The Bitwig Studio DAW transforms Linux computers into music workstations

Tunesmith

© Lead Image © Igarts, 123RF

© Lead Image © Igarts, 123RF

Article from Issue 164/2014
Author(s):

Bitwig Studio is the first complete music workstation offered as a commercial product for Linux. Now, Linux finally offers music production software that has, up to now, only been available on other platforms.

The Berlin-based startup Bitwig [1] announced plans for a new major league digital audio workstation for Linux about two years ago. About a year ago, a beta version of Bitwig Studio for Linux came out for testing, and in March 2014, the company finally released a complete version (Figure 1), having completely eliminated the bugs from the beta.

Figure 1: Bitwig Studio 1.0 is fully equipped – audio tracks, MIDI tracks, plugins, automation – and it's true Linux software that feels at home on desktops like KDE.

Besides the freely licensed Ardour and its smaller "siblings," such as Qtractor and MusE, musicians also have access to commercial and proprietary music production suites on Linux. Most are geared to the needs of electronic music producers. Renoise and Tracktion are built natively for Linux, whereas Reaper is a Windows program optimized for operation with Wine.

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