OK I’m back. After reviewing Sunjammer’s post, it’s clear that his issue with audio tracks is that it falls outside the tracker paradigm. I agree to a point, so I’ve decided to offer up some features that would give the functionality that I’m hoping audio tracks would give.
If we’re gonna attack this as a purely sample based solution, taktik has a valid point in stating that track freezing would solve the really long sample playback problem.
There are other issues in my opinion however. Recording audio is a big one. Many people have multiple inputs on their sound cards, and enjoy recording multiple parts at a time… whether it be in a band, or tweaking knobs on multiple synths. Currently, as far as I know at least, Renoise only supports recording one sample at a time. This has to change. I propose a feature that allows setting up multiple “tracks” for recording, where we can define which inputs we want to use, and have long samples recorded. As this is magical trackerland, there could also be a feature that automagically slices out the silent parts based on a threshold, and saves to separate sample chunks… placing the appropriate samples in the patterns as you record. This way, we could easily move around chunks of the recording at will.
The sample preplay, or predelay, is something that was recently discussed in another thread, and I’d like to bring it up again. We need a feature that allows us to set a fake startpoint for a sample, so that when we have the sample triggered in the pattern, it will start playing sooner than the note that is placed in the pattern. This pre-delay will allow for easy placement of reversed drum hits, and other rushing-type sounds. It will also allow for easy placement of lyrics that contain a pre-bar syllable or two.
The ability to time with dragging/visualization of timing … something that audio tracks could do, but so could having a mode where we represent notes as blocks. I’m not suggesting a piano roll as much as a mode where, like in Aodix, the notes+noteoffs are grouped visually by a block… yet in our implimentation, the notes would be moveable, changing the position and delay column value magically. This would tie in nicely with pattern zooming as well.
I’m fairly sure the features I’ve mentioned here are very much more tracker friendly than audiotracks… and if they were implimented as such, I would have no more desire for such an un-trackerlike feature