Need help to decide if renoise would be the right tool for me.

Help, Support & Bugs Beginners Questions - Renoise
1

Hi. I am currently in the process of choosing my first real DAW, for learning music, and making some sound. My main goal : make chiptune(more important) and some classic/orchestral music(maybe).

Its been a while i look at renoise. Since i love the old school era of computing, renoise look verry nice to me, being a tracker. But before I buy a tool, i need to make sure it has everything I need.

Does renoise have instrument included ? (for example, garageband has many piano, violin, guitar, etc…).

Does renoise come with lot of sample, loop, and other?

Does renoise has included special effect, plugin, equalizer, or whatever else included normally in ableton, fl studio and garage band?

Does renoise has a piano roll?

If not, does fl studio has instrument, sample, loop and other? And does fl studio combined with redux could achieve renoise + extra content?

EDIT: garageband is not an option for me, so altought i mentionned it, i can’t really use it, no mac.

2

None of this matters, find an interface that’s pleasant for you to use and get comfortable with it. Try the demo. Bundled samples and plugins are irrelevant.

If I wanted a Piano Roll I would probably use Energy XT instead of Renoise. Other DAWs come bundled with too much garbage.

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Renoise has no piano roll. I think it’s Yes to all your other questions.

You can try the demo version of Renoise, which has very few limitations, to get a feel for it.

4

Renoise has no piano roll. I think it’s Yes to all your other questions.

You can try the demo version of Renoise, which has very few limitations, to get a feel for it.

First, most of the time, demo don’t include all the thing the full version has. So it could have the full interface, without the included loop and isntrument. Its why I ask instead of basing my opinion on a stripped version.

Also, I am the type of guy who try to don’t install many software (demo in this case), to uninstall them afterward, because it clutter my installation. I only install what i intend to keep and use.

None of this matters, find an interface that’s pleasant for you to use and get comfortable with it. Try the demo. Bundled samples and plugins are irrelevant.

If I wanted a Piano Roll I would probably use Energy XT instead of Renoise. Other DAWs come bundled with too much garbage.

As for interface, I am the type of guy who can adapt to many interface/workflow quite easily. For example, I use many different desktop environment and OS: Linux(gnome3, gnome2, KDE), windows, mac OS.

I am a geek guy, who love computer and programming and can adapt to many different software/interface.

Also, for me, included plugin/instrument/sample is important, since I don’t intend to invest $$ in more sample/loop/instrument. I am not a musician, making money from music, nor its my main hobby. I just want to get a software, and use whats inside, and find some cheap/free extra on the web, without investing thousand hour to find my cheap/extra. (My main hobby are electronics and programming, and then gaming…).

So I need a DAW that include some content included… you know, battery include…

5

First, most of the time, demo don’t include all the thing the full version has. So it could have the full interface, without the included loop and isntrument. Its why I ask instead of basing my opinion on a stripped version.
Also, I am the type of guy who try to don’t install many software (demo in this case), to uninstall them afterward, because it clutter my installation. I only install what i intend to keep and use.

First, you don’t bother to read the Renoise demo download page to find out what it does or does not have, and you don’t want to make the effort to try it, because that might end up as an inconvenience.

You are the type of guy who wants other people to spend their own time answering questions about things you could easily find out for yourself.

Edit: I got this reply, “So instead of judging me, would you try to be more informative instead of making such a post.”

I.e. please do more free work for me.

6

First, you don’t bother to read the Renoise demo download page to find out what it does or does not have, and you don’t want to make the effort to try it, because that might end up as an inconvenience.

You are the type of guy who wants other people to spend their own time answering questions about things you could easily find out for yourself.

I checked all over Demo page, Renoise product page, and many other place on the site, and i can’t find anywhere about included content.

Also, on the Demo download page, it just talk about the DAW feature disabled in demo, but still it dosen’t say if demo include Renoise content, and if it don’t include it, if its because its demo, or just because Renoise don’t include content at all. So its why I am asking here if it include content, instead of basing my judgement on a demo that may or may not include content.

Ableton like to brag about how many GB of included content they got, and both, fl studio and ableton, got a edition comparaison page, where we can see all the feature it got. But like i said, i look over renoise, and i can’t find a list of included feature/content. And since I know nothing in music composition, opening a demo will talk less to me than opening a chart that list all the feature, since i won’t know for what to look for in the demo.

So instead of judging me, would you try to be more informative instead of making such a post.

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Renoise will be just fine. Try the demo, it’s basically fully featured minus wav rendering and asio support. You can start making tracks and even save your progress all you like until you purchase.
As far as bundled instruments, it comes with a small amount… but as you mention your main interests are chip music and orchestral… well for chip you can draw all your waveforms right inside of the renoise sample editor… and as far as orchestra sounds, you would have to do your own hunting for nice quality orchestra vsti / samples / soundfonts anyway…

8

I tried renoise quickly on a spare computer that i will clean install soon. I see not many instrument :(. I like being able to draw my own waveform, but i can’t find any included synthesizer.

I remember when i was playing with garageband (well, i spent few minute to few hour, but never really learned to make music), there was many instrument. But what is backstage? Is there any instrument in backstage(can’t seem to find any real info on what backstage is really)? What would you recommend for plugin & sample & instrument?

Does Redux come with backstage access?

People that buy renoise get special redux pricing?

Since i am in electronics/programming, is it possible for me to create a real synthesizer, and interface it to renoise, so renoise send midi, and my synthesizer send back audio to renoise? How about creating plugin/VST/whatever? Can I make a DSP/software synthesizer/special effect? Using which language/tool? (can i do it using csound?)

9

The only real question you should ask yourself: Do i like the tracker style editing or do i like pianoroll editing.

If this doesn’t matter to you it’s because you have lack of experience with it, beacause it really does matter a lot.

Renoise does not come with loads of samples and instruments. A high quality piano instrument would probably contain more than 1GB of data, so it wouldn’t make much sense to include things like this as the installation files would be enormous.

There are tons of resources on the net, ranging from free to expensive and Renoise forum also has an ever growing downloads section full of great resources you may download for free.

Garageband is not made for real musicians, it’s just a toy if you ask me. So the question is if you seriously want to get into making music or if you just want to play around a bit with some ready made loops and stuff?

Since i am in electronics/programming, is it possible for me to create a real synthesizer, and interface it to renoise, so renoise send midi, and my synthesizer send back audio to renoise? How about creating plugin/VST/whatever? Can I make a DSP/software synthesizer/special effect? Using which language/tool? (can i do it using csound?)

Yes, there are several approaches to do these things.

If you want to make external plugins you may use a VST-editor or program it from scratch yourself if that’s your thing. This has nothing to do with Renoise, the plugins could be used in any DAW that supports it.

Renoise is great for sound designing and comes with lots of effects that can be arranged in unlimited combinations.

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Does renoise have instrument included ? (for example, garageband has many piano, violin, guitar, etc…).
Does renoise come with lot of sample, loop, and other?

The main application (both demo and full version) comes with a small collection of basic starter instruments and samples. A few synths, a few basses, a nice amount of single shot percussion aimed at electronic music, a few breakbeats, etc. We do not have any big multi-gigabyte libraries to offer you.

Does renoise has included special effect, plugin, equalizer, or whatever else included normally in ableton, fl studio and garage band?

Renoise does not come with any third party plugins. We only include our native devices, which includes a variety of DSP effects to process the sound, and “meta” devices to automate and control things in various ways. There’s definitely more than enough included to handle most common production tasks, but if you need more specialised effects then you’ll need to look at other VST plugins.

Does renoise has a piano roll?

No.

does fl studio has (…)

Better go check the Image-Line website to answer any FL Studio questions.

i can’t find any included synthesizer.

We don’t have an included synthesizer, but our Sampler is quite capable of taking some looped waveforms and turning them into something interesting.

If you want more advanced synths, better look at the thousands of available VST plugins out there. The KvR plugin database is a good place to start.

But what is backstage? Is there any instrument in backstage(can’t seem to find any real info on what backstage is really)?

Backstage is a private area of our website for licensed users only. After buying a license for Renoise or Redux, you’ll get a login to the Backstage area where you can download the software (and future updates), plus some other goodies that are exclusive to licensed users.

We do have a small selection of bonus content in the Backstage area. This includes some instrument packs for Redux (which will now work in Renoise 3.1) which you can read about here, and also a few packs for Renoise such as the Puremagnetik pack which was first included with an older Renoise update that you can read about here.

In general, they are all relatively modest in size, so you should not expect any huge orchestral sound libraries or anything like that. It’s just a few extra sounds that you may find interesting.

People that buy renoise get special redux pricing?

If you already own Renoise, then you can log into Backstage and use a special link there which grants a 30% discount on Redux.

Vice versa if you already own Redux, and you want to buy Renoise for 30% discount.

Ableton like to brag about how many GB of included content they got (…)

Ableton is also a multi-million dollar company that employs hundreds of people, with entire departments dedicated to content production, licensing sounds from other producers, etc.

Renoise is a sliiiightly smaller operation (ie. super tiny!) with far less resources to spend on that type of thing.

In reality, you’ll probably never use 95% of the content included with most big DAWs anyway, and it’s simply wasting space on your hard disk, so I personally don’t even consider such stuff to be very useful.

11

We do have a small selection of bonus content in the Backstage area. This includes some instrument packs for Redux (which will now work in Renoise 3.1) which you can read about here, and also a few packs for Renoise such as the Puremagnetik pack which was first included with an older Renoise update that you can read about here.

If you already own Renoise, then you can log into Backstage and use a special link there which grants a 30% discount on Redux.

Vice versa if you already own Redux, and you want to buy Renoise for 30% discount.

Nice, the link you shared has quite a few interesting thing. So many instrument, to complement the tiny amount available with renoise. Also, from what you said, if i could get either a 30% rebate on Redux or Renoise, depending on which one i buy first, and which one i buy after on backstage, i should get Redux first… 30% of the one that cost the more (well, renoise cost something like 10$ more…).

Redux could be handy, I just got Ableton live lite for free, because of my Oxygen49 keyboard i bought few year ago. So i could use redux in ableton. Does anyone here know about if its legal to cross-use ressource (loop, sample and other) between DAW? I could use included content in my Ableton live lite in Renoise…

12

You’ll have to do a lot of homework, music making is a serious business.(and I don’t mean reading forums posts) (I’d say 56 hours of solid, not entirely experiment based learning should be a good start)

There are books on the subject, easily accessible via very accessible illegitimate ways, search for the basics, literally, ‘how to make music on a computer’. Then you can move on to skimming through youtube videos at the same time as making some noises yourself with vst plugins.

After which you, as an already more knowledgeable person in the field will have to read up on the manuals of several daws and decide what you want at that time.

Don’t rush to buy anything, test it out first.

If I’d try to simplify, classical/orchestral in renoise will be painful. 8-bit computer era music, on the other hand, easier.

This is not meant to sound condescending, but at this level you really don’t know what you want yet.

If you just want to play around you can always just use your live lite copy and play around with the templates. Sooner or later though you’ll have to move on, if you decide to keep going. It’s Digital Audio Workstation not digital audio playstation.

All of your questions can be answered with ‘depends’. There aretoo many variants, you must learn first.

13

I have bought Music theory for computer musician this summer :slight_smile:

I know what I want : If i ever make indie game, be able to make some cheap soundtrack to go with, and be able to play orchestral/classic like music (quality is not a huge factor for this, just being able to play some video game classic & movie classic in orchestral form is enough to make me happy… halo theme, zelda, Lord of the ring & other. So maybe I will use my DAW also as an instrument, where i would just plug my midi keyboard and play directly, without recording. Also, like I said, I may whant to try to make myself some DSP and software/hardware synthesizer. One of the thing i like about renoise, is LINUX SUPPORT!!. Bitwig is the other alternative. I will only buy DAW that are cross platform to at least 2 OS. So i could alway switch my computer environment without loosing my daw. (so it eliminate garageband, logic, cubase, sonar and few other. The one i now consider : Renoise, Fl studio, Ableton, Bitwig)

Any interesting book on modulation, synthesize, audio engineering, dsp and other? Or do you guy have recommendation of some nice cheap plugin and cheap sample pack that could get me some variety to get started, without going in the hundred $ in extra content? What are you guy using?

14

“Interesting book on modulation, synthesize…”

You can literally just google that and find very useful results, keyword is ‘pdf’. If you want Linux support you can only consider Renoise and Bitwig, reaper claims to be wine optimised, and then thereare the free ones Ardour, LMMS maybe I have forgotten some. Nice things cost money.

Go tokvraudio.com, search the forum, keyword 'free’and onceagain, google whatever you want, there are plenty of free plugins on windows and plenty of freeversions of commercial plugins on osx and windows (melda comes to mind). For audio programming I suggest you try protoplug or reajs(windows only but has far more user made scripts). Almost all daws expand their abilities with plugins VST, AU, LV2 or otherwise so if you’re into all that you can program your plugins, frameworks are also plentiful.

I use a lot of renoise as a synth, it’s a sampler with envelopes and effects chains, that’s extremely powerful. When you’ll read a book or 2 on synthesis it will all make sense, but that is vital to learn everything as fast as possible.

15

There are tons of free plugins available. synth1 is a fantastic free synthesizer.

Renoise DOES come with a bunch of samples and sampled instruments - I count 136 .xrni instruments and 278 .flac samples included in the Renoise 3.0 installation. Plus there are a bunch of extra packs available for download in the backstage if you choose to buy a license.

So, there’s way more than enough sample / instrument content to get you started. And with all the free plugins, all kinds of free samples available online, and the fact that you can build instruments from samples yourself, use the built-in effects, and load your own samples… you’ll never run out of stuff to work with.

In other words, the DAW you choose - whether Renoise, FL Studio, Ableton, or Bitwig - is not the bottleneck. None is perfect. DEMO them. Pick one. Make music. Don’t look back.

Or spend the rest of your life fretting about making the perfect decision, and never make any music :wink:

16

My main weapon is instrument and midi editing, and I just tried ableton, and maybe it come with a lot of sample and even some interesting instrument, its midi editing is horrible.

Correct me if i am wrong but:

It look to me that ableton is more about taking loop, sample and audio file, and then applying transformation over them, and then mapping some of those interesting sound to a special pad, like push.

While FL studio and renoise are more about manipulating midi, from either instrument or sampler.

So working with audio channel, ableton, or even audacity. Working with midi channel, fl studio or ableton. I wonder how is bitwig (no time to test it for now).

EDIT: my bad, now i understand more how ableton work, what is session and arrengement, but I still don’t like their piano roll.

I think i will wait until 3.1 before i buy, if i buy it… Because when we buy, its for a full major version, and since 3.1 will be release so soon, better not waste a minor, so i will get 3.1 to 4.1 instead of 3.0 to 4.0. Meanwhile, I have time to test ableton live lite and renoise, and even redux, to see what i will do. Some people here said that when its X.9, they offer upgrade discount. Can i get more info on that discount? I also need to be aware of economical implication of my choice,

17

Nice, Renoise is now from 3.1 to 4.1 in the store. I just watched the whole tutorial series for Renoise 3.0, and it look pretty nice to use in the hand of someone with experience. The only downside is that even with experience with renoise software, i still know nothing about music composition. If someone know some great resource on how to make some beat and music creation, it would be appreciate. I played a little bit with Ableton live lite, interesting, but having a tracker + a traditionnal DAW is always useful. In this forum, I see its pretty common for people here to fuse the best of many DAW. Is there something such as music creation introduction for video game compositor?

Unfortunately, my Ableton license is lite, so its pretty limited, and also, I can only install it on two computer. So, what would you guy think would be the best complement for Renoise, or in the other side, for what would be Renoise be the best complement? I also intend to maybe get Redux

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If you get really into classiscal composition, a piano roll is VERY handy for visualizing the voice leading, counterpoint,etc. If your piano skills are solid you’ll visualize (or hear)it on your MIDI controller as you play. Either way…if you have no keyboard controller, piano roll, or grand staff, I’d avoid classical(theory intensive) composition. If you’re just going for classical sounding, well, that’s a different story-any DAW will do. Just get some great layered/multisampled intruments (Kontakt) or a good mic and players. I minored in classical composition in college and haven’t looked at a grand staff since. Renoise is GREAT for chiptune and potentially gamescores, but I wouldn’t start a theory intensive composition in it.

However with a MIDI chorder or other MIDI plugin you can just program complex chords there and run it inside of renoise 3.1+ (much easier for complex progressions IMO). Also use aftertouch or modwheel for expressiveness.

19

I have been using Renoise only for a long time but then I was in need of a DAW that would allow me to have a better view on long audiofiles and videosupport, so I looked at Reaper. Their pricing is really fair and you can test it for 30 days without any limitations and afterwards just a nag screen. I bought it 2 days later (together with some pretty good videotuts by Kenny Goia that were on discount and saved me a hell lot of time. Reaper is pretty deep.) So I can only recommend it, if you are looking for a more traditional looking software. Can’t say if you’ll like its piano roll better, as I neither know Ableton nor do I like to use piano rolls very much generally. Anyways, Renoise/Reaper is a combo you should look into. The users in their forum are very helpful and enthusiastic as well.

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By classic/orchestral, i mean music like rohan theme(and other LoTR), zelda theme, lux aeterna, arrival to earth (transformer), battlefield theme, halo theme, skyrim/oblivion/morrowind theme not thing like beethoven and vivald, … So video game soundtrack not in chiptune mode, with violin and horn and all the other nice harminic thing, not heavy metal/dubstep/strange other style…