Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Poly-Grid Tutorial Ambient

Multi Audio Output for the Bitwig Grid

Tutorial | Jul 22, 2025

In this video, I demonstrate how to turn a Bitwig grid patch into a full track by separating and bouncing individual instrument layers using the DC offset trick for modulation-based audio routing. I explain step-by-step how to split sounds within the grid, assign each to separate tracks, and export them for further arrangement and production. While the process isn't perfect or high-end, it allows for creative freedom, layering, and practical workflows to develop unique ambient tracks from simple beginnings.

You can watch the Video on Youtube

Short Overview

In this video, I walk you through how I take a simple grid patch in Bitwig and turn it into the basis for a full track. I show you ways to separate different instrument parts using the DC offset trick, so you can process and arrange elements like drums, pads, and arps on their own tracks. This method lets you bounce out individual parts easily and start building a more structured song, adding new layers and effects as needed. I think it's a fun and flexible approach, and I encourage you to experiment with it for your own music.

Introduction: Turning a Grid Patch into a Track

In this session, I walk you through the process of transforming one of my recent Bitwig Studio Grid patches into the foundation of a full track. The patch we're working with is an ambient piece layered with simple, synthesized drums and a number of other sound elements, all contained within a single Grid instrument. My goal here is to share tips and processes that I use, especially in response to questions from my Patreon supporters about how to extract these sounds for complete productions.

The Challenge: Extracting Individual Sounds from the Grid

The core issue with starting a track in Bitwig’s Grid is that it typically functions as a single instrument on one channel. This setup can make it tricky to separate out individual sounds like drums, pads, arps, or effects, which is essential for proper mixing and arranging later on.

Method 1: Muting and Bouncing Individual Elements

The most straightforward approach is to selectively mute and solo certain modules or groups inside your Grid patch. By disabling parts you don't want, you can bounce the remaining sound as an audio file. For example:

This technique is effective if you have relatively few sound sources in your patch. However, if you have a complex mix of drums, pads, bass, and arps, repeating this process for each sound can quickly become cumbersome.

Method 2: No Native Multiple Audio Outs from the Grid

Bitwig Studio’s Grid, by design, offers only a single stereo output per instance. Unlike certain VST instruments, you cannot just assign multiple audio outputs for each sound source or drum inside the Grid instrument.

While MIDI note out exists in certain scenarios, within the Grid you are limited to routing audio or modulation, not direct MIDI or multiple outputs.

The DC Offset Modulation Trick

The Concept

To get around these limitations, I use the "DC Offset trick." This allows separate internal audio streams from the Grid to be routed out as discrete signals, which can then be processed and mixed independently outside the Grid. Here’s how it works:

Stereo Handling

Since standard modulation in Bitwig is monophonic, handling stereo requires extra steps:

This setup lets you output true stereo audio for each sound group.

Practical Steps

  1. Place a DC Offset device outside the Grid on a new track.
  2. Set up "Modulator Out" modules for left and right channels in the Grid.
  3. Use those to modulate the gain of the DC Offset, effectively recreating your audio.
  4. Amplify the result as needed, since volume can be lower using this technique.
  5. Repeat for each sound group: pads, bass, drums, arps, effects, etc.

Organization and Post-Processing

Once each sound group is isolated on its own track, you gain all the flexibility of working with independent audio sources:

Expanding the Arrangement

Getting the patch separated into stems is just the first stage. A typical ambient or electronic track arrangement might involve:

DC Offset Quality Considerations

While this method is an inventive workaround, some users express concern about potential quality limitations with audio-rate modulation and the DC Offset trick. In my experience, it is transparent enough for most music genres, especially ambient or experimental productions. Any minor degradation is typically negligible in context, and there are plenty of tracks released with far lower fidelity using tape or vintage hardware.

Conclusion: My Workflow and Suggestions

This approach of extracting stems via modulation and DC Offset is my go-to solution when I want to turn a fun Grid patch into a full-fledged track. It is not meant as a "one-click" solution for instant finished music, but as a powerful way to gain control for arrangement, mixing, and creative expansion.

I encourage you to try this process, experiment with layering and arranging, and use grid patches not just as isolated sketches but as founding blocks for rich, evolving productions. If you use my shared grid patches or adapt these techniques, let me know how it goes. For me, these Grid patches often serve as textural backdrops or starting points for new tracks.

Thanks for reading and sharing in my workflow.

Full Video Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by Whisper, 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.

Click to expand Transcription

[00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back.
[00:00:02] So here in the background, you can see my latest or recent grid patch.
[00:00:06] It's kind of an ambient tune with some drums in it.
[00:00:11] And all of these drums here are very simply synthesized with some very simple tricks.
[00:00:18] So of course, that's not a real track or something that you maybe want to call a complete production.
[00:00:28] It's just fun to me to create these kind of grid patches here and share it with you or
[00:00:33] with the community.
[00:00:35] So the question from some of my petrians was how would I do it or how would I push this
[00:00:44] into a full track?
[00:00:45] So how would I process it, right?
[00:00:48] And of course, this kind of question hints at the possibility of kind of get these sounds
[00:00:57] out of the grid because at the moment here, it's just one grid.
[00:01:02] It's one channel or one instrument track, there's one instrument on it and it's playing
[00:01:08] here basically pads and arps and rimshort, hi-hats, FX and kick sounds and so on.
[00:01:16] And when you want to create some kind of track, of course, you need everything on a separate
[00:01:20] track, right?
[00:01:22] So the first thing you can do, and sometimes this works pretty neatly because it's, you
[00:01:28] know, here we have lots of different instruments, but sometimes you have just a pad sound and
[00:01:33] maybe an arp on top or something like this.
[00:01:36] And what you can do is you can just select certain parts here.
[00:01:39] It's also very separate here in this kind of grid.
[00:01:42] So you just select these parts and say, oh, just disable this, right?
[00:01:47] And then you have only, let's say if I do this here.
[00:01:52] So now we have only the pads or the drone sound in the background.
[00:01:57] Maybe there's an arp here playing at some point and also disable this.
[00:02:01] Actually, it only works when you use this here in the sidebar, if you go here for right-click,
[00:02:07] it only enables what it's beneath the mouse cursor for some reason.
[00:02:16] So now we have only the pads or the drone sound playing, and then you can go here into the
[00:02:21] ranger and you just select the part that you want to bounce.
[00:02:26] I don't know how long is this here, actually, when I go here, it's, let's hit stop.
[00:02:32] So this is 61, two minutes, this is one minute, right?
[00:02:39] So you can say, let's do it a bit longer.
[00:02:45] This is here, eight minutes, I don't know how long an ambient track should be, maybe
[00:02:50] eight minutes is enough.
[00:02:52] So just right-click here and say bounce, post-fader, note that maybe 32 bits if you want to.
[00:03:00] And then you can just bounce here the pad sounds or the drone sounds.
[00:03:05] So this is one way of doing that, right?
[00:03:08] It takes a bit of time here, so maybe just cancel this.
[00:03:13] So this is one way of doing it.
[00:03:14] But when you have a lot of instruments that's maybe not the way to do it, can I actually
[00:03:21] enable everything?
[00:03:22] Yeah, I can.
[00:03:24] So another way is, of course, try and get the sounds out of the grid in kind of a dynamic
[00:03:31] way.
[00:03:32] And there is no separate audio out in the grid.
[00:03:35] There are some, yes, MIDI or note out that you can use to get some note information out
[00:03:43] of the grid.
[00:03:44] So we have one audio out here, but that's just one single stereo output and you can't
[00:03:53] change here on the inspector for, you know, have certain multiple channels or something
[00:03:58] like this.
[00:03:59] Or what's in a MIDI track output for VSTs is also something that's not possible here.
[00:04:05] Oh, there's also clipping on here.
[00:04:09] So what we can do is we can do, of course, the DC offset trick.
[00:04:14] So what we do is instead of going out with an audio signal, we go out with audio rate
[00:04:21] modulation and we modulate a device outside of the grid.
[00:04:26] So here in the Post-FX chain, we can just delete all the Post-FX and we use a DC offset
[00:04:35] device here.
[00:04:36] It looks like this.
[00:04:38] And we can modulate the DC offset device from within the grid window.
[00:04:44] So let's say we want to get here the pad sounds out.
[00:04:50] Let me see.
[00:04:51] It's basically this output here.
[00:04:53] So we just delete this here or we can keep it and just delete the connection and use
[00:05:02] a modulator out.
[00:05:04] So this one, right?
[00:05:07] So instead of going out here with the audio output, we go out with modulations and then
[00:05:11] we modulate here the DC offset.
[00:05:14] The problem with this is that this is only one modulation or it's actually a stereo modulation,
[00:05:22] but here this one can only give you a monophonic output.
[00:05:28] So it gives you, for the left and the right channel, the same modulation.
[00:05:32] So what you have to do is you have to group this together into, let's say left and this
[00:05:41] into right.
[00:05:42] So we have to modulate here to the left and to right.
[00:05:46] And to do this here in the grid, we have to use a stereo split.
[00:05:49] I know the setup is not straightforward, but so we have here now a left output and we
[00:05:56] have also a right output.
[00:05:58] We can also name this here.
[00:06:02] So this is left and this is right.
[00:06:09] Then all we have to do is to modulate here, this is left and this with the right.
[00:06:16] Let's actually modulate this here with the right amount.
[00:06:19] So this is one, this is not one, so now it's one.
[00:06:24] Okay, left, right, instead of just one audio output.
[00:06:29] So that's the idea.
[00:06:30] So let's give this a try.
[00:06:37] It's a bit quiet because we had, in the beginning, we had here a lot of post FX on there, like
[00:06:46] a clipper and a limiter.
[00:06:50] So here we need more volume.
[00:06:52] So we're going to do this maybe with an amplifier.
[00:07:05] I think we also have to put this here to the right side and this to the left.
[00:07:10] Yeah, this makes sense.
[00:07:16] Right?
[00:07:17] So instead of not hearing anything because we disconnected the audio output, now we
[00:07:21] can hear this over this DC offset.
[00:07:25] So this is now here the drone and we can just leave it at S, as this here, and we can group
[00:07:35] this together and do another one here, DC offset and we also group this together into
[00:07:44] left and right.
[00:07:50] So this one probably is the baseline or something like this, or maybe you go for the ARP here.
[00:07:59] Where is it?
[00:08:01] Let me see.
[00:08:03] So it's this output here.
[00:08:09] Here's the blend.
[00:08:10] We blend basically the dry and the wet signal together and then we go here into the music
[00:08:18] mix.
[00:08:19] It's the upper one.
[00:08:24] And here there's a modulation on an LFO and this is basically an arrangement LFO.
[00:08:29] So it's very slow.
[00:08:30] You can see it's using 32 bars.
[00:08:33] So it's slowly over 32 bars, it blends in and out.
[00:08:36] So you don't hear the arpeggiator all the time, or the sequence all the time.
[00:08:43] So let's go out here with the same idea.
[00:08:48] Let's use a split and use modulator right and left.
[00:09:04] You can also name this a bit of set up, but at least it's possible, right?
[00:09:12] There's always a way in Bitwig to make something possible.
[00:09:17] That's why I like it.
[00:09:20] Okay, let's check here on the inspector one, this is also one.
[00:09:28] So now we have the ARP here.
[00:09:31] We also need to amplify this, I guess.
[00:09:38] The ARP is not playing because it's too loud.
[00:09:49] Let me put this here outside to have more like an idea.
[00:10:05] So this is the pad, and this is the drone.
[00:10:21] That's not the pad, it's the ARP.
[00:10:24] No, all the way around, this is the ARP.
[00:10:31] Okay.
[00:10:34] So what's this here?
[00:10:36] We connect this here to the spectrum analyzer.
[00:10:40] So now we have the pad, the drone.
[00:10:43] We can mute this here and also sum it together.
[00:10:46] So I could do this already in my patch if I want to, but most of the times I'm too lazy
[00:10:51] for this.
[00:10:52] But you can get all these sounds out here if you want, split.
[00:11:04] So this is here the baseline, let me see where this is going in here, it's this output.
[00:11:13] Modulate art, right, left, DC offset, left, right.
[00:11:36] I think I also forgot to pan this, one, so left goes to, or right goes to right, left
[00:11:50] goes to left, also left, left, done.
[00:12:00] And now we have the baseline here, and it's maybe also a bit too quiet.
[00:12:10] That's also here a nice side chain already integrated.
[00:12:17] That's coming from the kick drum.
[00:12:21] Kick drum is here, it's basically here the envelope, modulator output going straight
[00:12:27] to the volume knob on the bass.
[00:12:31] Okay, so this is the bass here, and then you do this basically for all the things in the
[00:12:39] grid, and then you can, maybe I should do it here, just so you can see how it works.
[00:12:46] Or the baseline is actually way too deep and way too loud.
[00:12:56] Also the benefit of this is of course that you can put here some VSTs on these tracks,
[00:13:05] which is not possible inside of the grid, of course.
[00:13:08] So this is the baseline, maybe we do a combined for the drums.
[00:13:13] Now let's disconnect this here, it's the modulation here already, no, okay, let's do a DC offset
[00:13:23] again, put it together, this is left, this is right, and, oh, right, this goes to the
[00:13:39] right side, this goes to the left side.
[00:13:44] Okay, let's use the drum mix here, this is the output, actually I'm going to put this
[00:13:56] here, the top, so let's modulate this by one, and then disconnect this here.
[00:14:08] So, now you can mute all these tracks, let's call it drums, there actually is some kind
[00:14:21] of volume now, let's use the amplifier.
[00:14:44] So we can use here the ARP and we can say, I want to put a super nasophonet, maybe delay,
[00:15:04] and something to control the volume a bit better.
[00:15:13] Right, so we have the drums here, maybe I put the VST on that, just so you can see it.
[00:15:32] Oh, that's the bass line in the drum mix, okay, it doesn't make sense, maybe a clipper
[00:15:41] on that.
[00:15:50] Of course it's probably better to layer this with some samples instead of using here these
[00:15:55] very simple drum synthesizers.
[00:16:20] So you can also use the FX here in a separate layer, just for this example here, it's enough.
[00:16:31] So now we can create audio tracks and just import these sounds here, maybe put the mix
[00:16:40] down so you can't hear the sum, but now we can just go here to the first track, change
[00:16:48] FX, FX layer, right, you have all these things here as separate things.
[00:16:53] So drums post, for instance, so we have drums here.
[00:17:07] So here we get the bass, oh, that's actually my microphone, here we get the bass, FX, bass
[00:17:15] line, bass line post, audio track, so here we get the ARP post, and the pads, drum post,
[00:17:42] nice.
[00:17:47] So now we have nothing on all of these channels or on the first channel here on the output,
[00:17:52] it's more or less muted, and then we separate these into multiple tracks here.
[00:18:06] You can say I want to bounce all of this here, post fader, maybe in place, and it's bouncing
[00:18:23] all the audio down into audio files, then you can try and make what everyone really
[00:18:32] likes to do, and it's creating an arrangement that's longer than eight bars, and it's probably
[00:18:40] not possible just with the sounds from the grid here, you probably want to add some sequences
[00:18:47] on top, maybe you want to play something on the keyboard on top, add some additional layers,
[00:18:54] have x sounds, fade in, fade out, risers, whatever, just to make it interesting.
[00:19:03] Also the drums are very basic, like I explained, it's just very simple synthesis inside of
[00:19:09] the grid.
[00:19:11] It's just fun to me to make these, but it's not like state of the art, probably.
[00:19:17] So here you get something to work with or to start off and have at least something materialized
[00:19:24] as some clips inside of the ranger.
[00:19:28] You can see you don't need to actually record it, you can just bounce it, it just works.
[00:19:34] That's the drone you're going in and out, so now disable all of this, and you can just
[00:19:45] play it, or you can disable this.
[00:19:50] It's just audio files.
[00:20:06] So yeah, it just works.
[00:20:07] So this is my idea, this is how I do it sometimes when I get the itch of making one of my grid
[00:20:15] patches into a full track.
[00:20:18] And yeah, just like I said, you need to layer it with something else.
[00:20:23] It's not just you can bounce it out and then you have a full track, it's not that easy.
[00:20:28] You need to arrange it a bit, maybe you want the bass sound, not from the beginning, right?
[00:20:32] You want to fade in the arp here, at a certain point, you want to fade in the drone here,
[00:20:40] something like this, maybe you want the outro here, something like this.
[00:20:44] Maybe from the beginning here, you want to have some effects on drums, or maybe in high
[00:20:49] pass, then you go into the full drums, then maybe you have some percussion on top, stuff
[00:20:57] like this.
[00:20:58] That's how I would approach it.
[00:21:01] It's just a rough draft, and yeah, it's a nice starting point, I would say.
[00:21:10] So this is how I would do it, just to give you an idea here with the DC offset out.
[00:21:16] It's actually a question I get a lot, and I explained this a few years ago when the
[00:21:23] grid came out, but it's still not a straightforward solution and not everyone knows how it works.
[00:21:31] So yeah, get the audio signal, split it up into left and right channels, go to modulation
[00:21:39] out, use the modulation and modulate here, and DC offset for the left and the right channel,
[00:21:46] and then you get different audio out.
[00:21:49] And yeah, maybe there's a limitation, or maybe over sampling here with the DC offset, and
[00:21:53] maybe not top quality, but I can't hear any difference, and you know, for ambient and
[00:22:01] all the other things, there is worse quality in other VST plugins, and also people like
[00:22:09] to put it on tape and re-record it from tape, and they have a lot of kind of vintage flair
[00:22:18] to it, so why not using a DC offset, I don't see a reason why not using it.
[00:22:25] So yeah, give this a try, and that's my explanation for that 22 minutes, already too long, it's
[00:22:33] probably a lot of rambling in this video, I don't care.
[00:22:37] Let me know what you think, if you actually do this, and maybe let me know if you actually
[00:22:41] use my grid patches I publish on my other music channel, if you use that for your tracks,
[00:22:49] I have no idea, sometimes I just use my own grid patches for a backdrop, right, so instead
[00:22:54] of this here with drums and bass I maybe use, I don't know, something like this here, fireflies
[00:23:01] for instance, it's just pads, right, why not use this as a drone sound or backdrop of a
[00:23:16] song, just make it a bit quieter in the background, and then place something on top, and you have
[00:23:21] a very dense atmosphere, that's how I do it sometimes.
[00:23:26] So yeah, let me know what you think in the comments down below.
[00:23:30] Thanks for watching, see you in the next video.
[00:23:32] Bye.
[00:23:33] .
[00:23:34] [Music]
[00:23:54] you
[00:23:56] [BLANK_AUDIO]