Bitwig Improves Plug-in Hosting & Crash Protection

US 18/03/19

Bitwig has been in touch to tell us tha,t for their update Bitwig Studio 2.5, they have overhauled their plug-In hosting and crash protection and they have posted a video about it. Here's the details in their own words:

Overhauled Plug-in Hosting and Crash Protection
Bitwig Studio’s architecture has always supported 32-bit and 64-bit plug-ins (VST2.4 and VST3) natively. All VST formats can run side by side without any bridging technology. And with Bitwig’s advanced use of sandboxing, no plug-in is able to crash the whole project, or even stop the project’s audio.

For Bitwig Studio 2.5, two additional plug-in hosting modes were added to work with the latest industry developments, and we also improved the memory usage of our VST hosting in general.

In the Bitwig Studio Dashboard, five hosting modes now determine how plug-ins are handled, ranging from resource-saving to super-secure:

Within Bitwig. Plug-ins are loaded along with the audio engine. This requires the least memory, but any single plug-in can crash all audio.

Together. Plug-ins are sandboxed together, separating them from the audio engine.

By manufacturer. Individual sandboxes are created for each plug-in manufacturer. (This can be necessary when plug-ins need to communicate with one another.)

By plug-in. Individual sandboxes are created for each plug-in used. When a plug-in is used multiple times, its instances are sandboxed together, reducing the required memory.

Individually. Individual sandboxes are created for each plug-in used. This is the most memory-intensive option, but the safest.