Many Renoise users here seem to be very excited about the new record button in the sampler. That’s nice, but I don’t really see what’s so special about it. In fact, I get a little bit annoyed and ask myself "Who is so LAZY that he can’t load up Wavelab or Soundforge or Goldwave or any of the hundreds of the audio recording softwares out there, press play in Renoise and record in the recording software, edit the recorded data, save to a WAV-file and load it in Renoise? What’s so time consuming about it?
In fact, when I have now tested this new feature in Renoise 1.8, it turns out to be a much more time consuming process for me. How about syncing issues? Granted, I can get my external audio directly into the sampler. But I still have to edit the data manually, cut out the initial noise and/or silence of the recording to make it start playing from the beginning. I would see a point in all this, IF the record button was somehow activated by Renoise rather than by me. That is: recording would begin when one pressed “play song” button or something like that. But I can’t see that it has. You have to spend minutes editing the recorded data in order to align it and/or synchronize it with the rest of the music (e.g. by cutting out the initial silence/noise).
Could somebody please explain, without getting un-friendly because I don’t see the advantages, why this feature is so great? Explain your workflow and why having Wavelab open in the background for recording your voice or electric guitar is no good?
Lots of people will probably answer you on this, but here is my go at it:
First of all, Wavelab/Sound Forge, although great programs, are not free. Although freebies like Audacity exist, I don’t think it is fair to assume that everyone has “another recording program” always accessable.
Although there still arent any sync functions in Renoises record-option, it is my assumption that this will be added and here is where all the fun starts. In practice I will probably use it to sample my hardware stuff (vocoders, hardware synthesizers like Juno-106 / Yamaha DX100 et cetera) for my Renosie tunes and then be able to play around with the samples and also have selfcontained songs even though my hardware gear is turned off. Also think of how easy you can create a demo and add the lyrics to your song without having to render the stuff and recording the song in another program.
Well, while a real audio editor is superior to anything provided inside, they aren’t made for music. The benefit from the line-in drop-in is not about sampling stuff and editing it, but rather including external hardware directly into the music workflow (not just the editing workflow), so it follows the same rules as all other sounds produced by renoise, such as going through a DSP chain and being outputted into the master channel, or other output, along with everything else. That’s impossible unless you have a line-in thing.
Additionally, as junoir said, there’ll hopefully be syncronized recordings sometime in the future, where a long recorded sample is time-synced to the playback, so it automatically starts playing at the correct point when you jump into the middle of the song to edit something. This will make the line-in important for bouncing stuff from external hardware into a rendered track.
Well that is actually a very good point.
And it fits well along the desire for the “when do we get a count-in functionality?” (metronome ticking on the background for the first x beats before starting to record or start record as soon as a MIDI or key-signal is received.
Wouldn’t it be possible to add a “record on play” or (as suggested in another thread) a “record on command” function before the final 1.8? I think Trancending has a strong case and if this feature is easily done Isee no reason why it should have to wait until the next version. I guess there is always a risk when adding new features to an already pretty stable beta… but still…
As I’m a frequent vocal recorder I have to say that a record function in RNS without a syncronised play pattern/record from input-function is quite useless for me. I need a quick workflow for that, for re-recording parts that were not so good and quickly listening to what I’ve recorded without the hassle of having to edit the recording every time.
Hm, what would be nice was to have the pattern editor automaticly insert notes with a 9xx offset every x lines while recording in addition to a synced play pattern/record sound-function. That would totally eliminate my need for Kristal etc.
But anyway, no matter what we have now, it’s a start and going the right direction towards what we all ‘need’ to work the best way we can. I’m grateful for that, not annoyed that it hasn’t come as far as it can come yet.
Give it a bit more time, Transcender, your points are definetly valid but one step at the time!
I always used to work with Wavelab open in the background - it’s no problem, you can do the same thing, it’s just the shuffling samples to and from one package into another was irritating and awkward.
Any irritating or awkward aspect of music production, writing, design, etc. whether a missing feature or an annoying table lamp, has an affect on every decision you make, and, I find, how appealing the prospect of spending 5 or 6 hours working sounds.
The record/cancel/stop thing is very convenient now - I can do take, take, take, keep - trim a second off the beginning and it’s there…
Otherwise I just 900 offset it and tweak until the timing feels right.
A time ruler along the wave editor could help a little - just displaying 1/1, 1/4, 1/16th’s, etc. depending on zoom perhaps.
I have not tested this extensively but preliminarily it seems to work.
You can use an instance of energy XT in the renoise fx chain after the line in device.
Sync XTs sequencer to external press record in XT and recording in XT will begin when you press play in renoise (make sure you enable the audio track in XT also and that the audio track is hi-lighted). The audio track that you record will be played back synced to renoise wherever you play from.
I’ll say that recording inside Renoise is a step in the right direction - however for me it’s not complete yet - it’s perfect for recording a simple sound, but a little cumbersome when recording long parts where timing is important. Right now (for me) it’s still more workflow-friendly to render out the tracks into a multitrack environment and recording my live parts down that way.
Also, it would be very handy for me to be able to see the metronome/row markings on the sample editor to make it easy for me to clip and to give a better perspective of time.
What would REALLY welcome for me would be the facility to export a sample to an external editor at the click of a button. So you use the Renoise recorder to get the timing/feel right, and you use your favourite editor(s) to modify if necessary in an environment you feel comfortable in. Most packages have this option for a good reason, and I would assume if editing sounds is important to you, you would have an external editor! No offence, and I don’t mind being disagreed with, but the Renoise sample ‘editor’ is just a toy.
I don’t want to muck around with switching applications, open/save file dialogs and other audio editors when there’s a perfectly good one inside renoise. It’s just much neater, quicker and elegant.
As already said in the Renoise 1.8 discussions forum:
It would be a pity if we have now a recorder in Renoise, and people still want/have to use external sample editors for recording, or don’t see the need for it. So it seems we at least need the ability to sync the record start/stoping to the playback (pattern) in Renoise. Wisely I already prepared the code for that, so that will not be very hard to implement, nor break much existing stuff.
So yes: we will take care of that (for Renoise 1.8) if somehow possible. Keep on brainstorming! The final release is not yet out. Let us for now concentrate of the bugs, fix them all, and then do some feature fine-tuning, where its really safe and necessary…
recoding option wasnt quite on my priority list too but it doesnt hurt that its now there…
main problem with usability for me is that cooledit have nice noise reduction features /that renoise sample editor dont have/ with what i want to process my not so good quality home recordings before i use them in a song
I use it like I used to use the sample function in Protracker. Record stuff on the fly, edit, trim things and use it a sample. It’s perfect to me.
Any chance of implementing ‘record start’ with right mouse button and ‘record cancel’ with left mouse button? ^^
That’s fair enough. And, you’ve already implemented the most important features IMO (accurate BPM and XML), which means that Renoise just re-conquered the throne in my studio.
Would it be difficult to implement some kind of auto-crop function in the sample editor, so that clicking a button automatically scan the recorded data, mark the selection x1 to x2, where x1 is the starting/zero offset and x2 being the noise > y dB? (That is actually the only procedure I call from an external audio editor, at least on the pre-mastering level.)
Definately need the sync record to the rest of the song.
For me it’s “containment in one enviroment” that I like with the line-in/record funtion.
Especially in conjunction with the mixer.
E.g. using sounds from my external gear using the same delay-vst as the other instruments and be able to record it in one package.
Point is I don’t need to sample the synth first to do that anymore.
Which also makes it simpler when you change something on the synth, e.g. you change the filtersweep.
Then you don’t need to sample it again.
Unless I run out of inputs
