^Is kind of a good point, man. But, in a tracker or sampler workstation you cut the vocals up and play them when you need them and don’t waste bits and bytes or whatever on the noise floor. But, but, time marches on. But, but, if a stratocaster is still good enough!!
Fun conversation.
Spoiling the party, as usual:
Well, I believe it’s technically possible for a VST to (request) control of the host transport, but I think only a couple of DAWs allow this. So in most cases it just won’t work.
No, it’s unfortunately not.
Was more thinking the transport buttons, play/stop etc but if position worked then yes that would be even better. My thought was that renoise would pass MIDI commands to the host like an external controller does.
Simplyhave the transport controls sending CC`s like a virtual MIDI surface that can be mapped using the hosts mapping ability.
It’s not only about the simple start/stop commands, but also about synchronizing loops and changes in the playback position and tempo.
But even if this would work, I don’t really see why this would be easier than ReWire. ReWire takes care about exactly this + audio + MIDI routing between multiple apps.
^Is kind of a good point, man. But, in a tracker or sampler workstation you cut the vocals up and play them when you need them and don’t waste bits and bytes or whatever on the noise floor. But, but, time marches on. But, but, if a stratocaster is still good enough!!
Fun conversation.
Well, sometimes it’s much more fun to use a DAW like Reaper for cutting and editing. For exactly these kind of situations ReWire support was added. And I’d expect that Renoise finally renders all tracks in sync, even the rewire track.
Spoiling the party, as usual:
No, it’s unfortunately not.
It’s not only about the simple start/stop commands, but also about synchronizing loops and changes in the playback position and tempo.
But even if this would work, I don’t really see why this would be easier than ReWire. ReWire takes care about exactly this + audio + MIDI routing between multiple apps.
I recall someone in these fora talking about there being some problem with PDC and ReWire. Can’t say i’ve noticed it myself but worth a mention, I thought.
It’s not only about the simple start/stop commands, but also about synchronizing loops and changes in the playback position and tempo.
I acknowledge the hurdle, but for example energyXT has two modes that are available for syncing, in the sequncer options menu [Internal / External]. When you set it to External it works as a slave to the renoise timeline, looping seems to works fine too. Maybe there are other ideas to get around further limitations of when renoise is in focus (rns_virtual_MID / MIDI Mapping a controller…)***(more brainstorming at end of post)
But even if this would work, I don’t really see why this would be easier than ReWire. ReWire takes care about exactly this + audio + MIDI routing between multiple apps.
—The points where VST beats Rewire: Generally being able to load multiple instances + File management
-Multiple Xrns loadable into host, bring your disparate xrns ideas together easily!
-Track freeze; Split different parts of your xrns to different tracks and freeze as required (only useful if you have multiple renoises to use so when one is frozen you work on the others)
-Easy long sweeping automations over Rns_VST(chords), or chopping glitchy automation over Rns_VST(beats) (multiple instances again, maybe rewire channels help here though)
-Use the output of Rns_VST as a sidechain source or destination (not strictly limited to but becomes more useful with more renoise instances)
-Save all as one song-file, in host
s own would improve renoises ability to share its content with other apps. Im sure it could benefit rewire users aswell (and ofc, hypothetical Rns_VST). I`d say this is the other half of the coin and pretty important.-Access to Piano Roll/ notation etc with fast D+D to and from Rns_VST (benefits to: standalone/ rewire/ Rns_VST)
-Use hosts pitch shift; render down sections, drag back into Rns_VST for instant tracker treatment (benefits to: standalone/ rewire/ Rns_VST)
Speculative about MIDI Mirroring , but could be a big bonus: Maybe this could even be achieved with a host like reaper already which has scripting??
-Lua scripting included in Rns_VST so that current tools work and new host specific helpers can be coded in the future (maybe two way MIDI mirroring could be achieved here)
***More brainstorming: I know there are VSTs that can share audio/ info between instances loaded on separate tracks. Maybe you could have a situation where you have 10 renoises loaded into your host all on diferent tracks all communicating with each other. Transport in one causes all other renoises to play/ stop/ loop at the same time. You use your host mainly as a platform for multiple renoise`s if you wished.
add in other features like rns_virtual_MID or even : rns_VST_virtual_rewire – Here only one copy of the renoise VST has to communicate with the host (like bidule does?). This copy can then sync all other renoises transports at the same time with the above data sharing…
call it re-borg!
all savable as a single host file.
No, it’s unfortunately not.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood something here what you guys are talking about, but at least in Logic as host you can control its transport (like PLAY/STOP) regardless if any other AU plug-in window is focused or not.
Redux behaves like this too but only while the editor is collapsed (not when it’s uncollapsed). So, I guess this is rather an intentional design decision rather than “technical reasons”. I suppose for some users this is exactly like they want it to work though, but it’s a workflow-obstacle to others if they’re used to plug-ins to not override the host-transport (which more often than not is the case).
This is my main-issue with Redux. I’d be happy if it was possible to at least optionally make Redux “bypass” the space key in future updates, so new modifications in the phrase editor efficiently and quickly could be tried out out along with the Logic arrangement (meaning without having to un-focus the Redux-window each time for PLAY/STOP). If needed, the SOLO-button in a DAW is there for a reason too.
This was also what we were discussing inthis topic, but you didn’t follow up when I mentioned that’s not a normal behavior of a plug-in.
“I would like”
renoise is fantastic stop crying like a baby - renoise is a solid DAW making it vapourware would kill it renoise 2.8 is still a great tool the current renoise is also fantastic and there’s no rush to update it all these whinners demanding piano rolls and the such can go away and use other DAW’s
If you think Renoise is perfect already and you don’t wish for any more features, then that’s fine and I respect that. But clockwise, you have to also respect other opinions and ideas. What you have to do, instead of being insular, is to further explain why additional features would jeopardize your user-experience with Renoise. Moreover, develop your reply so people understand how already implemented features makes no need for other popular suggestions like audio-tracks etc.
VSTis/AUs can not control the host’s playback, so you’d need to switch back from such a Renoise plugin to the host every-time you want to start playback in the host. ReWire was invented to solve exactly this an other related problems (running two fully fledged DAWs with their own time line side by side).
ReWire indeed can be a pain to setup. But once it’s running, it’s running. That you constantly need to switch between applications still isn’t ideal.
That you can’tcontrol the host’s playback in a plugin really is a deal-breaker. Try the FruityLoops VSTi for example to see how that “feels”.
Redux actually is the result of the idea of “a Renoise VSTi”: it is a compromise between the “limitations” of how plugins work and Renoise for the above mentioned reasons.
So wait, you actually consider a tracker within a VST shouldn’t send MIDI ?
Redux couldn’t do that from phrases last time i tried it (Maybe it has been updated to send MIDI now ? )
Spoiling the party, as usual:
No, it’s unfortunately not.
It’s not only about the simple start/stop commands, but also about synchronizing loops and changes in the playback position and tempo.
But even if this would work, I don’t really see why this would be easier than ReWire. ReWire takes care about exactly this + audio + MIDI routing between multiple apps.
Sorry to spoil your party, VST has had many 3rd party add ons to the standard, and as suggested (Some, not all, in fact hardly any) hosts allow plugins to control the transport, however, there are not enough of these to even consider calling this an option for development, it would be such an esoteric feature that only worked in one or two hosts, and no developer is going to add features to their host for a tracker plugin.
Personally i have no idea why anybody would want a full blown Renoise VST anyway, sounds like complete silliness to me, the only gain vs rewire would be project recall, and to be honest you don’t need a full Renoise VST for that, just build a VST that you load in to your DAW, give it the correct string and have it trigger the correct project and open Renoise whenever you load the project (Yes it is doable, i built it in synthmaker years ago) if the project is set up for Rewire, done and done.
Just one little thing I want to say. I’ve been using a few pianoroll softwares along with Renoise and the “difference” only really manifests when it comes to commands, typical (but in theory unneccessary) limitations, some complexity. But it’s not the way (vertical, note names, etc) how trackers work that makes the real difference for me, and that is why I I’m not so happy to hear “niche product”. I for my part have learned in the forum that there is no way to combine tracker view and piano roll view, when Raul tried it with best efforts. But I think some people overestimate the importance of putting in notes. It’s not that important. I think, it doesn’t really make it niche or not niche, nor does it define the category of the software.
Just one little thing I want to say. I’ve been using a few pianoroll softwares along with Renoise and the “difference” only really manifests when it comes to commands, typical (but in theory unneccessary) limitations, some complexity. But it’s not the way (vertical, note names, etc) how trackers work that makes the real difference for me, and that is why I I’m not so happy to hear “niche product”. I for my part have learned in the forum that there is no way to combine tracker view and piano roll view, when Raul tried it with best efforts. But I think some people overestimate the importance of putting in notes. It’s not that important. I think, it doesn’t really make it niche or not niche, nor does it define the category of the software.
I supose that you talk about this:https://forum.renoise.com/t/piano-roll-integrated-in-pattern-editor-a-advanced-pattern-editor/46102(comment #36)
I have been following this topic and this otherabout Recommend a new DAW.These two topics have been burning lately.However, I’ve avoided participating, and I’ve preferred to waste my time learning something else from LUA and the API available to create tools (I’m building my own tool to my taste, slowly (GT16-Colors)).What I am going to comment is based on my opinion, about what I have seen and experienced in recent months and it is very possible that my opinion does not like many people (sorry for the length of the message. Do not read if you prefer.)…
…
Renoise is powerful software with a bestial tour (slow) and with an incredible future potential.However, the small company in charge of building and maintaining it is not powerful, is small with few members and does not have a seriously focused machinery for sale (marketing).Although Renoise takes 15 years. There are many people in many countries who make music through a DAW, who does not even know its existence.I live in Spain, and I have asked in some music software sales stores about Renoise, and they ignore their existence (they know more famous DAWs, they have real marketing).This is just an example.
Therefore, Renoise is a niche product because its creator so prefers.Why?He will know.The image of Renoise’s official website that it offers to the public is poor.The public watches everything before buying, including all other DAWs on the market. Even blogs of responsible people have been published that are empty. That’s a bestial marketing mistake for a product.Maybe its creator has never intended to sell licenses massively.Because he is not able to do it, his motives will have. It is possible that the error of the Renoise occurs with the rest of DAWs, and because of this fact, Renoise does not evolve.Maybe he wants to dedicate little time of his life invested in this software, must be fed up already.The fact is that there are some things so reasonable that have not yet been built, which generates frustration under your niche (people who have purchased a license).
Renoise has fallen behind, outdated.And I’m afraid it’s a sales and attitude problem.In other words, it is not in Taktik’s plans to powerfully develop Renoise.Maybe your way to sellis not sufficient to raise money and hire another programmer to work full time all year round under his orders and supervision for what, to enhance Renoise and thus satisfy your niche, and not with the idea of attracting more customers.It’s a matter of making a better product, and people will buy it, without forgetting the marketing management.
Some small things that fail, actually:
Of course, these are only minor comments.And I do not like to comment on the work of others. They will know what they are doing.But I do care Renoise, I like, and I do not want it to end up muddled by stupidities and negative attitudes.This comment #107 of Taktik so defeatist has let me down. Cheer up! You have a good niche.I liked reading the news and the current state. But Airmannwas right in which the product needs an official roadmap published, and not precisely hidden in the forums.You are going to be a year without publishing anything. People are not always entering these forums. Only the most assiduous.Do not make people guess.
I just hope people get encouraged.Renoise is great!
Mark2, just to clarify. A vertical pianorollor at least a visual aid for the composition is perfectly feasible. It can work, as long as the creator wants it to work.If it does not exist or it will exist, it is because Taktik does not want it for its product, not because it is not possible or it does not help.Many things are not added because he does not want, for whatever reason. There’s no more.Focus on improving Renoise.Make support so that Renoise supports higher resolutions (as Bitwig or FL Studio), and improve workflow in all areas of Renoise (not because other DAWS do, but because the current hardware requires it).Do not add anything new until this is well covered.This is what I would do, as well as fixing bugs.Fortunately, Taktik continues, and is fixing errors.
What happens to the crowdfunding?Enable a paypal account.Would anyone be interested in paying for a full-time programmer under Renoise’s bonnet?How much does a programmer earn per year in Germany?A year, a single full-time programmer would do wonders.I would be willing to pay €100 (Not much, but could be € 5).Would this be a shame for the Renoise Team or an honor?
One last thought. “Harmony: users to continue composing music and creating tools (those who can), Taktik and his little team, continues to improve Renoise”. There’s no more.
…These are my thoughts.
There have been too many different proposals for a piano roll sharing large parts of its GUI with the tracker. It’s kind of not possible to decide what’s right, for me the opposite of your proposal is right, a simple black box that converts (constantly) from tracker to piano roll back and forth, and the piano roll sharing no GUI with the tracker and vice versa. That means, you’re doing a hybrid, just like a hybrid car, which agains means you can actually simply create the other product type and forget about the second part. In my eyes there’s a 90% chance taktik creates a piano roll software just like Bitwig, and I seeked some confirmation of that and failed in my “A new software?” thread.
So, it’s his (taktik) life, and for a happy life you need 2000 EUR a month and that’s it. When you’re not keen on creating a 5-man-company being in your 30s or 40s then this is just the way it is, I respect his ideas and kind of doing things too much to join supposing the company and funding ideas.
I have these ideas for myself, one being an open source tracker, GPL, but then again, there is either too many different ideas. When you ask two guys what they like about Renoise, you get different set of preferred features. There’s no way of creating anything that would suffice at least 50% of the Renoise user base, and being in the Renoise forum there is no good feeling to talk about creating an alternative software/project/anything (due to respect). You can’t change taktik, and one can’t just steal ideas of Renoise for another project.
My best approach to everything is chit chat and maybe one time in my life create a product myself. Or working with others on a GPL project.
Let this thread die already, all you entrepreneurs. 
Let this thread die already, all you entrepreneurs.
Has it become that bad? 
Years ago i requested microwaves for making very small sound and a freezer to freeze my tracks to make them sound more solid, still nothing, Renoise development must be dead.
A short message from the renoise community to to taktik (damn you c++!!!):
edit: just for clarity I was saying damn you to the c++ programming language there and not calling taktik a… 
Happy new year to everybody and the devteam ! 
In 2002 I saw Renoise as an great effort to improve the “tracker concept”. Everybody knew that it had to be improved even if it was a tool that would be used by a niche market. It’s a niche market because the tracker concept is a very specific way of making music, vertically, using a computer keyboard, and shortcuts… Nobody at school learns music like that and kids are discovering scores, instead of patterns and hexadecimal values. Tracking, is using samples, and micro-editing them in a pattern. A tracker is “Pattern-centric”. Everything is in the pattern. And we can all say that with renoise 3.x this concept has been really, really improved, with time, in such a way that today, we don’t really know at first how it could add anything to it, without compromising the “soul” of a tracker.
Renoise removed not only the limits of a usual tracker in terms of track organisation and pattern editing features, but also, vastly improved the concept of instrument. Renoise also really improved the final quality of tracked productions with great efforts brought to the rendering engine, digital signal processings, chainings, routings, automations, and “DSP logic” with meta-devices. You should just listen to the last MBC 9 songs, and… compare it to some FT2 productions from the past, to instantly get the difference in overall sound quality.
Piano roll ? I remember I’ve participated to the main suggestion thread about it, and, I’ve even drawn a few mockups, trying to imagine what it could be, to add a “vertical midi pianoroll” in renoise… But in the end, I realised that i do not really need a more “visual” or “graphical” interface. I need efficiency. I don’t care if it looks complex, or conceptual. I don’t care if i have to copypaste some hexadecimal values in a grid instead of drawing lines with the mouse. The only thing that is important is : " what can I do and how long it takes ?". If the “'rendered result” is in the end exactely the same with a pianoroll ( vertical or not ), coding it in renoise is a waiste of time and energy. Because nothing surpasses the efficiency of a tracker interface. The same comments can be done for the pretty vertical audio tracks. You can add more eye candy visuals to the way samples are displayed in the pattern editor : if in the end, it sounds the same, with or without displaying soundwaves instead of cells, and if it’s not more efficient with the pattern editor as it is, you can forget audiotracks.
It does not mean that the pattern editor is perfect. And there are some situations where it does not bring the workflow I would expect from it.
One first thing that could be abit improved are " timestretching"/“pitch sifting” techniques that have to be used within the pattern editor. Okay I know I can beatslice in a granular way my samples if I create interpolated values for the Sxx command, but it has never been really intuitive, precise, and you can hear the limits of the technique when you try to slowdown samples (you can hear some stuttering microdelays). I know I can use LUA tools to timestretch / pitch shift a sample, but if the result is better, it’s not a realtime signal processing, and syncing it to the pattern/beat/tracks workflow has never been as intuitive as expected. Since renoise has become a fantastic sampler, I think that its workflow would be improved by adding some “true realtime” timestretching / pitch shifting possibilities, in it. Or, if it’s too cpu consuming, the pattern editor should have a " special warp mode", that allows you to (1) create slices in the sample perfectly aligned with pattern lines/beats, and (2) moving these special pattern based slices would timestretch correctly the sample without loosing the focus on the pattern editor. I know that it would be hard to make it, because, it deals with the sampler engine itself and the pattern editor, a PITA to modify, (the better example is the last 3.x release that took a huge amount of time).
There are core modifications of the engine okay. But if it’s too long or hard to make them, adding some DSPs and/or meta devices would not imply a modification of everything.
By the way, the list of DSPs/meta devices is not complete.
A proper multiband compressor/limiter should be created. And, let’s say that if most of the usefull DSPs allready exist, some very interesting and unique ones could be developped without breaking the tracker paradygm. I do not only speak about very complex DSPs such as Binaural / HTRF 3D sounds. We have for example the “signal follower”, for now. More interesting effects could be produced with a " spectral follower", reacting to the incoming signal from a defined band of the spectrum. And why not finally adding a " multiband spectral follower" ? Adding some realtime spectral analysis to the behaviour of some equalizers would create interesting results. There is also something that could be natively done : a " meta recorder". I mean : we can allready record sliders values in automation curves/pattern commands. Only by clicking on the right button when changing the values. But honnestly we should allow any device to record its values in automation curves too when indirectly modified by a previous device (example, a meta device), and not only when you right click on a slider.
Renoise is retarded when it comes to the very basics. That’s the problem. And I am not the only one who thinks so. In fact a bunch of people left renoise, because of this. Maybe they don’t say this loud. It’s not about tracker or not, or very special feature addons. It’s about recording and being able to quickly and precisely finetune. The basic editing.
It won’t help anybody if you guys continuously white washing this limitations and the devs put their heads into the sand. Just fix the basics.
And of course e.g. an automation next to the notes is a great workflow speedup for ANYBODY, even for you people who obviously cannot imagine such difference.
Fine, stay with your silly midi pattern commands, oh sorry you just mangling samples and never used it, because u like the static sound 
Piano roll ? I remember I’ve participated to the main suggestion thread about it, and, I’ve even drawn a few mockups, trying to imagine what it could be, to add a “vertical midi pianoroll” in renoise… But in the end, I realised that i do not really need a more “visual” or “graphical” interface. I need efficiency. I don’t care if it looks complex, or conceptual. I don’t care if i have to copypaste some hexadecimal values in a grid instead of drawing lines with the mouse. The only thing that is important is : " what can I do and how long it takes ?". If the “'rendered result” is in the end exactely the same with a pianoroll ( vertical or not ), coding it in renoise is a waiste of time and energy. Because nothing surpasses the efficiency of a tracker interface. The same comments can be done for the pretty vertical audio tracks. You can add more eye candy visuals to the way samples are displayed in the pattern editor : if in the end, it sounds the same, with or without displaying soundwaves instead of cells, and if it’s not more efficient with the pattern editor as it is, you can forget audiotracks.
You write “what can I do and how long it takes ?” and “nothing surpasses the efficiency of a tracker interface”.
I have a different opinion/perspective:
For example in a piano roll editor it’s totally quick and easy to adjust note starts and note lengths. In a tracker it’s totally cumbersome because you have to enter delay values for startpositions and OFF-position. Every note which is not a one shot trigger always needs two values: note start and note end (OFF). I agree: if you don’t leave the straight grid, just use one shot triggers all the time then the tracker approach is easy. But if you leave that path and try to use non-grid start/length variations (which makes the music much more organic and human) the tracker approach is a big disadvantage. E.g. if I want to add some groove feeling to a hihat shuffle etc. - it’s so easy to give the beat a human feeling with a piano roll editor. Think e.g. about the groove patterns/flavors in Ableton Live. Also I think that chord editing in a tracker is not as good as in a piano roll editor. Moving, transposing many note events at once is much more easier in a piano roll editor. And you can do that for note events on multiple tracks at once. In Renoise each track has to be handled seperatly, no overlays etc…
So: especially for the speed a piano roll editor would be a great addition. It has nothing to do with eye candy. It’s pure function and workflow.
And of course e.g. an automation next to the notes is a great workflow speedup for ANYBODY, even for you people who obviously cannot imagine such difference.
Inb4 the real piano roll?
EDIT: The color theme, as requested: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6812754/joule_best.xrnc
