Ive been using Ableton for a while as the rewire master in my live setup, but recently discovered Cakewalk Kinetic, very straightforward program, basically a groove box with a synth, reasonably priced, easy and fun to play, and Im trying to see about slaving it as an audio sequencer, which pretty much is all I was using Ableton for in the setup, in the current incarnation only 2 channels of audio are sequenced, the rest is all MIDI, so theres not really a significant reason to keep on using Live, and Ive always been frustrated by a few of its quirks.
The main thing that I was doing in Live, though, that I don’t know how to do with Renoise (Im still 2.5.10) was running analog-style mono step sequencers which I had mapped to teh controller and are very fun to play sequencing racks of instruments. I can see how not only is it possible to rack instruments in a single channel Renoise with control over what is active in the CPU, but its potentially possible to toggle the on/offs of more than one at a time, wiht Live’s chain selection its very linear.
The other thing that Live can do a bit easier than Renoise, is off-time percussion, but Kinetic can do that just fine with more MIDI connectivity. Its been a major sticking point in the developemnt of my setup, how to arrange percussion with enough variation so it doesn;t just sound like Im up there with e single drum machine wiht a single mono sequence ad nauseum. And Kinetic is fun to platy, part of why i shaved off the bulk of audio sequencing was the wonderfully awkward mouse based piano roll doesnt really bring mback for more wiht new ideas… Kinetic is more like a hardware box with integral seqa la Electribe, and I can’t think of what else Id want to do that Renoise wouldn’tbt. Exept run in Win7 x64… (which causes me to look simily arly at Reaper as another idea).
I just don’t know how, or if its possible, to route MIDI within Renoise, and I recall that being the reason that sidechaining isn’t really possible, or wasn’t, or soemthing, anyway if Im wrong I would love to know how to do that…
Anyway, the potential for Kinetic to fill the gaps seems intriguing and I hadn’t seen any mention of it around here