Bitwig's New Native Devices

US Decompiled devices include Ableton Glue Compressor & Roar      17/09/26

Some expert computer giggery-pokery has allowed for a number of fantastic new native devices in Bitwig! Normally against the Bitwig TOS (terms of service), last month a Bitwig user shared news of an open-source tool chain to Decompile Bitwig's Nitro Modules, without redistributing Bitwigs code. This is therefore (presumably) not infringing on any legal terms defined by Bitwig (please seek your own legal advice) and great for their users, with some fantastic new toys to play with! 

Get Bitwig here
 


Decompiling is a process where you can essentially unpack a program or plugin completely, enabling you to rebuild (or recompile) it in another format. There have been a huge wave of decompiled ("decomps") and recompiled ("recomps") video games in the last few years - enabling all kinds of modern enhancements to age-old software and programs. 

A couple of videos on the subject are below, and all the details here, on Reddit and on GitHub...

Bitwig Studio got hacked - not the website, the actual application. People are now building their own devices that appear directly inside Bitwig's native device chain. No VST window, no CLAP wrapper: SHARD, Halftime, OTT, Normalizer, Growl and even an Ableton-style Glue Comp. In this video I show these devices working, explain the reverse engineering behind Bitwig's Nitro DSP format and ask whether this could become the beginning of a completely new community ecosystem around Bitwig Studio. Important: These are unofficial experiments, not a supported Bitwig SDK. The current methods are version-specific, can break after updates and may crash the audio engine. Back up first and experiment at your own risk. If Bitwig released an official device and UI editor tomorrow, what would you build first?

Timestamps below... 

0:00 Bitwig Got Hacked 0:57 Halftime Is a Native Device Now 1:38 How This Is Even Possible 2:05 Custom Devices, Downloads and the TOS 3:11 Ableton Devices Inside Bitwig 3:43 AI Can Modify the DAW Itself 4:58 Why This Could Be Huge for Bitwig 5:49 My Native OTT and Normalizer 7:38 I Rebuilt Ableton Roar 8:54 More Devices - and the Crashes 10:38 What Bitwig Can Learn From Game Mods 12:56 Will Bitwig Shut This Down?

 

One of the first videos to show the devices working... 

 

More from Polarity Music

 

About the author [midierror]: midierror is co-founder of Potato Audio, he makes nifty Max For Live devices, award-winning Sample Packs and hosts the 'midierror meets...' interview series speaking with all kinds of people working in sound & music. 


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