In what things Renoise is better than other DAWs

General Discussion
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Please try to answer 3 questions. It is really very interesting.

  1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?
  2. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?
  3. What other DAWs you try?
  4. What music styles you prefer?
  5. What music styles you compose in Renoise?

Thank you!

  1. Being new to renoise and coming from more graphics based Daw’s, the biggest improvement I have personally noticed is a more efficient workflow.

I have found the variety of ways in which i can mangle beats in renoise and the speed in which i can do so, has freed me up to either devote more time to other elements, or to hone in further editing of beats. I like the use of shortcuts, how it auditions samples, the ease of automation and the layout is easy for me to navigate.

I am also impressed with the variety of ways in which a user can customize their experience. I have not fully explored all the options yet, however, the possibilities for personalisation have sparked an interest in areas i was not so previously concerned with.

I feel like I am just scratching the surface of Renoise’s capabilities, therefore I anticipate many more reasons why i will continue to use renoise emerging in the near future.

  1. Yes, I have an understanding of musical theory and play a few different instruments. I feel these things have improved my own experience with using renoise (or any Daw for that matter), however, I don’t see it as a prerequisite, as i feel as that depends on the individual.

  2. Cubase, Fruity loops, Abelton, Acid, Pro tools, Sonar and a few others i can’t recall at this moment.

  3. Mostly anything that moves me or takes me on a journey (under this, my scope is always expanding)…

Metal (mostly black metal/atmospheric bm, some thrash, doom etc), Classical/Neoclassical, Folk/Neofolk, Experimental, Ambient (mostly dark), Punk (particularly 70’s and 80’s), Electronic (idm/ambient electro, glitch, breakcore etc), hip hop and more. Quite often listen to a band called Slint.

  1. Predominantly electronic (Write music in other styles, but am yet to try in renoise).
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  1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?

It’s fast, stable, has a great workflow, having samples as instruments makes sound design a lot quicker and less cpu usage. Works with my external instruments fine, easy to send audio out and record in, nice integration of modulation tools, absolutely LOVE mod and fx sets, resampling is instant and satisfying, a lot of little things also, like the mouse cursor on the spec analyser revealing the frequency and note.

  1. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try renoise?

No formal education, all self taught synthesis knowledge and piano/theory

  1. What other DAWs you try?

Logic, cubase, pro tools, studio one, reason, bitwig, reaper, ableton, fl studio, acid, too many, they cost way too much considering the bugs and crashes, cubase always crashed on me, even new updates etc. I like the tracker approach of renoise, it doesnt have the colourful blocks and fx that a traditional daw has, but this works better imo, you focus on what you are hearing instead of seeing.

  1. What music styles you prefer?

Electronic, mostly pre 2000 for most things like trance, but i like todays techno and drone etc
Also listen to vangelis, jarre, dark ambient stuff, trip hop, some 80s synthpop and gary numan, idm, experimental, i like dark stuff the most.

Also classical, russians - prokofiev, rach, etc. Some futurejazz, 60s soul, led zeppelin, steve vai, 90s hip hop.

  1. What music styles you compose in Renoise?

Dark techno, trip hop, drone, dark ambient, experimental

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  1. why Renoise?

–Stability. It very rarely crashes compared to other DAWs I’ve used on my mediocre laptop. Very important when you play live.

–Vertical orientation. I like it, specially since I perform and mix with a big MIDI mixing desk as my main ‘instrument’.

–Plays very nicely with the desk mentioned above. MIDI-learn is fast and easy.

–Modulation and per-sample fx yes!! Gives fantastic fine-grained control for sound design.

–X-factor; the sample-based worklow is a ‘creative limitation’, the good kind, like using an MPC.

  1. musical education?

–only a little. I can play guitar and bass OK, mediocre keys. I played/sang for years in a moderately successful post-punk band before going digital.

  1. What other DAWs you try?

–Reaper. Still use it for mixing, it has real strengths there (which is also Renoise’s weakest point imho.) But not very inspiring as an instrument.

–Hollyhock. Some intriguing ideas, like completely user-configurable UI, but ultimately too tweakable for me to be productive.

–Studio One. very logical, easy to use, but I felt like it was babying me. A condescending software.

–Ableton. Annoying.

–Bitwig. Actually quite like it now that I’ve figured out how the vertical clip-launch works. The FX chaining possibilities are great. It feels a little characterless after Renoise, but I could definitely be productive with it.

  1. What music styles you prefer?

–Muslimgauze. Philip Glass. Ethiopian jazz. Coil. KLF.

  1. What do I make with Renoise?

–https://rongallipoli.bandcamp.com/album/agrokomplex

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after 1.5 years using Logic Pro X, I’m going back to RENOISE(this time it’s 3.1).

I realize I made better music in Renoise and I was much more productive.

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Because I have a very small penis.

I’m not sure 100% why but for some reason I’m drawn to it. I think maybe the low-resolution interface appeals to me on a deep level because in low resolution my penis, which is small, can look average-sized if things are zoomed out enough.

I took a Music Theory class in college. One day the professor said “okay, today we’re going to investigate ‘microtuning’” and the whole class looked at me and I knew I was about to get my comeuppance. The professor made me stand on the desk and he pulled down my pants and grabbed my tiny little penis with a pair of tweezers and said “behold! The Pythagorean comma” and everyone laughed. Then he suplexed me off the desk, I think the tweezers must have been made of titanium because they didn’t bend at all even while their death grip on my extremely small penis was the fulcrum for my entire body weight. I landed hard and the tweezers fell off and I was flat on my back with my pants around my ankles and my stupid crummy little penis poking up and for a minute I thought I was paralyzed or dead but it turns out I just had the wind knocked out of me. I guess I might be dead though, my whole existence sucks so maybe I’m dead and in Hell. But I’m definitely not paralyzed so at least there’s that. He said “and that was the Wolf Fifth” and everyone laughed even more even though it didn’t make any sense and then I passed out. I didn’t go back to Music Theory class after that day. This was before I started using Renoise.

I tried Cubase but had issues with the dongle (DON’T ASK). I also tried Ableton but the userbase was full of microdicked freaks. Support would routinely send motivational emails to everyone with sayings like “remember, Abletonners, size doesn’t matter!” and “it’s not the length of the surfboard that counts, it’s the motion of the ocean” and the userbase was really snotty to me because to them my penis, which is barely any bigger than the eraser on a pencil, was really large and they were jealous of it, and the whole experience was just horrible. Also the piano roll sucks.

Pop-R&B, Eurodance, K-pop, and Gabber (of course).

Unhappy Hardcore and New Orleans Beta Blues.

You’re welcome! I hope your advertising was successful!

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“I tried Cubase but had issues with the dongle (DON’T ASK)”

What happened?

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I SAID not to ask because I REALLY don’t want to get into it but… ugh. I’ll try not to drag this thread off-topic but if anyone from Steinberg is lurking this forum, let me just say the following: When someone purchases the PRO version of your product they deserve PRO support, and “PRO” is short for “PROFESSIONAL”, and a support team that decides to send a locksmith to the scene of what is quite clearly a medical situation is NOT acting in a “professional” capacity. And whoever in Legal sent the followup email summarizing this incident as “customer’s attempt to plug a USB 1.0cm (yeah, that was real funny – not) device into a USB 3.0-compatible port” was the complete ANTITHESIS of what I would consider to be “professional”.

Yes, Steinberg DID foot the bill, and yes, the locksmith they sent carried himself with an admirable amount of aplomb in what was clearly a highly-stressful situation for all involved. But neither of them reimbursed me for the peanut oil.

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I see this 8 years old thread was bumped, so I’m like, hey, why not post a serious reply the op will never see

A lot of my formative musical experiences were made with computers. With terrible, limited, idiosyncratic software, that constrains and challenges you more than it helps you get things done. So I figured out, why not try out a tracker to understand how it shapes your workflow?

Turns out, it’s now my favorite way to see all harmony at once, and I end up writing much more tonally adventurous material with it than anything else I ever used.

I think theory is some horrifying post-hoc attempt to map out a territory after centuries of wars, in a language born out of compromises that were relevant centuries ago. I bang my head against theory once in a while, sometimes I learn something, but rarely.

I started out on Mario Paint.

Reason has always been my main tool. It’s what I truly learned how to make music with over a decade ago.

Since then, its sequencer barely changed. It’s a barely functional antique you should only use out of nostalgia. Sometimes you want to get things done, so I investigated my options, and Renoise adding support for VST3 encouraged me to actually learn it.

I used Logic Pro for a while. Very powerful, but it never inspired me. It’s no songwriting tool. It’s something you use to transcribe a song you wrote elsewhere.

I also used VCV Rack for a while, and I even released a ton of synthesizer modules for it, but the lead developer is a jerk alienating the community that made his success, so I just dropped it. I’m still developing audio tools but no longer for someone else’s locked down platform. I’m working on a standalone kinda sequencer using Unreal Engine those days (don’t laugh, UE4 has incredibly legit audio tools, and UE5 even more amazing ones - even if they’re more meant for videogame applications than musical ones.)

VGM first and foremost, sorry for being a turbonerd. But also Funk, Prog, Synthpop, Glam, uh, lotsa more stuff, I’m not big about genres I have no idea how they even work.

Gay Baroque Technopop, Pastoral Industrial

2 Likes
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Holy thread resurrection, this is a fun one.

Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?

Short answer - because it works really well on my 10 year old Linux laptop.

Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?

Aye, I studied music and sound engineering for about 6 years, have a degree in it. Forgotten a lot of formal theory now though, not enough practice really.

What other DAWs you try?

After years with 8 track recorders, I got onto Cubase, Logic and Ardour. Then settled on Reaper for a decade and dabbled with Reason (9, 10 and 11).

What music styles you prefer?

Aggressive music, hard rock, punk, metal, noise, industrial rock.

What music styles you compose in Renoise?

Similar stuff to the above I guess. I find it easier to experiment in Renoise, it feels like you can go outwith definitions easier than with other DAWs.

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I read your linked article about VCV Rack and the project owner’s actions. Forgive me for not reading 100% of it, I got as far as the failed attempt to launch the VST that that community developed but having never used it I didn’t quite have the investment in the story to read it all, maybe I’ll go back to finish it tomorrow.

Sounds like you had a rough time, you’re better off pouring effort into your musical endeavours instead of working effectively for somebody else’s benefit.

Your shmup level select screen sequencer looked ace, as did the tarot card generator. Welcome to the community, diversity of voices is important everywhere and I hope you’re made to feel welcome by everybody here. Do you have any music to share?

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Haha that stuff about VCV was kind of an aside about what led me here. Many third party-devs left for the same reason and will say in private they feel bad abandoning their project, I didn’t have it rougher than them, I just don’t care about the “professional” consequences of writing about it. I’d rather not bring too much of that baggage there.

As for music to share, I didn’t finish many songs with Renoise yet, but I’m pretty happy with the ones I finished, such as this one.

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1 - Idk why, it exceeds in sample manipulation basically, and intricate rhythmic stuff, the Line is a good tool for absolute control of rhythm and sound
2 - yes, I’m a music composition bachelor, I’ve come from a traditional classical music background.
3 - I’ve tried Fl Studio, Ableton Live and Reaper, I’m currently still using Reaper.
4 - I listen to a lot of stuff, from Indian Raga, Brazilian funk, Japanese shakuhachi music to The Carpenters, Tyle, The Creator and Aphex Twin.
5 - Experimental music/Electronic.