Maybe support this project if you don’t think Renoise will cut it? http://zytrax.org/
Full source code is available under the permissive MIT license. If you like it and want to contribute, feel welcome to do so!
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The only little project that I started myself (and pretty certain never ever remotely finish) is a real simple FM ‘adlib’ type errr ‘tracker’…
It plays a simple text file (with a green play line).
It’s largely pointless to everybody…(but myself) No secret hidden Renoise crushing project
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I like the Zytrax idea of a tracker without hex.
Someone should somehow rip the old MPC1000 sequencer and build a tracker around that kind of system…96 ticks per quarter note etc
but renoise is 17 or 18 years of programming…the only tracker which even comes close is sunvox
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I think before Renoise can “rivial the other DAWs” or get to “the next level”, it first needs to actually catch up in some areas. For instance, Renoise could be brought on par with the features of hardware samplers from 30 years ago (e.g. sample start/loop automation, zone crossfading, sample groups). Then with features of software samplers and DAWs from 15 years ago (e.g. timestretching, pitchshifting). I personally would rather like to see this kind of development than some new features that try to stretch the tracker paradigm.
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I think something very consistent with what Renoise actually is would be to add some more sample mangling features to the sampler à la octatrack. At least the ability to modulate the sample reading head, wich kinda is there because you can do it with FX but not with modulations. Modulating that with an LFO and then controlling LFO’s speed from the tracker would be destructive. It would also repurpose the whole system as an excelent wavetable synth with minimal changes, since the other modules are already there.
In general i think’s there’s lots of stuff to steal from the Octa. One feuture of it that really interested me is the posibility to start and end recording with sequencer commands. This would be truly aswesome for live playing.
Granularity and Pitch Shifting/time Stretching would be great, but i think the would be more work intensive, the other proposal would be easiear and add lots of posibilities, combined ith the tracker interface. Also, in many situations they can be replaced by musicianship (you know, just playing in time).
Another thing that would be great would be some minimal set of live playing oriented features. I’m still to find a satisfying way of recording a phrase and immediately having it playig. For example if you are jamming with more musicians to capture a phrase and return it, or keep it as a background and play something else over it it or mangle the shit out of it. Also, find ways to get the amount of processes that stop the sound engine to a minimal, for example slicing. I’d rather wait a little more than seeing the whole show stop (again, it can be directly used with FX, but it requierse an ability i still lack). I think this would also be doable without lots of effort.
+1 for loop points automation, timestretch, pitchshift
what do you mean by sample groups? (mute groups?)
sample start automation is pretty much the 0S command, although it cannot be done in automation lanes in any way as far as I know.
0S - trigger sample slice number xx or offset xx
zone crossfading - surely there must be some way to crossfade between two samples in the same instrument, which are placed on the same key in keyzones…maybe with the new mappable ‘modulation wheel’ slider to the far left of the keyboard?
it was discussed in 2008 here (if anyone knows how, id be interested to know how sounds like a cool thing to do):
+1 for “adjustable volume of the metronome’s click”
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There are only two things I’d really like to see added in Renoise: timestretch (there’s a plugin for it, but it can’t be used in real-time) and tabbed projects, i.e. having multiple projects open as tabs in the same window (see Bitwig). I like to work on multiple songs at the same time, and copying/pasting things around from one to another, which is very awkward to do in Renoise currently.
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Wöttzäfükk 
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tabbed projects would be cool.
Maybe to somehow write those kind of albums in which each song just continues straight into the next song. Like an hour of music, maybe ten songs, each one mixes straight into the next one.
It would be possible to do it in other software but yeah would be cool to somehow line up songs so that they continuously go into the next song…
I personally think there is a still a lot of room for improvement when it comes down to quality of life, and especially with the sample editor section. pitch-locked time-stretching would be awesome as previously mentioned.
Ability to loop your preview selection in sample editor (would speed up workflow tons for dialing in loops, even one shots to make sure you dont pop on a transient,single cycles etc.). Super quick way of dialing in new layers for an instrument. I added this idea recently, hopefully it finds its way in.
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A container with its own modulation set affecting all members in the group. For instance, when you create a kick drum by layering 3 samples, each with their own modulation, you want a quick method to change global settings of that kick drum (e.g. attack and release of the whole 3 sample creation).
Not really. You want to map velocity to sample start in order to create realistic sounding instruments. Currently this is not possible.
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the one thing I’m disappointed is my Roland MX1 mixer soundcard doesn’t like Renoise.
My Audient ID14 soundcard also doesn’t work with RENOISE… yes I updated all drivers.
guess what worked? my VIRUS TI2 sound card is my sound card now.
Risking mayor punishment from die hard trackkies
but how about incorporating some features from sequencers , the pattern sequencer could be vastly improved by stealing some features from sequencers.
so my proposal : a hybrid version of a tracker / sequencer
To come back to the original question, to me several breaktrough could still be made for Tracker- DAW :
1) Having a better song mode : when building a song by chaining patterns, in the pattern matrix it woud be nice to be able :
- mute/unmute some tracks (which can be already be done)
- tranpose/force to scale melodic tracks the pattern
- set a tempo
- set a start/end point (i.e start at line X and stop at line Y)
That would basically means being able to sequence the sequencer 
2) Having concurrent tracks : each track could have :
- a clock multiplier/divider
- a different length
- played forward/reverse/ping ping/random, or being able to play the step in any order.
3) The pattern editor could be made touchscreen friendly, like the step sequencer of Pigment for instance.
4) Midi map should be defined at the instrument level, and not only at the song level. So that we could design instruments that could be edited with hardware controller.
5) Expressivity : for renoise instrument, it would be nice to rethink the way expressivity works : normally velocity, pitch bend, aftertouch, mod wheel, should work in the same way (currently velocity is handled differently from others).
Having an “expressivity” section , that would make it easier to assign all these controllers to several destinations would be nice.
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Wohoo! ! ! Sounds brilliant… ! ! !
The XY work pretty good with touchscreen, you can use one finger at a time touchscreen on XY and faders already but not more than one finger at a time
“Instrument” part:
Renoise could be brought on par with the features of hardware samplers from 30 years ago (e.g. sample start/loop automation, zone crossfading, sample groups). Then with features of software samplers and DAWs from 15 years ago (e.g. timestretching, pitchshifting).
Totally agree, especially with the instruments of Renoise being spun out into Redux. Why anyone would use this without such features as we take for granted in every other sampler is beyond me. Honestly though I only use Renoise to drive VSTis and don’t use its own instruments at all.
“Sequencer/Arranger part”:
Arranger is kind of a cop-out falling between what Renoise and all it’s predecessors had always had and Buzz’s Sequencer where patterns belong to a particular track and are independent of those that play in parallel. I get that having that feature would mean totally changing Renoise’s concept of patterns, but it makes it much easier to write a song instead of a collection of loops.
If anything though, it’s the pattern editor & sequencer that is Renoise’s unique selling point over “normal” DAWs, and it’s that that should have been spun into a seperate plug-in product. I can’t imagine ever needing Redux, but would use a VST that let me sequence other plug-ins using a tracker style view.
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To me, DAW software (may it be piano roll or tracker style) in terms of “huge ideas” are good as they are, even if I would love a hybrid of Renoise and FL Studio.
BUT it’s the small changes that make a difference to me. There are always hundreds of small things that can be perfected. I can’t spend an evening with a DAW without thinking “hey, this would be much better/easier if it were that way”.
Fully happy with everything? Never have been. Probably never will be. But enjoying every single little update that makes the experience a little better.
more examples of how to create nice instruments from single cycle wavefrom samples (for people who cant spend money on overpriced VSTi)