Well, i’ll be!
good stuff, except that they advise buying reason instead!!!
daft if you ask me…
noise all the way! 
Quote i dislike…:
Quote i like…
That must have hurt real bad… 
Or did they mean the Reason price dropped 350 quit? 
Nah, I think it’s a joke.
Something in between Garageband (free) and Renoise (=~ £42 ) costs over £350.
The extra layer to that joke is that Garageband supports Rewire. So you can use both Garageband and Renoise at the same time and voila, you’re in between.
…Load up a demo song and you’ll see a bewildering list of numbers and letters. Hit the space bar and your cans will fill with sophisticated, multilayered music, with core effects and software synths, samples and real-time parameter shifting. If only you could work out how it was all done…
when did we get software synths included in the OSX distribution??? 
yes, I call shenanigans…
mac world, yer on watch!
You guys are totally not getting British humour, at all.
It’s a 4 star review. It’s the same amount of stars Ableton Live 8 got in the same issue.
Nuances people, UK has 'em.
Words from a “been there done that” vision that has been said long time ago and it was followed by a “time to move on”.
The overlooked picture here however is the workflow. Such folks usually only refer to the limitations that forced a programmer to create a tracker the way it had to be in the first place.
The learning curve is steep for Windows-dummies who do everything with the mouse and mousebuttons and have never worked with hex figures.
The reference is most probably about fact that the keyboard has a prominent role in Renoise whereas most other applications allow you to do everything with the mouse (and causes CAMS in your arms, wrists and other joints).
It probably comes right at ya, but i cannot really call that steep.
Yeah that’s a good review. Just written slightly strangely. Saying that there is a steep learning curve but you can make music in no time at first makes no sense but sometimes that’s how us brits end up writing.
Silly isn’t it?
It does not seem very hard to get 4 stars on Mac World once your app is targetted for posting…
I could see that as an average score…
If you want… the Reason 4 review is right here which also got 4 stars:
http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle…m?reviewid=2569
The learning curve is steep because the documentation is difficult to find, and once you find you have to read through like 6-7 sections (including an explanation of hex and how to make your own sample-based instrument) before you get to the part where you can make a sound.
Personally, I think a lot of the claims of a steep learning curve would go away if the first thing in the quickstart guide was the document entitled ‘LookAndFeel’ followed by an explanation of what the columns in the pattern editor mean, and if Renoise started with a simple song preloaded by default where people could punch in a bassline to go along with a drum loop that was already in a second track. The first tip of the day should always be 'Welcome to Renoise! Press The Esc Key to start writing your first bassline."
The first few times I installed the demo, I gave up because I literally couldn’t figure out how to enter notes in or change the notes that were in the demo songs. When you’re trying out a demo, there’s a limit to how long you’re willing to read before you want to get started.
With that said, you must have felt a sense of accomplishment. 
I know I did, also began feeling a strong sense of will power.
Just had an idea, how much does anyone think a tutorial of the actual perspective from in front of the computer would be?
I was using camstudio 2.5 beta a couple months ago, and recorded about 2 hours worth of 1600x1200 of just messing around in renoise, I went and looked at it, and some parts don’t really make sense without a view of the keyboard.
this
this
i reckon that if you put the video tutorials on the front page, especially mr baguette’s ones, then grasping the basic “look and feel” of renoise would happen in minutes. for me it was those videos that convinced me that renoise was not as scary as it looked.
I dunno man, I think to each his own. I got up and running with the demo and making a tune right away… and I’m a “Windows dummie”. I did have the fx commands part of the manual loaded in the background iirc, and I had watched some youtube vids, no tutorial ones, just ones with Renoise playing (which sparked my interest in Renoise in the first place and got me to try it). Even recorded a vid of the final result and put it on the tube.
After that it took me a bout a month to decide to buy, during which time I watched some tutorials, read up on the manual when needed and made sure Renoise could do what I wanted it to. I’m not a manual guy tho, don’t like em lol, but when I can’t figure ish out for the life of me it’s a good, and obvious, place to go.
I had very limited experience with trackers before trying Renoise, used some a couple of times in the early 90s on the ST, but that’s it… always been a Cubase/Sampler guy.
But then again I grew up with hardware samplers, and there’s no way in hell you’ll figure out how say an EPS works unless someone either shows you, or you read the manual and have lots and lots of patience. So I guess I might benefit from that since I’m not expecting instant gratification and/or mastery the instant I try something unfamiliar to me. Which I think is the main problem… not that it’s hard finding, or clicking, help on the sites menu.
Bantai I would take issue with that – trackers have a very steep learning curve, especially because so many of the numbers are in hex. If I sit down with my 2 brothers who are amateur musicians, (guitar players) put them in front of Renoise and tell them, for example, about how to start a sound playing from halfway through (sample offset) and then explain that the offset number might be “09FA” they will get very confused.
That is why I think the zoom view is so important to the next update. With sliders and other more intuitive features the volume, panning, and othet settings can come out of programmerland and into something that is more user friendly.
I’ve been using trackers for a long time and I still can’t get proper use the more advanced timing feature because I can’t divide hexadecimal numbers in my head! =)
So, it is a fair criticism in my opinion.
That’s a bogus comparison.
Anyone who picks up a guitar can see that the sound is produced by plucking the strings.
A beginner opening Renoise for the first time sees a spreadsheet that you can’t type into.
So if you start Cubase or Logic for the first time you instantly know how to use it ?
Don’t think so
Word. I was in a studio with a famous dutch trance-producer and he’s a Logic-Guy. But when I pitched some notes here and there with renoise his smile disappeared. Especially when I fired up some vsts and changed some fx by entering some tiny hexcodes in the pattern.
“This is how to control the distortion?”
-“Yarp”
“That easy?!”
- “Yarp”
-“Was it hard to figure that out?” - “Erm… Narp”
Face it guys, we’re a dying breed of elitist music producers. 