i've never used any version of Bitwig's browser pre-v5. This looks like generic Windows Exploer/old school Mac Finder. That kinda sorta looks like how other DAWS all have the expandable lists but it's all pre-expanded and taking up your whole screen. No thank you.a new pop-up browser to see all your plugins and options in one view!
Between the context views you can set up, the collections, smart collections, snapshots, sound library/sample locations, I am finding Bitwig's browser to be the best browser of any DAW I've ever used. I can get to everything so quickly and with zero mousing around.
However, as a Bitwig noob, I will say it was extremely unintuitive to learn. A bit akin to learning how to use a spreadsheet or some shit like that lmao. (well, not exactly that bad, but you get the point.) But once it's all set up, and I got accustomed using it without mousing/clicking, it's so f**king crazy quick and functional IMO. As soon as I think of an instrument, plug-in, preset, or sample to bring up, I can have it up 3 seconds after the thought entered my brain without mousing or clicking on anything.
There are some superfluous things about it tho that clutter it up a bit. Tags for instance, is just nonsensical. Also, when first booting up Bitwig, the indexing is annoying. If you boot up Bitwig and get right to the browser searching for something, there is about 2 minutes of it "finding shit" and updating it's lists.
I've been observing alot of the complaints that I've been reading about the browser are simply a case of having to RTFM. Somebody the other week literally made an angry post about "I just want to find MY CREATED presets and most used plug-ins yada yada" and I thought "This is so low effort you don't even need to read the f'n manual do to that. This person isn't even trying." I guess that shows tho, to be fair, that alot of people are not willing to learn or expecting anything outside of a Windows Explorer/Mac Finder like experience from their browser.
Also, to be fair/sympathetic, it did indeed take some months for me to settle into the Bitwig browser, because like I said, it isn't exactly intuitive when you first see it. My opinion over the course of 3 months went from "this is whack omfg so terrible" to "it's okay-ish I guess" to "I kinda miss the Bitwig browser when I'm in other DAWS like Pro Tools" to "Oh shit, I think the Bitwig browser is the best one after all, isn't it?" haha
Cheers
Statistics: Posted by Funk Dracula — Sat Mar 30, 2024 2:42 am