Buzz User Questions

Help, Support & Bugs Beginners Questions - Renoise
1

I love Jeskola Buzz and I always will. But there’s only one guy working on it (for the most part), and granted he’s doing some amazing stuff, like overhauling the whole system to support 64-bit VST’s and making it easy to port native machines to 64 bit. Or opening the GUI’s up so that anyone can write an interface, sequencer or pattern editor in .NET or even just xaml.

But rather then becoming a developer, I want to write music NOW. I don’t want to wait another couple years (or even forever) till a Buzz pattern editor comes out that’s as slender and intuitive as the Renoise one is right now.

So that’s why I like Renoise, it’s all pattern, hardly any fluff and it’s quick and easy on my CPU. There are just a few things I’m really going to miss from Buzz, and some of these are features I tried to experiment with or search this forum for, but were unable to find. So I apologize if what I’m asking about already exists in some form and would indeed like to know if equivalent features exist in Renoise and where to find them.

  1. Peer Control - these are kind of like the meta automation stuff in the new version. I was going to ask if there’s a way to send the same data to multiple instruments across tracks, but just downloaded the 2.7 demo and see that Hydra does just that (across tracks tho?). Peer Controllers in Buzz can remap data based on a drawable envelope, not just min/max plus there are a ton of them: Accumulator, Trigger (Renoise has an envelope follower now but I’m going to miss Peer Trigger), Peerscale, etc. But I’m sure I have enough to play with in Renoise without all my beloved Peer controllers. And I would fall flat on my face if the automation devices Renoise does have can work at audio rate, as opposed to Buzz’s 256 block size…

  2. Effect triggering by note. Essential but I can’t seem to find this one anywhere. If I add an instance of Reaktor 5 to the DSP chain, how do I send a note to it? I have too many Reaktor patches to give this one up. Oh, and that brings me to…

  3. VST automation precision. I believe in Buzz there is a whole WORD of precision for a given VST param unless you use a CC to automate it. Renoise doesn’t seem to work like that because of all the custom tracker commands for each VST which take up the first two digits in a column. I can live without that, but again, using this with Reaktor allows one to make their own VST commands for example.

  4. Kind of like 1. But in regards to VST. I admit I’m being lazy here and didn’t look at the forum extensively, but can you send data from one VST, effect or otherwise to any other VST or native machine? If so is such routing restricted to the current track, or only one other plugin? Can I send Reaktor data to Hydra for example?

  5. Is there a possibly of creating a feedback loop in Renoise? While doable in Buzz, it’s kind of unofficial and imperfect at the moment, and I would like to see how Renoise handles it if possible.

That’s all the really important stuff I can think of. I may add more later if I run into anything while playing with Renoise 2.7.

Thanks for reading all this, and sorry about the pseudo Buzz rant, it really is a great piece of software, but no one should restrict themselves to one program when we have so much available IMHO.

2

Ey, welcome to the forums…

I have no experience with Buzz besides some hours of playing with it a few years ago and don’t have time to answer your questions now (some I don’t get :)).

While it will be hard, I think you should forget about all of your old workflow in Buzz and simply try and build new experiences and ways of working with Renoise. I think the manual for 2.7 will be ready soon, but the old one is still online somewhere. If you are serious about learning Renoise you should check it.

Good luck!

3

1: Hydra device -> automation device on the same track can control things on other tracks. ( use you buzz-fu, it’s all about the chaining. )
2: in Instrument settings choose VST FX alias. Now this “instrument” sends notes to that effect
3: I think using an automation device to automate VST params gives you higher resolution that using MIDI CCs, but I’m not sure.
4: no you can’t > :(
5: I don’t think you can. (could try VSTs like wormhole - but while I use it often, I haven’t tried making a feedback loop with it)

4
  1. Audio or midi/control feedback? Audio, no; you can never route to a track to the left or previous device. Control, kind of; the Hydra lets you break the rule of only controlling devices later in the processed chain, so you can have a control then affect something earlier in the chain, so you can route a meta device (eg Signal Follower) to a Hydra and then back, (so you could have a Delay device and then its own delay effected output adjusting a parameter of itself via a Signal Follower for example.)
5

Yeah, I played around more with Hydra and see a lot of possibilities there. I love the way I can put automation into tracks with a right click.

It took me a while to figure out that a separate instrument was needed to do what you were talking about with notes → effects. At first I had my effect on the VST alias track.

I tried the Instr Automation device again to see if I could get greater precision, but it has to be proceeded by the command to work it seems :( It’d be nice if I could just open a VSTi/FX and choose a param to automate right off the bat, without setting up an automation device. Going to the “DSP” menu for this seems to be a misnomer anyway: I thought DSP was for effects, and automation more of a “generator” or “instrument” thing. But again, I’m thinking in terms of Buzz.

Number 4 is a bummer, but I’m sure the devs see the value in that, since there are so many nice VST sequencers, not to mention midi transforming vst’s like all the pizmidi stuff. I’m sure there’s plenty of other things to experiment with at the moment though.

Thanks for all the help/clarifications.