It’s possible to use External FX hardware with Renoise, but I won’t pretend that it’s easy. It requires some weird processing, which I’ll try to cover below. Whether this will work for you or not is, well, up to you and your needs…personally, I use an Alesis Quadraverb externally from time to time. I don’t mind the weird workflow with Renoise, but I could understand if others aren’t willing to put up with it.
PART ONE: ROUTING SETUP
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Yes, use the outputs that show up in the bottom of the mixer channel. I’m assuming you want to use the external unit as a Send effect, which is also what I do. So, as you’ve already pictured above, choose the output pair that corresponds to your Audio Interface’s Output that connects to the hardware FX unit. I’m not sure how your audio interface is configured exactly, but basically whichever outputs have the cables going to your hardware FX, thats the pair to select as output in the Send track.
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Now you need to create a second Send track in Renoise. No, it’s not possible to use hardware FX with just 1 Send Track in renoise, you -must- use two. Renoise currently lacks an “external effect” device that you find in some other DAWs, which simplifies the routing process. In renoise, you have to do this routing manually. So, create a 2nd Send Track, and put a LINE INPUT device on it. Then set the input of the LINE INPUT device to the inputs on your audio interface that receive the output of of the hardware FX unit. The output of this second Send Track should simply be Master.
make sense? In my setup, I have these named “To Quadraverb” and “From Quadraverb” to keep things clear, so that when I put the Send device on various tracks, I always want to select " To Quadraverb". You’ll never need to Send to the “From…” track, it exists purely as routing to grab the output of the FX (via the Line Input device, as described above) and pass it on to the master.
example in usage:
Track A, a synth in Renoise, has a Send device on it. This Send device Sends a portion of its signal to Send A, which passes the signal to the Input of the hardware FX device. The hardware processes it, and then Send B receives the output of the hardware and passes that on to your Master buss.
PART TWO: WHEN IT COMES TIME TO RENDER…YOU HAVE TO RECORD THE FX OUTPUT MANUALLY
Here’s the big problem with Renoise and external FX (yes, bigger than the routing headache above): when it comes time to mixdown, you have to manually render (e.g. record in real time) the output of the FX unit.
Renoise, in its current form, will not render any external devices when you tell it to render a full mix, or (sadly) even with the “Render to Sample” command.
This means that for the purposes of just working on your track, you can Send as much track content to that External FX send as you want, and you’ll always hear the External FX just fine, BUT when you render your track, the FX will not be printed!
So what to do? You have to “print” the external FX output yourself (see below) and then once that done, trigger that recorded content, and then render your whole song.
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Create a Track
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Switch to the sample editor – you’re going to Record into it.
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Choose the SECOND Send track in the routing described above (in my setup, the “From Quadraverb” track) as the recording input.
(because you want to record exclusively the ‘wet’ processed signal from the external hardware).
- real-time Record as much of the song as you need – you can break this into individual patterns if you want to, or record the whole song’s worth, it’s basically up to you how you want to organize it.
What you’ll then have is new “instruments” (since any recorded sample in Renoise is an ‘instrument’) that is really just the raw waveform of your wet-signal Return FX, which means…
You need to input a note in the sequencer trigger that audio. In effect, you’re just playing back a recording of the FX instead of the realtime FX output of the hardware. At this point you can turn off the FX sends that were sending (so you don’t hear doubled-up FX).
the newly recorded signal does not contain any dry signal; it simply represents the Wet, Send FX content. In other words, it’s a recording of the FX only, so it has to be played back alongside the dry signal. Basically you’re replacing the Send FX with a new channel that plays back a recording of those send FX (why? again, because Renoise won’t render that content by itself; you’re doing it manually so that it shows up in your final render).
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So, that’s the process. If you’re competent / experienced with audio routing and keeping it all straight in your head, this is actually not difficult, I swear! It’s just a matter of managing the difference between “realtime FX output” and “rendered FX output” (the latter being done via the recorded samples of that output).
People’s mileage will vary, of course. It all follows a certain logic, but certainly Renoise could have improvements down the line that would vastly simplify this process.
Meanwhile, this is how you do it… give it a shot and see if it can work for you.
-Michael