I’ve been using this forum actively for about a year now and I’m just hugely impressed. The community is supportive and helpful. Threads mostly stay on topic without people falling into turf wars.
There are loads of great music making competitions with a really high quality of entry.
I know how hard this is to achieve as I was one of the founders of The Fretboard (did the initial deving and was an admin for the first 5 or so years). Which is a similar high point in quality for music communities.
I was wondering if people knew of other electronic music communities which hit a similar high watermark?
The reason I ask is that I often have “in the box” questions like “What’s a good sounding synth VST with low CPU?” and though I’m sure I’d get a good answer I don’t like to ask it on here when this is a primarily hardware focussed forum.
I used Reddit occasionally, but it’s much lower quality compared to here and KVR threads seem more likely to end up in squabbling.
I don’t think you’ll have any problems asking those sorts of questions here, to be honest. If there’s a similar thread it might just get folded into that, but by and large everyone here is a music nerd keen as to help out and chew the fat. Lines is a great community, maybe a bit more poetic than Nauts in spots, and maybe with a slight academic userbase as well? General tech questions might find their home in an aggregate thread there, too. I like both sites, and hang out on both. Lines I feeI I can be a bit more expressive with writing, Nauts a bit more of a laugh and hardware-boxy, but ITB is welcome absolutely
Awesome! Look around and get a feel for the place. I started off mostly searching for Elektron specific tip threads, but there’s loads of thought and discussion going on every day, it can be hard to look away
doesn’t bitwig has a grid where you can basically build your own synths? sounds like the best option cpu-wise to me, there a loads of vsts that sound good but once you put them in high quality mode or start modulating they all start building up usage…
imo vital is nuts and pretty mellow on the cpu, serum always a great choice, lots of people really like the pigments although I’m not sure how it’s on the cpu…
generally there’s no way around cpu usage rather just sampling your synths / freezing tracks, it’s a hassle but once you like the sound coming from the plugin but it’s using 3/4 of the cpu there’s no way around it…
. Bigwig (autocorrect which I’ll leave in here ) is like a modular synth. Ableton as well. Really utilizing the stock plugins is the easiest way to save CPU usage and provides loads of possibilities once you start adding modulation sources and what not.
There are great Bitwig Grid tutorials on the official YouTube channel, plus those of Polarity and Taches Teaches. The latter is my favourite because I love his voice and vibe. I don’t bother with Polymer or Phase 4 tho. The Grid does all that and more.
Back to the original topic, I’m on Lines too, though I mainly lurk rather than participate. It’s much more in-depth and academic than here and there’s much more focus on modular/Eurorack, too. There’s way less posting frequency than here, tho, and the vibe is a bit friendlier and funnier here in my experience.
…another happy bitwiguser here…was a heavy hw and especially elektron user for the last decade…but slimmed it down to a4, two ot’s, a heat, a cycles and a st…
and nope, i’m not aware of any other techtalk gear lover place like this…
and i don’t need to find one, since even if all u need is itb tips, u gonna find the answers here…
as mentioned here already, if it all comes down to bitwig details, bitwigs very own utube resources and knowledge basics do all the trick…
and in case u have not realized by now, no matter which daw is ur choice, end of the day, it’s all about learning it’s shortcuts to know it inside out, so no hardware can really make u feel gas for more ever again…
daws can only be annoying, if u curve around and through ur screen real estate with nothing but a mouse all day long…
get a oldschool klak klak keyboard, a heavy trackball, a dead simple basic controler and know the shortcuts and whoooosh, ur flying…
or go for the most slimlined way possible and reduce it all to absolute max with nothing but a solid laptop, insist that ur trackpad needs only tapping but no clicking AND have ur shortcuts in mind again…
) is like a modular synth. Ableton as well. Really utilizing the stock plugins is the easiest way to save CPU usage and provides loads of possibilities once you start adding modulation sources and what not.
