Renoise just became more useful when it comes to hardware synths thanks to mxb’s new tool “freeze tracks”. New Tool (2.7, 2.8): Track Freezing
I agree that Renoise is not the optimal DAW for using hardware, but thanks to more tools and features it will get there. To me, the tracker interface and “Instr MIDI control” device makes it cool enough. I don’t know anything about the Virus TI interface though.