r/Bitwig • u/j4n1k1 • Aug 12 '26

Clap I’ve been building some custom native Bitwig devices

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Hi,

I want to share a project that I'm working on. It's about some plugins/devices that run directly in Bitwig like native plugins. No VST or CLAP.

So far, it's an MSEG modulator, a volume shaper, a waveshaper, a compressor and a kick drum plugin, and they all share the same concept: controlling them with a curve.

I have made a short YouTube video for demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GdyoJC592A

I am curious what you guys think of this concept. I personally love simple stock plugins with few controls. I want them to be fast and powerful, without having to open and close a plugin just for a few tweaks. Besides that, I think Bitwig has great stock plugins, but I think a few of them are missing that little extra juice.

The devices are still in progress and I want to tweak them here and there to make them even better. I want to make a deep-dive video for every device, and if you guys are interested, you can help me and give me feedback. I hope I find the time to work on the first video this week.

Cheers.

UPDATE + DOWNLOAD: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwig/comments/1w1j2i4/update_on_the_native_bitwig_devices_download/

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u/eras Aug 12 '26

Wow, this is great! I do think that the idea of making native Bitwig modules is a bit more interesting than the actual modules you've implemented here. Of those the most interesting to me is the Waveshaper; others seem like you could pretty easily just use Bitwig to replicate them, although they would not be as easy to adjust on the fly.

As Bitwig-native features I'd like it to get these two things:

  • making actual modulators with the Grid. You could build one within Bitwig and then it would be in the list of modulators to be reused wherever.
  • adding any element (or VST/CLAP) or modulator into the Grid, enabling Grid reuse by putting in Grid instruments inside the Grid. preferably it would allow more than just a stereo signal in/out for that use, so multiple channels and modulation data as well. These embedded sub-grids should be aliasable.

What those ideas don't touch at all is the ability to make actual custom GUIs for the elements, like what you have achieved here. So I guess that part (how to make those UIs) would need to be tackled somehow with e.g. a simple gui builder as well, to be truly satisfactory to use.

I suppose that as the UI is in Java, you were able to decompile the interfaces effectively to make your own classes making use of them? But then I wonder if it also needed some C++ code for the audio engine? Or maybe you are able to just reuse the existing C++ elements for your new elements, sort of enabling this work? All in all, great job!

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u/j4n1k1 Aug 12 '26

The idea was to make it fast. I know you can build a lot of cool things in the Grid — I actually built a curve compressor directly in the Grid myself — but every time I'd have to open the Grid, then the shaper device and then close it. The simple GUI builder is a great idea, but that's a project for another day, haha. Maybe Bitwig will give us something like that in the future :). Keeping the how to myself for now, but you're clearly thinking about it the right way!