Bitwig Connect - my Problems with the device

Tutorial | May 05, 2025

In this video, I explain why I don't use the buttons and features of the Bitwig Connect 4/12, preferring the efficiency of keyboard and mouse controls in Bitwig Studio. The device is well-built and integrates nicely, but features like the big knob and transport controls don't fit my workflow. While it's a great audio interface, it doesn't fully meet my needs or preferences.

You can watch the Video on Youtube

• support me on Patreon
• Info and Buy the Bitwig Connect here
• Bitwig Connect is Fun

Summary #

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

In my recent videos, I showcased the Bitwig Connect 4/12 and explained why I don't utilize all its features, like the buttons and the big knob. The main reason is that I never found them useful because I prioritize speed and efficiency in my workflow. For example, in Bitwig Studio, I can zoom and scroll quickly using just the mouse and keyboard, making it unnecessary to reach for the hardware controls.

I explained how in Bitwig, I can easily navigate the timeline and adjust values using the mouse and keyboard. This approach is faster than using the interface's buttons or knobs. I see the potential utility of those features if you're away from the computer, perhaps recording an instrument, but that's not my typical scenario.

I mentioned the Bitwig mode, where you can adjust parameters with the big knob. While it's a neat feature, I find using the mouse and keyboard for precise adjustments more efficient. There's also a lack of haptic feedback with the knob, making it less user-friendly for me. I usually reserve the knob for recording automation because of its tactile response.

One drawback I noted is the multi-functionality of controls. When you need to quickly adjust volume during a feedback loop, cycling through modes can be cumbersome and counterintuitive. I prefer dedicated controls for each function, similar to analog synthesizers, which allow for muscle memory and quick adjustments.

Additionally, I pointed out the lack of input channels and ADAT, which could be limiting for users with extensive gear setups. Despite these criticisms, I acknowledged the excellent build quality and integration with Bitwig Studio. It also supports Linux, which is impressive.

In conclusion, while the Bitwig Connect 4/12 is a solid audio interface with useful features, not all of them align with my workflow needs. I invited viewers to share their experiences and thoughts on this interface and finished off with the usual sign-off, encouraging feedback and interaction.

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] Yo folks, in some of my recent videos I showed you the Bitwig Connect 4/12 and how I used
[00:00:05] the CV-in in Outputs and some people wanted to know why I haven't showed actually the
[00:00:10] buttons and all the features here, the big knob and so on.
[00:00:15] The reason for that is pretty simple, I don't use it and I probably never gonna use it because
[00:00:20] I already noticed from other audio interfaces, other MIDI controllers, they have all these
[00:00:26] kinds of type of controls here and I haven't used it so far and I want to show you why.
[00:00:33] So in Bitwick Studio, for example, the scroll or the zooming mode here, right, so in Bitwick
[00:00:38] I just can click at any position inside of the timeline.
[00:00:43] I want to go over here or maybe here and then I can click and drag and I can zoom in and
[00:00:48] zoom out pretty easily, pretty fast.
[00:00:51] So why should I leave my left hand from the keyboard here?
[00:00:55] Go over here, click scroll, tediously search for the right position, let's say this one,
[00:01:03] click scroll again to zoom in and then I hit play.
[00:01:10] Go back to phones to change the volume, right, it's just not fast for me.
[00:01:19] When I have my left hand on the keyboard, I can just click here, hit play, stop, zoom
[00:01:24] in, play, stop, click here, play, stop.
[00:01:28] It's so much faster, why should I go to this interface and push these buttons, turn the
[00:01:33] knob, it doesn't make any sense if it's in front of your PC, right, or in front or besides
[00:01:40] your keyboard and your mouse.
[00:01:42] Maybe you are not in front of your PC and your keyboard and you want to play an instrument
[00:01:48] and you want to record the instrument and you want to quickly zoom into the arrangement
[00:01:53] because you can see the screen from a different place, but you're not in front of the keyboard,
[00:01:59] then maybe it makes sense.
[00:02:01] But if it's in front of your keyboard, then it doesn't make any sense in my opinion, it's
[00:02:07] just gimmicky.
[00:02:08] It's nice to have, it's also neatly integrated, it also works nice, but I probably never needed
[00:02:14] or use it or however you want to call it.
[00:02:18] I also know this kind of feature, not the scrolling, oh the scrolling also from my Audient
[00:02:26] interface, there's also a big knob and you can switch it into different modes and I haven't
[00:02:31] used it or I never used it so far in multiple years.
[00:02:37] So this is the scrolling, it works great, it works great, that's not a problem, it's just
[00:02:41] I don't need it.
[00:02:44] Another thing here is the knob, the Bitwig mode, right?
[00:02:49] So this one is kind of yeah, it's not useless, but it's also not like you need it all the
[00:02:57] time.
[00:02:58] So the Bitwig mode works like this, I can hover over something like here, the frequency
[00:03:03] of the filter device, it also shows you the value, that's also nice, but we can just go
[00:03:11] into Bitwig mode here and can turn this knob and switch to a different knob, change the
[00:03:16] value of this one, go to this one, go to this one.
[00:03:20] Also double tap works to reset this here to the default parameters, which is nice, I haven't
[00:03:27] seen this on any MIDI controllers and it's also something I miss on MIDI controllers
[00:03:31] to just quickly reset values to the default value, here it kind of works with the double
[00:03:37] tap, even though the tapping on this device or on this metal plate doesn't feel great,
[00:03:44] it's like having an iPad, there's no haptic feedback, there's no click, there's no sound
[00:03:50] or anything like this, you have to just trust it.
[00:03:55] And if you don't look at the screen, you don't know if you actually trigger the action, because
[00:04:02] sometimes you can do the tap too fast or too slow and then it doesn't register as a reset,
[00:04:13] and sometimes you do it in the same kind of taping frequency and it works and sometimes
[00:04:20] it doesn't work, but most of the time it works, but there should be a feedback, so you can
[00:04:26] use this without looking at the screen, this was my criticism of this.
[00:04:33] So this feature is the same thing, I'm on my keyboard with the left hand and the right
[00:04:39] hand is on my mouse, so I can change the value here with my mouse pretty easily, and if I
[00:04:44] want to have a higher resolution or more control, I just push down shift and hold down shift,
[00:04:50] I can change here the values with higher resolution, double click to reset this, so I can also
[00:04:57] use control and type in here maybe a note name and it switches to the right frequency
[00:05:05] or I can type in frequency in hertz, so that's pretty quick for me, that's how I use Bitwig,
[00:05:13] so why should I leave again my left hand go into Bitwig mode and then use the knob for
[00:05:20] that, I can see this is useful if you want to record automation and you have more feeling
[00:05:27] in with this knob, with this big knob, because it has a certain type of feel to it, it's
[00:05:33] not heavy, it turns pretty easily, but the knob itself feels very heavy because it's
[00:05:41] heavy metal, but it feels great to move, so it's maybe a better option than using the
[00:05:48] mouse for recording automation, just having this knob, and you also don't need to have
[00:05:53] a MIDI controller in the near range to record quickly just one knob, and usually with these
[00:06:01] MIDI controllers, you have eight controls, but you usually only can turn most of the
[00:06:06] times, or at the same time only two knobs, because you have two hands, you can only
[00:06:11] touch two controls at the same time, so why I have eight controls, you can't turn them
[00:06:16] at the same time, so if you want to record automation, this is a neat way of doing this
[00:06:23] with the Bitwig control, so it's not useless, it's just, I'm not maybe the target audience
[00:06:30] for this, but I see me using this for recording automation, for that it's probably really nice.
[00:06:40] Another problem with this that I have is, let's say you control a parameter here, maybe
[00:06:46] it's not the frequency, maybe you control here the resonance or the feedback, maybe
[00:06:53] also the feedback of a delay or reverb or something like this, and you make some experiments
[00:06:58] and you turn it up, and at some point, you get the screaming feedback, and you get panic
[00:07:04] and you want to turn down the volume, but now you are in Bitwig mode, so you can't turn
[00:07:10] down the volume, so you have to switch back to phones or maybe main, and then you turn
[00:07:15] down the volume, but if you are in panic, you just quickly turn it down and you see,
[00:07:19] oh shit, this doesn't work, because you have to put it into a different mode, so this is
[00:07:25] also something I don't like in audio interfaces or in devices in general, that's not a Bitwig
[00:07:31] specific problem, I have this with all kinds of devices, that you have one knob or one
[00:07:39] control and this control has different modes and you have to switch it into different modes,
[00:07:44] that's also why I don't like digital synthesizers, you have like multiple sections, you have
[00:07:49] multiple controls and you put it right in this mode and then you have this mode and
[00:07:53] then this control does something different, that's not what I like, I like to have analog
[00:07:59] synthesizers, one button does one thing and you can build up muscle memory, you reach
[00:08:04] out for this button and you know exactly what this button or this knob does, and here my
[00:08:11] feedback for this was, why not just remove these buttons altogether and replace it with
[00:08:18] smaller knobs, like on an analog synthesizer, so you have one knob for the input gain for
[00:08:25] input one, one knob for the main output, one knob for the phones, one knob for the scroll,
[00:08:31] one knob for the zoom, one knob for the Bitwig controls and so on, so everything is just
[00:08:36] one smaller knob, because I also don't like to have big knobs, it just, I don't know,
[00:08:42] it feels better to have a smaller knob, like on my Moke synthesizer, they have the perfect
[00:08:49] size for my hands to tweak a parameter, if I'm honest, so I don't know why certain audio
[00:08:59] interface vendors or companies want to have these kind of big knobs on an audio interface,
[00:09:05] maybe it looks good or it's a designer thing, I have no idea, but in a practical way it makes
[00:09:12] no sense for me, maybe there's a reason, maybe you can tell me in the comments if you like
[00:09:17] to have big knobs or if you into big knobs, I haven't seen this, you don't see this anywhere
[00:09:24] else, it's just on audio interfaces that you have a big knob for something, and on an audio
[00:09:31] interface, if there's a big knob, it usually is the volume, but here it isn't, you have
[00:09:36] to switch it into the right mode to be a volume knob, maybe I'm not a designer, maybe I have
[00:09:44] the wrong thinking about this, but if there's a big knob, it's maybe the most important thing
[00:09:50] and it should be have only one function or one function, so also the same with the transport
[00:10:01] controls right, stop, start, I just used my space key because my left hand is already
[00:10:10] on the keyboard, same thing, maybe it's interesting if you want to record an instrument from a
[00:10:16] different place in your room and you're not in front of your PC, then it's maybe interesting,
[00:10:21] but I haven't, yeah, that's not a situation I had in my life so far, maybe I'm, because
[00:10:30] I'm not recording instruments, but this is also on most of the MIDI controls you can
[00:10:37] buy on the market, there's always a transport control on there, I haven't used it so far,
[00:10:42] maybe you are different, I don't know, so these are my criticisms basically, oh yeah,
[00:10:49] sometimes here the mono button, that's something I use all the time, but I could easily maybe
[00:10:55] put this on a hotkey probably, but this is something I use to just quickly control my
[00:11:04] stereo field that's very neat to have on the audio interface itself and of course the
[00:11:10] big criticism, it doesn't have enough inputs, right, it's only four inputs, it kind of works,
[00:11:17] but if you are kind of analogue synthesizer semi-modular nerd or you have in Eurorack,
[00:11:25] so you probably have in Eurorack because you want to have or you have CV input and outputs
[00:11:31] here so it's clearly aimed at Eurorack users or semi-modular synthesizer users and if you
[00:11:39] are a semi-modular synthesizer user or Eurorack user, you probably have more synthesizers
[00:11:45] than just four or yeah, you probably need more inputs also though there is no ADAT which
[00:11:53] is also a big thing, so to make a closing statement here, the device itself is great,
[00:12:00] it's a very good audio interface, nice build quality, everything feels solid and heavy,
[00:12:06] the big knob feels heavy and solid so it's not cheap, it doesn't feel cheap in any way,
[00:12:13] it sounds great, I use it to replace my audio end with no problem, it's neatly integrated
[00:12:20] into Bitwig Studio and all the features make kind of sense and also the software panel,
[00:12:27] the mixer panel and the driver in Windows works cool and no problems there, it also
[00:12:35] works with Linux, so the software panel also works within Linux which is also not something
[00:12:40] you see every day, so it's a great audio interface, it's just not every feature clicks
[00:12:47] with me, that's basically it, so that's it for this video, let me know what you think
[00:12:54] in the comments down below of course about this audio interface, maybe you have some
[00:12:57] experiences already, let me know in the comments and I think that's it for this video, leave
[00:13:02] a like, leave a subscription and I see you next time, bye.
[00:13:05] [BLANK_AUDIO]