I have not tried this thing but from a quick glance I think I dig its pattern sequencer… this part of Renoise could be overhauled.
1 Like
More isn’t better.
I’ve tried way too many of these one-man FLOSS project… I know precisely what to expect: too many ideas (albeit probably great ones) and in the end an unfocused unstable mess. Great for a couple of enthousiasts who enjoy having to fight their tools… but unuseable for anything productive. Just like an old car you need to fix all the time : it can be a fun past-time, but you don’t take it to make a long trip.
I really wish people would understand that what makes Renoise great is that it does a few things and it does it really well and very coherently. If you start adding waveform, pianorolls and all sorts of non-tracker features you will very quickly end-up with a cluttered mess. Even the biggest names of the industry add features at a extreeeemly slow rate (just read the change logs of Ableton… it’s mostly tiny improvements of the existing workflow — and it’s a 350 people company.)
Renoise has many many things that need improvements but it must stick to what it is : a modern tracker (but a tracker first and formost). I really hope Renoise won’t take the Radium path and try to do too many things at once.
8 Likes
I am a big proponent of less is more. And extra functionality like you mention Tumulte should be an option so not to clutter the interface for those who don’t use these features. Clutter must be avoided at all corners.
If you ask me about the old school pattern sequencer, I would say it’s clunky and an outdated concept that I have worked with for over two decades and never been a fan, is that such a sacred part of a tracker that it has to stay?
For me a tracker is the pattern editor because that functionality works 100%, everything else is replaceable… but yeah, we all have our views and that’s how it is.
I find that the abstract and static nature of a tracker makes them extremely efficient to focus and to deal with extremely complexes stuffs (no wonder why so many people use trackers for Breakcore). I also find it extremely convenient with complex rhythms and frequent time signature/BPM changes.
If you start adding waveforms or visualisations you don’t add much information BUT you introduce lots of visual confusion: if you change the BPM mid pattern the same sound won’t have the same waveform OR you’d have to change the spacing of lines (like Radium apparently) and you end up with the same problems as standards piano rolls : dealing with complex rhythms or huge length variations (like having 4 bars pads and 1/32th notes) forces you to zoom and dezoom constantly.
A tracker IS actually a very damn efficient and clever representation of note through time. Although, I’ll admit that a standard piano roll is significantly better for your average western 4/4 music (which is 95% of what people do with their DAW)
Also the song arranger in Trackers are a BLESSING : contrary to any other DAW you can rearrange patterns, add or remove length to a section without having to worry about messing with the rest of the song. The tradeoff is that it’s slightly more complex to deal with cross-patterns recordings… fine… I still keep my arranger.
And finally I love that every thing is at its right place. You deal with one thing at a time: sounds, notes, automation,… and one aspect isn’t in the way of others unlike Radium and most modern DAW.
So yeah, Trackers are still relevant to this day and forever will. What isn’t relevant however are the few legacy standards that made sense for the commodore 64 but not today: namely the HEX format, the midi CC or audio inputs limitations… this would expend the software without changing its inherent qualities.
And I feel that Radium is a tracker that tries to be Ardour… won’t work.
2 Likes
Yes, I agree with everything you say except the song arranger (pattern sequencer), it’s a nightmare 
And i agree with Lilith & Helltrack. I actually like the interface of Radium. And it’s fully zoomable. (Very good for my tired old eyes). The piano roll got some very good updates. You can hide it, so if you wanna go full tracker there’s no problem. Lilith: i’ve had no problems stability wise (win10). The devloper is a very nice guy, and he listens to feedback. (This is not meant to start a vs war, i like Renoise too)
1 Like
It’s the main reason I haven’t made the switch to Live or Logic pro… we are all different I guess 
1 Like
I LOVE the pattern sequencer in Renoise. It’s extremely efficient.I bought Bitwig this year, but I will keep using Renoise in parallel. It’s just too good to switch to Bitwig completely.
1 Like
the visable
waveform looks ugly
i dont even want piano roll
The pattern sequencer is certainly quick and even great for making a basic tune, what turns me off is the cumbersomeness of using aliases and doing automation and not being able to shorten the length of the alias… Maybe I just need to read the manual again 
1 Like
dont get what you mean by alias
end of midi note is note off in renoise its easier for me
I mean in the Pattern Matrix, when you alias a block (track)
And by length I was talking about the length of these blocks like you do in Ableton live for example, then you could skip the lead in to a new block and not have to make a duplicate to edit.
I don’t have the holy grail here, I am just saying it’s not intuitive right now but maybe I’m alone on this, that happens 
tbh im learning renoise and its a head fuck way of learning at first but now im
getting it slowly the other daws are looking more like a headfuck , the only things i wish is zoom in the pattern editor so i could zoom the patterns larger and smaller somehow , and when i record the tracks get really big apart from that , recording in patterns little chunks is helpful , and the pattern editor here is like all the midi editors are open at once and u can see the matrix , renoise is basically the matrix , there should be a matrix theme that leave a little green trail
and i also wish some new way of recording audio but the more i get into it the more its becoming my flow
1 Like
This hasn’t been open-source since 2012 So quite a long time
Here-
Here(?)
1 Like
my personal opinion is that this is be next-to-impossible to implement (but if it was implemented, renoise would be the best music-making tool for me ever, period)
Half of my plugins don’t load in Linux. The developer wants to make better Linux builts in the near future. For me it does not work at the moment.
Whoever is using it, I wonder with which OS.
1 Like
This tracker is very interesting in many ways, but the audio setup kills it for me (on the oft-loathed Mac OS X). I want to create, not go back to researching/setting up audio routing, then hoping it works.
The one time I could get it to work, it was very confusing. Granted, Renoise was confusing to me initially, coming from traditional DAW territory, but Radium REALLY needs some UI love. Very unique interface and a lot of neat sound creation ideas, but too much going on visually. Too many colors, text-heavy. All that amazing potential weighed down by too much to look at.
6 Likes
Radium is now working without Jack.
2 Likes
Finally been giving it a go.
Still forming an opinion though …