

When I change the BPM of the project, the file shows no visual changes, but there are audio artifacts due to Bitwig’s multi-band granular stretching mode. There's no indication that the file is being stretched, which is frustrating.

To work around this, I modified the settings to always start the clip from the sample start rather than the first beat. But I still couldn't select a raw mode for stretches—the option was removed in a recent update. So, the best I could do was use 're-pitch' mode, but changing the BPM alters the pitch of the sample.

After various trials, I found a partially hidden solution. Holding down the 'Control' key during the import switches the file to raw mode. This significantly helped, though not perfect, because changing the BPM still introduced complications.

The root of my frustration is that while Bitwig tries to be intuitive with its audio import settings, it often results in overly complex and hidden functionalities that are not beginner-friendly. Also, matching the lengths of audio events to wave files manually is cumbersome.

There should be clearer communication within the software when alterations are being made, like stretching or changes in pitch. Additionally, the option to snap the length of the audio event to the wave file or to disable comping entirely would be beneficial.

In conclusion, these complexities and hidden features led to substantial frustration while trying to get a simple seamlessly looping wave file to work properly. Despite some tips from the community, like holding 'Control' for raw import, these problems show that Bitwig Studio's audio import process could use some enhancements to be more user-friendly and transparent.

Thank you for watching. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and see you in the next video. Bye!

Transcription #

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back to another video.
[00:00:02] It's actually a very, very sad video about Bitwig.
[00:00:07] I said it multiple times in the past that I plan to do some videos that are not 100%
[00:00:12] positive.
[00:00:13] I want to highlight some problems, some bugs, you know, of Bitwig Studio.
[00:00:18] And there are multiple reasons for that.
[00:00:19] So the first reason is the most important reason.
[00:00:21] So these bugs get fixed in time.
[00:00:24] I know that some developers watch my videos here and there.
[00:00:29] So they see exactly what kind of steps I'm doing and I can, you know, fix it, optimize
[00:00:34] it or change it.
[00:00:36] The second reason is so you can tell me in the comments polarity you are using Bitwig
[00:00:41] Studio wrong.
[00:00:42] Do it differently.
[00:00:43] So it's basically your opportunity to tell me in the comments that I'm stupid.
[00:00:46] Okay.
[00:00:47] And the third reason is to show you that I'm not just chilling for Bitwig Studio.
[00:00:52] I know that there are always someone out there, you know, things I'm a chill or things other
[00:01:00] people are chilling for different products.
[00:01:03] There's always someone, right?
[00:01:04] So I can prove that.
[00:01:06] But it's for me an opportunity to actually show you it's not this way.
[00:01:11] I'm also a normal user, regular user of Bitwig Studio.
[00:01:14] I have maybe some connections here and there, but I have also problems.
[00:01:20] And then the last thing is I'm not this kind of person that when I have a problem, I go
[00:01:27] to the next forum, right?
[00:01:28] And I open up, you know, I want to make a beat inside of Bitwig Studio and something is not
[00:01:33] working.
[00:01:34] And then I go to Reddit and write like this is not working.
[00:01:39] And then 50 other people, yeah, it's not working for me either.
[00:01:43] And then up or down.
[00:01:44] Well, then nothing happens.
[00:01:46] So I think it's better to make a video so we can talk about it and you should see exactly
[00:01:51] what the problem is and what kind of lead to this problem.
[00:01:56] So today I'm actually in the right mood.
[00:01:58] I'm in the real right mood for something because I tried to do something.
[00:02:03] Oh, it's actually me down there.
[00:02:06] Okay.
[00:02:07] Yeah, I show you this here in Bitwig.
[00:02:10] So here are some wave files and these way files are seamlessly looping.
[00:02:17] So I opened this up here first in an player so you can see it.
[00:02:21] So this is the way file here.
[00:02:24] And when I jump to the end here, you can see it loops seamlessly from the end to the beginning
[00:02:35] without any gap or any transition or something.
[00:02:39] It's just one loop and it loops over and over.
[00:02:43] And my idea was, well, let's use this actually in Bitwig and let it loop, right?
[00:02:48] Let it loop.
[00:02:50] So I tried to drag this into Bitwig here and there are multiple things now in place already
[00:02:57] without me doing anything.
[00:03:01] When I go here into this audio clip with tab, you can see it changed or offset the beginning.
[00:03:09] We are not at the beginning of this way file.
[00:03:13] It's bad because you saw it's just seamlessly looping.
[00:03:19] So we need to start here at the beginning.
[00:03:21] So that's the first thing.
[00:03:23] The second thing is that this audio clip here is already in a stretch mode.
[00:03:29] You can see this here on the left side mode stretch.
[00:03:33] And the original tempo of this way file is one under 10 or that's at least what Bitwig
[00:03:39] thinks it is.
[00:03:40] It thinks it's one under 10 BBM.
[00:03:43] It could be something completely different.
[00:03:45] And the project tempo is also one under 10.
[00:03:48] So because the project tempo is one under 10 and this original file tempo is one under
[00:03:53] 10, Bitwig doesn't do anything to this file.
[00:03:56] It just plays it back completely normal.
[00:03:59] You can't hear any problem.
[00:04:02] It's just a normal way file now.
[00:04:06] Okay.
[00:04:10] But now if you change the BBM of this project here, let's say down to 85 or something like
[00:04:16] this.
[00:04:17] Do you see anything changing here in this file?
[00:04:22] No, you don't.
[00:04:23] It looks exactly the same.
[00:04:25] Nothing changes.
[00:04:26] Nothing indicates anything.
[00:04:28] But what you did just with this BBM change here is that you introduced a lot of artifacts
[00:04:35] because this is in stretch mode, which is in multi-band granular stretching mode.
[00:04:41] And now Bitwig tries to match this tempo.
[00:04:44] It tries to stretch this way file to this 77 BPM tempo here.
[00:04:49] So now it sounds like this.
[00:04:54] So my problem now is that I can't see that actually something happens here, right?
[00:05:07] One under 10, 50.
[00:05:10] This way file looks completely the same.
[00:05:12] There's no indicator, no symbol, nothing that indicates watch out polarity.
[00:05:18] There is stretching in place.
[00:05:21] This sounds maybe different or introduces some artifacts.
[00:05:26] So this is my first problem.
[00:05:28] Or this is my second problem.
[00:05:30] The first problem is actually this offset here.
[00:05:33] So what I can do now to circumvent this is, I just delete this here.
[00:05:39] I go to the settings behavior and then I have the audio import settings.
[00:05:44] So what I want to do is I want to insert clip from sample start.
[00:05:50] I always want to start in the beginning.
[00:05:53] I get the idea of having insert clip from first beat.
[00:05:58] So when you drag in, let's say a drum loop and this drum loop, the first kick drum doesn't
[00:06:03] start exactly with the first sample of the way file, then you need to offset it.
[00:06:09] And this does this here for you.
[00:06:12] I get the idea.
[00:06:13] So it's a smart solution to something.
[00:06:15] But here it completely gets in my way.
[00:06:17] So I want to disable this.
[00:06:20] So this was my first stop.
[00:06:24] And then I thought maybe let's dial in here some default stretch modes because I never
[00:06:28] want to have a stretch mode by default.
[00:06:30] I always want to have raw.
[00:06:34] I want to have this raw way file.
[00:06:36] So I go to the default stretch mode here and you can see there's no raw file stretch mode.
[00:06:41] It's gone.
[00:06:43] It was removed in some of the last updates.
[00:06:46] I have no idea why.
[00:06:48] I guess because of these new auto import settings here to make this, to make everything smarter
[00:06:53] or smarter for some beginners.
[00:06:57] So you have, I can only choose between different stretch modes and I guess stretch HD is the
[00:07:04] best one or maybe you can use re-pitch.
[00:07:06] So re-pitch the problem here is if you change then the BPM, you change the pitch of the
[00:07:13] sample.
[00:07:15] So let's do this again.
[00:07:16] So remember we changed this here from insert clips clip from first B to insert clip from
[00:07:21] sample starts.
[00:07:22] So now I do the same thing.
[00:07:24] I'll go back here to my browser and I drag this in.
[00:07:29] Go in here.
[00:07:30] Now you can see it starts exactly at the beginning.
[00:07:33] So that's nice.
[00:07:35] But now this here is in re-pitch mode, right?
[00:07:39] Same problem.
[00:07:40] I change here now the BPM.
[00:07:42] Nothing changes in here, but you actually change in the background the pitch.
[00:07:46] So now it sounds like this.
[00:07:56] So in this default stretch mode re-pitch here, you change the BPM, the pitch of the way file.
[00:08:06] And there's nothing in here that indicates this.
[00:08:08] This is my problem.
[00:08:09] There should be at least something here on the left side maybe or maybe you put the small
[00:08:14] to the simple here that you alter actually the sound when you change the BPM.
[00:08:21] So now we have here the beginning of this way file, which is nice.
[00:08:25] That's exactly what I want.
[00:08:27] And you can see now here that it's also at the end looping perfectly, right?
[00:08:35] So I go back to 110.
[00:08:38] And it's probably also, let's use your control and L.
[00:08:42] So I loop this.
[00:08:45] Let's start here.
[00:08:47] Yeah, nice.
[00:08:51] It loops seamlessly.
[00:08:52] I can also put this here into the clip launcher.
[00:08:57] Now maybe start at the end.
[00:09:02] Can hear the transition.
[00:09:06] And there's a small little crack.
[00:09:11] Crackle.
[00:09:12] But it kind of works.
[00:09:15] Okay, this is nice.
[00:09:16] But my track is actually not in one of the 10 BPM, right?
[00:09:20] So now I encounter multiple different problems.
[00:09:24] So first and foremost, I want to go down to 85 because this is in re-pitch mode.
[00:09:29] It's now pitched down.
[00:09:32] That's not what I want.
[00:09:33] I also don't want to have here stretch HD because it introduces artifacts and re-pitch
[00:09:39] changes the pitch.
[00:09:40] So I want to go to raw.
[00:09:42] Okay, because I want to have the original pitch.
[00:09:45] So now it looks like this.
[00:09:47] So now we are multiple levels deep already in this way file.
[00:09:51] I show you exactly every level.
[00:09:54] The first level is here on the Ranger.
[00:09:56] So here we have this one.
[00:09:58] This is an audio clip.
[00:09:59] We go into the audio clip.
[00:10:01] Inside of the audio clip, we have this one, which is the audio event.
[00:10:05] And in this audio event, there is this wave file, which has a different length.
[00:10:11] So here, you know, when I shorten this, we have different three different lengths.
[00:10:15] We have the wave file itself.
[00:10:17] We have the audio event and the audio clip.
[00:10:20] Everything has different lengths.
[00:10:22] And now when I change here to BPM, you can see the wave file changes inside of the audio
[00:10:26] event.
[00:10:28] So to make this now looping seamlessly, I have to match this audio event here to this
[00:10:36] file in there, which is not really possible with the option here.
[00:10:41] I think there's nothing.
[00:10:42] Maybe you can tell me in the comments if there's something there to actually match the length
[00:10:46] of the audio event to the wave file in this audio event.
[00:10:52] So I can only try to match it here manually.
[00:10:55] So this was my first idea.
[00:10:58] Can do it roughly and then maybe bring in here a small little thing.
[00:11:03] Like I said, it's overly complicated actually for a wave file.
[00:11:06] It's already looping.
[00:11:10] And then another thing is that you can't use this place stop thing here.
[00:11:18] So this place stop value here shows you this kind of marker.
[00:11:26] You can see this changing here, right?
[00:11:27] So you can change the length of this file inside of this audio event.
[00:11:33] So this gives you here one minute and 12 seconds.
[00:11:37] So my idea was, oh, let's actually copy this and put it into the audio event length here.
[00:11:45] But this doesn't work because this is a minute and this isn't beats.
[00:11:52] So this also doesn't work.
[00:11:54] So it's very hard to correct this, to make this audio event exactly the length of the
[00:12:00] wave file.
[00:12:02] And then if you have then the length here with the audio event, you can use them or click
[00:12:06] on this audio event.
[00:12:07] You can use control and L and then you can match the length of the audio clip to the
[00:12:14] length of the audio event.
[00:12:16] That's possible.
[00:12:17] But in here, not so possible.
[00:12:20] Very hard to do.
[00:12:21] Okay.
[00:12:22] So let's try something different.
[00:12:23] We go back here and we delete this audio clip.
[00:12:27] We also delete here this audio channel and we go to our destination BPM, which is 85.
[00:12:36] And we also delete here all the cache files.
[00:12:41] And we go back to our file explorer here.
[00:12:44] I made use instead of endless loop 22, we use now here 20.
[00:12:49] There's nothing different.
[00:12:52] It's just a different wave file, right?
[00:12:54] So we drag this in.
[00:12:57] And now we have a different problem.
[00:12:58] We have our destination BPM, which is 85.
[00:13:02] So the bitwig actually thinks this file is in 142.06 BPM for some reason.
[00:13:11] I have no idea why.
[00:13:14] So we have the same problem here.
[00:13:15] We go in, we select this.
[00:13:18] We have to go back from re-pitch to raw, then it switches back here and there's no possibility
[00:13:24] to find the end here with audio clip.
[00:13:26] So we can't loop it actually.
[00:13:29] Because it's actually snapping here.
[00:13:30] No, it's snapping to the grid, right?
[00:13:32] Yeah, it's snapping to the grid, not to the end position here.
[00:13:37] So there's no real solution to this problem.
[00:13:41] What we can do is we can use a shortcut.
[00:13:45] So let's go back here to the file explorer.
[00:13:49] Let's drag it in.
[00:13:51] But before we drag it in, we just stop and watch bitwig.
[00:13:57] Here you see some kind of hint that you can do something now.
[00:14:03] And what you can see is, of course, down here, down here, all the way down, they're
[00:14:09] hidden by the taskbar of Windows.
[00:14:13] There is bitwig studio basically in the full windows screen and it's behind the taskbar
[00:14:17] and there is a hint that you can now hold down shift, alt and control.
[00:14:25] And when you hit control, you can import this audio as a raw file as before.
[00:14:31] So you need to use control.
[00:14:34] If you press down, now this is in raw mode.
[00:14:42] So now it's a bit better with this.
[00:14:44] It's a bit hidden, but you can kind of circumvent this stretch problem.
[00:14:50] I don't know why you have to press down a key for that.
[00:14:54] I don't know why it's not here because I have this since the beginning of Bitwig Studio,
[00:15:00] I have the stretch mode here on raw.
[00:15:04] And with this, we can now loop this here seamlessly.
[00:15:10] Let's actually try this.
[00:15:14] Let's start at the end.
[00:15:20] There's a small click there.
[00:15:27] So this kind of works, but we have still the problem that when we change now the BPM, everything
[00:15:34] is fucked up again.
[00:15:38] And we can't, you know, match here the audio event to the end of this thing.
[00:15:47] All we have to do now is we have to delete this again and go to our destination, BPM,
[00:15:54] let's say 60, and then track this in holding down control.
[00:16:01] And then the audio event matches exactly, kind of exactly the length of the way file
[00:16:07] within this audio event.
[00:16:10] So in my case here, I have to use control, which is hidden behind here, or it's only
[00:16:19] shown in this info bar down here.
[00:16:21] There's no kind of thing here inside of the shortcuts menu.
[00:16:27] I haven't found anything in here.
[00:16:29] So it's pretty hidden.
[00:16:30] And it's also hidden in my case because it's hidden behind the dust taskbar here in full
[00:16:35] screen.
[00:16:36] I could put this here into this kind of mode, right, in this full screen mode.
[00:16:41] So now it's at least visible down there.
[00:16:47] But I think this could be communicated a bit clearer also for beginners because beginners
[00:16:54] are not very aware probably what's happening behind their backs.
[00:17:00] Sometimes there's BPM detection, sometimes not.
[00:17:03] Sometimes there's something in raw mode.
[00:17:06] It behaves differently than when it's in re-pitch mode.
[00:17:09] It also behaves differently in this stretch AD mode or stretch mode here.
[00:17:15] So there's a lot of stuff happening in the background.
[00:17:19] And it's not very clear when something happens and when you need to do something else or
[00:17:25] when you have to change something for certain different behaviors.
[00:17:28] In my opinion, it's a, I mean, it's a complex problem.
[00:17:32] And there are a lot of use cases and a lot of solutions.
[00:17:36] And I think this could be made a bit clearer and a bit more easy or easy to use.
[00:17:44] I have also no solution.
[00:17:46] What's the best way of doing this?
[00:17:49] But I think just having the raw mode back in here in this default stretch mode would
[00:17:57] be a good first step, in my opinion.
[00:18:01] And then maybe in here a feature that allows me to, which is back here too, that allows
[00:18:11] me to match the length of the audio vent to the wave file inside of this audio vent to
[00:18:17] give me at least the key or maybe right click and match audio vent to file length or maybe
[00:18:23] give me the option to copy this length file length to the length of the audio vent.
[00:18:30] That would be also a solution.
[00:18:32] I'm open for everything, right?
[00:18:35] So this is basically my problem with the audio file import at the moment that it's very convoluted
[00:18:43] or feels like overly complicated.
[00:18:47] There are a lot of more problems surrounding here the wave file or the audio clips in general,
[00:18:53] let's say comping here.
[00:18:54] I don't like comping at all.
[00:18:56] There's no way of disabling this.
[00:18:59] I don't want to go into that.
[00:19:01] Maybe I do a different video about comping because I really hate comping.
[00:19:07] It's not my thing.
[00:19:08] I really want to have in here behavior just a check mark right where I can say disable
[00:19:16] comping forever.
[00:19:19] That's what I like.
[00:19:21] So I think that's it for this video.
[00:19:22] I want to show you here the file import problems I had today with these seamlessly looping wave
[00:19:28] files.
[00:19:30] It just drove me nuts.
[00:19:33] I was going to the discord and someone told me that you have to actually hold down control
[00:19:38] to import raw and it kind of works, but it's very hidden.
[00:19:43] So that's my main problem.
[00:19:45] Yeah, like I said, that's it for this video.
[00:19:48] Thanks for watching.
[00:19:49] Tell me in the comments what you think and see you in the next one.
[00:19:53] Bye.
[00:19:54] [MUSIC]