Is that strange, or what? Well, the last version is from -98 … Draw your own conclusions. But I can tell you that back then there didn’t exist any better trackingprogram. And besides even Renoise reminds of the very first tracking softwares made 10-15 years ago. So… Very Outdated, nope I can’t really agree with that. But it depends how you look at it.
Very ridicolous, indeed.
Yes, and it felt outdated already back then. Even amiga-trackers felt more up to date back then (octamed for example felt more up to date already back in 1992-93 than ft2 ever did, unfortunately Teijo Kinnunen left the team when it was time for a PC-port so Octamed died after the amiga-verion of soundstudio, the versions released on pc is unfortunately just crap). I will never underdtand the hype of ft2.
FT2 LOOK MAY BE OUTDATED,
But i think it’s very efficient. Renoise took the best out of ft2 and upgraded it to current standards.
This really is the best there is nowadays. Everybody who tracked in the past can handle renoise. Learning curve is about two days if you know how to handle a tracker. It took me about a year to learn ft2 without any help from internet, forums or anything else.
Í won’t even try skaletracker. Why should I. I can’t imagine it has anything more than renoise. Renoise is as good as complete and is upgraded regularly. Can we wish anything else???
Big up for those renoise die-hards who keep improving this fine piece of software!!! 
Isn’t that kinda silly? I mean, you should at least try it rather than just assume, right?
As for me, I did try it…took one look at the limited envelope capabilities and went straight back to Renoise. Gotta love those sweet jabbanoising envelopes. 
In fact, it would be great if you could have Renoise instrument envelopes that worked on MIDI CCs, so you could use them with VSTis rather than just sample-based instruments.
interesting idea, but can’t be realized because of the most annoying VSTi limitation: you don’t have control over the single note: if you send a MIDI CC message to the VSTi, every note will receive it.
Thats right, I should have a look at it, but I’m working on renoise right now, installed it this week (week 3 jan’04) and it works.
I downloaded skale-T’s setup, but havent done anything with it (yet). i’ll probably have a look at it.
But not now…
“Man must sometimes assume before trying it all!”
I see what you mean, that is a big limitation. Wouldn’t be a problem for monophonic VSTis though…?
Another crazy feature the instrument envelopes could have is the ability to morph from one envelope to another at a set speed, triggered from the pattern editor. Could result in some very interesting evolving riffs.
Another crazy feature the instrument envelopes could have is the ability to morph from one >envelope to another at a set speed, triggered from the pattern editor. Could result in some very >interesting evolving riffs.
Like this idea a lot! Could definitely get some cool things working with this I think!
not me but have to agree with that robert
yes it would work.
but this is probably something to implement for ReNoise’s proprietary plugin SDK which is going to be defined later.
I’m not getting your point. What was so unmodern with FT2 in -98 ? And what did the Amiga trackers bring that FT2 didn’t ? Anyway, there might be amazing stuff to make as good quality music as today already 20 years ago, but then you did have to spend a lot of money. I’m talking about free (ok, not entirely free but very cheap) softwares on PC… With this in mind, FT2 ruled the scene back then 
You are so right. It took the best out of it and added all the stuff that I missed from it… So Renoise is simply the number one software.
A thought with regard to the plugin SDK: The Creamware SCOPE platform has got a lot of good plugins on it because the Creamware folks offer some basic building blocks. E.g. You may not be able to develop a good oscillator yourself, but they’ve already done that work, so you can borrow theirs and concentrate on customising the synth in other ways (whereas without a good oscillator the plugin might otherwise be way dodgy).
I’m not sure if this is practical for the Renoise plugin SDK, but some kind of step down that “here’s some basic, high quality building blocks” path might go a long way towards ensuring quality on the platform.
That would mean that Renoise would have built-in simple (or not) modular synthesizer? Although I think this would definetly be useful (free extra modular synth, who would say no?) I think that coding of it would take a huge amount of time and resources. And there is already many good VST synths and definetly the new SDK would encourage codes, especially new ones, to try out their skills and make some great plugins. And I dont really think that these oscillators make huge difference. Saw wave is saw wave and pulse wave is pulse wave anyway. More I think means the filters and such, that give the synth its characteristic sound. If someone is to code a plugin I really think he should know how to make an oscillator that sounds like the wave that is being played, and when done then one can just use that osc he already developed in any synth he will make later. I don’t see this synth block-building as very important thing. Get Reaktor instead. 
Or did you mean like open library for sources of synths? The developers of course could base their own community for trading source codes… :?
Another question is would these plugins be under public license or could the developers start asking money from them. I think both have their pros and cons, but that is not the thing to discuss under this topic.
And comparsion to Skale tracker is useless to discuss. Only ones that would find skale tracker more useful is because of taste (it looks like FT2). So let the retro people decide for themselves, everyone can try it out anyway. Personally I never liked FT2.
No one knows THE truth. 
But we can use the excluding theory 
And I am talking about as free programs as you do. med/octamed on the amiga was shareware (exactly as ft2 was) and they also released the older versions as freeware when a new verion was released. I started to use MED back in 1990 when version 2.00 was released, it was the first tracker with real MIDI support and that was pretty essential to me cause I had a couple of synths and wanted to use them in my creations. Another big different between med and the trackers I did use before was the interface, it felt modern back then and it didn’t try to rip off the old boring soundtracker/protracker interface together with its limitations. med continued to develop on the amiga until 1996. At that point the amiga was almost dead and I was starting to consider to buy a pc instead. I did start to look at the alternatives and found fasttracker, and I didn’t know if I should cry or laugh, the interface was like taking a step back to 1987, the program I was used to at that point was octamed soundstudio, and that program have had a better interface than this sad soundtracker-clone for years. Sure, fasttracker was able to play 16 channels inside the box, and octamed only 8, but I was using external synthesizers and samplers so I realy didn’t care about that, on almost all other points fasttracker was much more pimitve than octamed on the amiga. If you want to know exactly what octamed had that fasttracker didn’t hace you can download octamed soundstudio 1.03 (the amiga version, the pc version is a joke) and try for yourself, it is freeware nowadays. Sure it feels primitive compared to todays standards and if you aren’t used to the Amiga-OS you are probably going to think it sucks just because of that. but even if it feels primitve today it is far from as primitive as fasttracker ever was… 
just flush this f**ling ft2-crap down in the toilet once and for all and let us never be reminded of it again 
btw, if I shall finish my little story: when I finaly bought a PC I started to use cubase just because the lack of good trackers of the PC-platform, I did so until I found out about Renoise alittle more than a year ago…
and btw, the scene was already dead when ft2 arrived, that is probably the reason why it was so easy for it to “rule the scene” 
Well, Med came 3 years after Soundtracker. Thats maybe why they are not mention it. Med is also still developed on the PC and that is maybe another reason. But if you try to search google and type for exampel ‘music tracking history’ then in the first link that appears you can read about both soundtracked, med and fastttracker… or maybe take a look here http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOD
So you are saying that med wasn’t popular? Well, that is your words. Sounddtracker and ProTracker was ofcourse more widely used than MED but that was mostly because MED was mainly suitable for people who made music with more than 4 channels, and that required external synths, something that most amiga owners didn’t have. You could still do 4ch mod’s in MED aswell and you wont see any different from a mod made in MED or in PT so don’t think all 4ch-mod’s on aminet are made in pt or st
I can undoubtedly say that med was the most popular tracker after st/pt.
I would say it was a pretty small step considering what you could have made with such a big step in hardware…
If you read my previous posts you also see that I do NOT deny that, but neither think it is anything good. As I said: read my previous posts and you get my answers…
I was maybe wrong about that but as I said I didn’t care much about it cause I used synths and samplers.
Unfortunately, nostalgia doesn’t make the world turn
And I went to the same school as Crayon (the author of ProTracker2.x)
I have never denied that
Have to agree with twilek here, but I guess it’s because we are more or less in the same situation. I found OctaMED very late when Soundstudio just had been released, but wished I’ve found it sooner. I left the demoscene in '94 or so when I also felt it died…
Btw, Soundstudio could play 64 (or was it 32?) sample tracks Anyhow, I don’t have a strong opinion about FT2 because I’ve never used it, except for just trying it out. But I do know OctaMED was a tracker beyond its time and has several features Renoise lack (talking about the Amiga version that is). Many features people here are requesting or discussing now, 8 years later. For example notation editor, several songs in one, mapping of MIDI notes to launch basically anything, sysex editor, resizable/movable windows and scripting. The scripting allowed you to access almost all functions making it possible to set up complex short-cuts for example. I remember one script that created bassdrums (like stomper). And things like “make all patterns unique and then sort them” could be done with a small script. Hmm… think I lost my point now… Well, anyway, I think OctaMED is a better model than FT2 in many ways since it really was revolutionary, as you said twilek…