Compared To Buzz

Hi all,

Brand new here and not a Renoise user yet…

Are there any ex or actual Buzzer here ?

I’m considering buying Renoise and dropping Buzz.

I’m asking myself what I would win and what I would loose in the change.

I know there is a free demo, but before investing time in learning, I would love to read some objective opinions

k

Hey Kara, not a Buzz user myself, but some here have used it

Why would you want to drop Buzz completely? Don’t think a new sequencer will kill procrastination or magically create hits for you. Time and dedication is what’s needed here. The fact that you’re thinking of dropping Buzz, makes me wonder if when Renoise doesn’t grant you ‘immediate’ results, you’re posting a similar thread in a fruityloops forum :)

Of course there’s nothing wrong with using multiple sequencers, experimenting, trying out new toys. Why don’t you install the demo which only limitation is render to disk and asio support, it will still let you save …judge for yourself, trust noone!!

Well, to answer a couple of your questions
-I won’t drop Buzz completly, there are a couple of buzz machines that i couldn’t miss :)
But it looks to me that renoise has a couple of major advantages over buzz
The biggest seems to me that patterns are independant of instruments, which is Buzz isn’t the case; Create in buzz a couple of pattern and the decide that you want to use another machine and you are in big shit…
Another one that sample handling and mapping is realy more advanced then in Buzz
It is allso a fact that the development of Buzz is dead, and despite the fact that there are a couple of clone development out there, none of them I found are in a usuable production stage. Contrary to renoise which seems to be a ongoing development.

I am playing with the demo at the moment and must say that alltough it has a hugh feature set, I pretty fast found my way in it, after browsing trough the manual.
At the moment, the biggest feature I’m missing is the fantastic routing possibilities of Buzz.

Perhaps there are other things missing which old buzzers realy are missing, this was the reason of my question.

Fruity loops, you are kidding aren’t you… :D

Well the routing is there in Renoise, its just sendchannels instead. (Yes you can connect a send channel to another send channel etc.)

(Which ofcourse is not a visible and easy but it does the job)

There are some advantages to not using modular routing also.
You can for example automate the routing in Renoise by automating the send device.

You can also have different tracks with different effect chains on them and then play your sample or vsti instrument in different tracks to quickly hear what it sounds like with different effects.

Its also has a much better pattern editor. Better/more shortcuts/undo autosave etc.

Though the arranger in Renoise is not a multipattern arranger.
(I still would much rather prefere a multi track arranger.)

So yes I think you should give it a serious effort, as in trying it as much as you can out for a month or two.

Renoise also have dedicated developers and is very stable.

Just found this, which might be interesting for you. No idea how well it works.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=172305

Yep I found this too, a shame it is very buggy, barely useable

Thanks for the link

k

Yeah ! Sendchannels is the thing !
I didn’t realize that it was the equivalent to routing.
I agree that it has a better pattern editor, but the lack of a multi-pattern will be a heck of a change for me.
I’m still not sure how to construct a song without a multi-pattern arrangement. I suppose that the only way is a lot of copy & paste ?

Thanks for your answer

k

Renoise is extremely stable… I don’t think I had a single crash since 1.8, and very very few before that. And besides, it saves a backup when crashing, so I’d call the stability perfect.

yep renoise is quite stable but crashes here sometimes, too (winXP SP2). but it crashes no more than nuendo, i blame hundreds of VST plugins installed…

No worries, buzz crashes too :)

i guess there are many renoisers who want to tell you whats good/better in renoise.
thats why im here to tell you what youll loose.
just a few things that came to my mind… in no particular order.

  • buzzmachines:
    ~ 400 effects
    ~ 300 generators
    u know there are some of those things you will never ever see again.

  • the trackers inside:
    utracker, matilde2 (and the ~60 new/old commands)

  • probably the best vst wrapper around (polac)

  • all peermachines (maybe the mightiest weapon of buzz)

  • higher command- resolution (4 digits)

  • the warmth/crappy sound (point of view)

  • modularity

  • abillity to import a song (ok thx to conner_bw; you can merge songs now via php)

  • real sidechaining

  • multipattern sequencer

  • ticks per beat

  • the church (active devs for buzzmachines)

  • addons like overloader, screamwaver or halfos cool editor

  • run the risk of loosing a track while tracking or re- opening it

g’day

Well, question: Can Buzz Midi-Export/Import? I really want Export Midi in Renoise although I am actually working at a XRNS-MID-Converter in PHP…

Thank you very much for this very detailed answer

k

import - yes (with kazuya’s midi- editor machine [yes, a nice pianoroll inclusive])
export - no (but theres a b2m tool)

yes i know that one, and it works !
but in renoise you could do the same with the energyxt vsti i suppose ?

TBH, I never managed to let that b2m tool , do something that works…
I asked a couple of times at buzzmachine & buzzchurch but never got a real answer how to make it work.

k

Still I see on your site that you use it yourself :)
Actually it is not Buzz crashing, but the machines :D which aren’t there in Renoise.
I suppose renoise would crash on a bad Vsti too…

But I have to admit, after 2 days I love the Ui of renoise. You can even do some semi routing using the send channels

BTW. We are fellow country men :) I’m from the centre of Bretagne

k

God… Rember the nagging about adding buzzplugs to Renoise? Wasn’t the code ready already, but dropped due to the high price tag? Think we can be glad it never was included, just imagine the crowded subforum with machine bugreports and the amount of time Taktik would have to spend on fixing those bugs (to be able to be proud of his stable composing environment) in stead of adding the awesome features he’s added now!

Oh, and about exporting to MIDI… There was a short tutorial here on the boards somewhere, Kizzume or IT-alien made it work with Energy XT.

Haha, Buzz. I used that 10 years ago. The crashing, the horrible sound quality (I always had pops), the harsh filters which were actually great for some things (ear splitting leads). Renoise is much better, missing only an arranger. But then again, I had a compilation CD release with the only tune I did in Buzz. Maybe I should switch back. :D

Buzz is so old skool

And the crashing is part of the charm.

I love its kitschness.

Yeah but his crashing charm can realy hurt :D

actually, BUZZ machines support was about to be added in a special version of Renoise, but then Oskari went mad about Lunar07, a BUZZ user and machine developer he probably hates, was a Renoise user, and decided not to allow Renoise to include BUZZ support.

that one is still one of the lamest things I’ve ever seen on this forum…