I’m on Linux so I don’t have access to quite the same range of plugins, nor have I found Renoise to be limiting (pardon the pun) my creativity just yet; my total lack of musical talent is still the main cause
But one thing that is missing for me is a multiband compressor. After using my own processor for a bit I recently connected the excellent StereoTool up to Renoise’s output, bridging the audio using ALSA, and have been trying that. See screenshot if you’re interested.
Previously I would use the “Multiband Send” in Renoise to to send to a Low, Mid and Hi which I could compress and process separately. StereoTool has a fixed chain with two sets of multiband processing in sequence, each with compression and limiting, and then some other processing.
What else are people using as the master chain on their tracks? Especially on Linux. Is everyone using external VSTs?
Using an external tool isn’t too bad, but I’d love to do more in Renoise. One thing I’m interested in is access some of the bass growl like an Optimod processor – the power to massively over-process things in a controlled way would be useful, just so I can then conciously choose dial it back to something civilised.
I’m in a similar situation. just now beginning to have work that I’m motivated to carry on, and some time there will be the question of trying to do amateur masters myself.
While working I drive stuff into a simple native renoise fx chain, but for end result I wouldn’t want to show that anyone but close friends for their opinion. The renoise fx just isn’t good for mastering. Just alone the maximiser which will grind/click ass out of bass drive to it, no lookahead to fix it, it is just not up on par for a clean sound unless you are real wizzard and feed it with something that will only make it chew on transient peaks, or unless you feed it with…noisecore or so. The compressors also have unsuitable artefacts.
What I’m currently contemplating is doing my mix in renoise as good as possible with proper gaining and eqing of everything. feeding it through the crap ass maximiser chain just to be comfortable & toggle it on/off while working with it, and then deactivating the shit and render the stems/channels to wave audio. Then import this into ardour and try my luck with the calf plugins or even something antiquated like jamin. There must be some way to get a clean master on Linux without higher alien skills and having to buy lots of plugins that aren’t even out for Linux yet!
I’d also love to do it on renoise, but then, it is missing proper power. Sidechaining compressors, lookahead limiter, linear phase eq, gentle and not noisy compressors, proper transparent saturation/clipping, such stuff that you just neeeed to build a reasonably clean mastering chain.
Don’t get the wrong idea of my original post, it wasn’t a “Renoise sucks” kind of post. I actually really like the Renoise setup, because the processors don’t claim to be anything that they aren’t. I’ve not used a lot of mainstream music production plugins, but when I have I’ve personally gotten a feel that they can be dressed up a bit, and not necessarily any more advanced than combining the basic tools. I definitely am not keen on parameters that go through some ‘secret sauce’ that can’t be explained; I don’t mind building the more advanced functionality using the basic building blocks. I’m not sure what the “unusable artefacts” of the compressor that you refer to?
Describing “gentle and not noisy” compressors is rather subjective and harder to pin down, but you did remind me of lookahead which (along with multiband) is something I don’t think is possible at all in the current scheme. Perhaps I will try a “Multitap delay” into a signal follower as a side chain into something. Definitely using signal follower to implement compressors is not as convenient as a dedicated functionality, but I’m no expert in what is common for a DAW. And the “sensitivity” control definitely falls into my mystery-control-secret-sauce
