Is renoise perfect now?

[esaruoho]

there are really minor user flow issues. let’s say you use disk browser in expanded view. you’ve selected a folder… then you go back to regular disk browser display mode – that folder is still highlighted, but not actually auto-shown by the smaller disk browser. you then have to take the mouse and scroll down and get to where the chosen folder is at…

[Jorito]

As nice as Renoise is, I wouldn’t say it’s perfect. It has some very strong points, like its speed, stability, lots of very useable functionality that make it a joy to work with.

But also due to its tracker roots (which have been far surpassed in a myriad of interesting ways) it has some limitations in my workflow as well:

• Renoise is great at working on a detail level (= pattern) but getting a good overview of your song and what’s happening at any place in a song in any track is tricky as the number of channels grow. The pattern matrix is very helpful already but I wouldn’t mind an update here to give s better overview. Also has to do with (see next)
• Doing automation across multiple patterns is a pain. It’s not very intuitive and though you can zoom the automation view it doesn’t work well for me. Related to that it’d be nice to be able to see more clearly multiple automation channels per track at one.
• My last beef would be that realtime recording of midi events is unusable for me. Stuff doesn’t align up on the tracks like I want, the continuous delay columns annoy me and the way it thinks I play multiple notes at once and how it creates new note columns make it so cluttered for me that I stick to manual editing notes. Which is a shame because for some parts playing things in live can give a very interesting twist. I also understand that this is tricky to solve due to Renoise’s tracker origins.

And personally I wouldn’t mind a piano roll like view of my tracked data, just so I can easily change velocity values in a more intuitive way

But other than that it’s definately very usable and the best for me. I did a brief excursion to Logic Pro but came back running

[Moonriders]

@esp81

Almost… still needs internal midi routing, saving effects with instruments, and a few other things.

midi is so slippery! does make sense though, with the way renoise turns a typical computer into a powerhouse piece of hardware.

@esp81

It will never be perfect.

But you’ll always be able to get the job done anyway. />

You’re too humble dBlue!

@esp81

death to midi

modular FX (edit:routing) + native grain synth

i personally would probably never need use another VSTi again!

@esp81

In that regard we can post some more partial screenshots of the actual Renoise 3 version…
But it would reveal what has not changed and would provoke reactions like “Owh so feature x will not be in there in the next version”

I vaguely remember what happened the last time, wasn’t good.

@esp81

I’m glad it’s staying true to the roots.

On a more serious note, I just tried FL studio again to see what I’d come up with, and crazy enough, what I saw was that every time I load Reaktor in a new channel I have to wait that same 10-15 seconds. I definitely cannot go to any DAW that does this loading VST .dlls over and over (don’t know how Renoise does it but once I loaded one instance, the others pop up instantly)

IIRC they did some low level magic with virtualization and figured out how to address the same DLL.

@esp81

The dancer plugin did it in for me. Whatever they smoke over at image-line is something none of us have access to apparently.

welcome to the world of software development for public consumption />/>

We don’t have to worry about the lowest common denominators, anymore. XD

@esp81

As nice as Renoise is, I wouldn’t say it’s perfect. It has some very strong points, like its speed, stability, lots of very useable functionality that make it a joy to work with.

But also due to its tracker roots (which have been far surpassed in a myriad of interesting ways) it has some limitations in my workflow as well:

• Renoise is great at working on a detail level (= pattern) but getting a good overview of your song and what’s happening at any place in a song in any track is tricky as the number of channels grow. The pattern matrix is very helpful already but I wouldn’t mind an update here to give s better overview. Also has to do with (see next)
• Doing automation across multiple patterns is a pain. It’s not very intuitive and though you can zoom the automation view it doesn’t work well for me. Related to that it’d be nice to be able to see more clearly multiple automation channels per track at one.
• My last beef would be that realtime recording of midi events is unusable for me. Stuff doesn’t align up on the tracks like I want, the continuous delay columns annoy me and the way it thinks I play multiple notes at once and how it creates new note columns make it so cluttered for me that I stick to manual editing notes. Which is a shame because for some parts playing things in live can give a very interesting twist. I also understand that this is tricky to solve due to Renoise’s tracker origins.

And personally I wouldn’t mind a piano roll like view of my tracked data, just so I can easily change velocity values in a more intuitive way />

But other than that it’s definitely very usable and the best for me. I did a brief excursion to Logic Pro but came back running />

point #1 I think the pattern matrix could be detailed enough to allow that.

point #2 I do agree, I was behind that pretty strong, until I stopped using it and switched to pattern commands and the LFO devices to handle all automation. I found simply turning things off and on with pattern commands worked very well across the scope of it.

point #3 I agree but it is complicated, and something I’ve had a problem with for years and years. I never start with a tempo in mind or know it, if I try to play to a different tempo I’ll completely lose it.

I had this problem big time when I was sending midi from another source into Renoise. Editing midi gets so complex it’s best to keep retaking until it’s just right.
When it was completely live I had to change the way I worked to get around it. Now I audio record several versions of what I’m doing without knowing the timing, when it’s pure and fresh in mind. Once I’ve made sure the pure version of the melody is safe. I crop the best one and fit it with time. Tracking the notes afterwards of the pure melody becomes a breeze.