Recommend me a new DAW

General Discussion
81

Maybe I would agree if there weren’t many solid aspects which justify criticism. The Renoise customer management is just lousy, and it doesn’t help to ignore that fact. It’s arrogant or at least ignorant to blame unhappy users for that. If there weren’t so many unsolved topics in Renoise, people wouldn’t criticize that much.

Can you give us a specific example for the “lousy Renoise customer management” that doesn’t involve update-related shortcomings (if at all) ?

One thing you need to realize is that the moment you purchase Renoise you buy the program at this particular state of development. You do NOT buy future updates, you are GRANTED them. If you don’t like the DAW at that state, don’t buy it. If you think feature X is essential for you and Renoise doesn’t have it, don’t buy it. If you think another DAW is better at handling audio tracks, don’t buy it. Please don’t start to speculate whether Renoise is going to introduce your desired feature at a later point just because you can post your enthusiasm about it in the Ideas & Suggestions forum. Likewise, purchasing Renoise doesn’t give you the right to complain about any update related issues either.

Regarding the argument “stop complaining and make more music”. If this statement was the foundation for music production, we still would use wooden sticks in the jungle. And Renoise never had been written, because people still would use The Ultimate Soundtracker on Amiga 500. Progress and invention have been there all the time.

This point isn’t about progress, it’s about devotion and musical competence. Look at Venetian Snares, ASC and Bizzy B. These musicians don’t hang around in forums and complain about why feature X and update Y haven’t happened yet. They take the program as it is, embrace its strengths and weaknesses and do the best out of what is given to them. Can’t do a certain thing in Renoise? Learn to work around or use an additional program that can achieve it. That’s what these musicians do and they are fucking successful at it. They are professionals. And guess what, they use the same program as you do. Crazy, isn’t it?

As soon as you hit the forum to start a new complain thread it’s just another pitiful attempt at concealing how much of a terrible musician you are. You try to blame your musical deficiency at a feature that Renoise doesn’t have yet, while at the same time all of the above mentioned producers don’t give a shit and release their music on CD and vinyl.

82

A bit of perspective…

The devs will open up a cesspit of feature requests with every new feature added :smiley: (“please turn redux into a full-blown rompler/analogue/granular synth with feature x and y”). Potential is kind of exponential that way, so the nagging will increase at the same rate Renoise becomes more potent. Current rate of nagging already indicates Renoise is quite potent. Especially in relation to its price tag.

83

Can you give us a specific example for the “lousy Renoise customer management” that doesn’t involve update-related shortcomings (if at all) ?

One thing you need to realize is that the moment you purchase Renoise you buy the program at this particular state of development. You do NOT buy future updates, you are GRANTED them. If you don’t like the DAW at that state, don’t buy it. If you think feature X is essential for you and Renoise doesn’t have it, don’t buy it. If you think another DAW is better at handling audio tracks, don’t buy it. Please don’t start to speculate whether Renoise is going to introduce your desired feature at a later point just because you can post your enthusiasm about it in the Ideas & Suggestions forum. Likewise, purchasing Renoise doesn’t give you the right to complain about any update related issues either.

This point isn’t about progress, it’s about devotion and musical competence. Look at Venetian Snares, ASC and Bizzy B. These musicians don’t hang around in forums and complain about why feature X and update Y haven’t happened yet. They take the program as it is, embrace its strengths and weaknesses and do the best out of what is given to them. Can’t do a certain thing in Renoise? Learn to work around or use an additional program that can achieve it. That’s what these musicians do and they are fucking successful at it. They are professionals. And guess what, they use the same program as you do. Crazy, isn’t it?

As soon as you hit the forum to start a new complain thread it’s just another pitiful attempt at concealing how much of a terrible musician you are. You try to blame your musical deficiency at a feature that Renoise doesn’t have yet, while at the same time all of the above mentioned producers don’t give a shit and release their music on CD and vinyl.

Anotherpettifogger of taktik? I think you completely mixing up arguments here. You also can do lot of music in Renoise, also good music, but still complain about missing features. Esp. because you very well know its limitations. Because it’s also about not to disturb creativity by technical workarounds. (Also I don’t like Venetian Snares, maybe one tune by them). Some people don’t care for features at all and make music, and some care for features - wishing a bit of common daw in Renoise - and also make music. Nobody ever said, I cannot make music, because Renoise lags of that specific feature. And I really don’t hear that people not complaining are doing music better. Opposite is true :stuck_out_tongue:

I find suggestions not bad at all at the first place. Also most suggestions are repeated over and over again, from different people. It’s often a try to motivate the devs somehow. Ok, it’s ridiculous to repeat it over and over, maybe if the was a definitive answer, it would stop. Right?

Really bad is the way of language in here quite sometimes. Very unfriendly. And arrogant. To the people, but also to the devs. And stupid judgements of people who think themselves the best musicians in the world. Kind of spreading narcism.You are a star. I geddit.

Renoise team is always very pro and nice as support. But just ignoring users for a long time - yes, that’s kind of lousy? Wouldn’t it be much more clever ift you had announced “we will make a renoise pause now, developing other ideas” instead? Really, that would have prevented lot of frustration posts in here.

BTW. the piano roll is just as old as the tracker view. It’s both from the 80s. 80s are the best!

84

A bit of perspective…

The devs will open up a cesspit of feature requests with every new feature added :smiley: (“please turn redux into a full-blown rompler/analogue/granular synth with feature x and y”). Potential is kind of exponential that way, so the nagging will increase at the same rate Renoise becomes more potent. Current rate of nagging already indicates Renoise is quite potent. Especially in relation to its price tag.

You’re right, the forum ist flooded by many esoteric feature requests. And I’m really happy that devs don’t implement them. That said, there are missing many bread and butter features like e.g. support for high resolution monitors, consequent multi monitor support (only instrument editor can be docked/undocked), multi-project support, Wav tracks/clips, direct from disk streaming (samples still need to be loaded into RAM before playback). Side chaining (not possible - probably never will be), multiple automation lanes visible at once ,proper undo support for external midi controllers and so on.

Most of these features are essential and not just “nice to have” options, whereas things like “tracker in tracker” are IMO more on the esoteric side of life. I don’t understand the devs feature weighting here. Feels not balanced at all.

85

Can you give us a specific example for the “lousy Renoise customer management” that doesn’t involve update-related shortcomings (if at all) ?

Especially the overall information politics of the Renoise team is really not good. There’s nothing like a Renoise roadmap, no news/infos/blogs about planed features, enhancements. Nothing. Also for script developers like me no infos about upcoming changes. Nada, nothing. They just don’t care. So if you for example hope for new features, you could be lucky, or not.

E.g. years ago, short after I bought Renoise in 2009 or so, I wrote taktik a mail regarding wav tracks. He replied that this feature would be probably implemented later on. So I waited and hoped. Fought some fights with Rewire and Reaper and out of sync problems, and 7 years later we have tracker in tracker, but still no wav tracks.

This point isn’t about progress, it’s about devotion and musical competence. Look at Venetian Snares, ASC and Bizzy B. These musicians don’t hang around in forums and complain about why feature X and update Y haven’t happened yet

Well, if those artists wouldn’t appreciate progress, why do they follow digital pathways at all ? Why don’t they use analog drums and record everthing to good ol’ tape ? Mmmh, maybe because breakbeats with 1/128 triplet snare rolls at 290 BPM are hard to play on a pearl drumset ? ^^

As soon as you hit the forum to start a new complain thread it’s just another pitiful attempt at concealing how much of a terrible musician you are. You try to blame your musical deficiency at a feature that Renoise doesn’t have yet

Well, that logic implies that only successfull musicians would be worthy to criticize Renoise, and all the other “complainers” must be terrible musicians ? Wow ! ^^

86

Renoise team is always very pro and nice as support. But just ignoring users for a long time - yes, that’s kind of lousy? Wouldn’t it be much more clever ift you had announced “we will make a renoise pause now, developing other ideas” instead? Really, that would have prevented lot of frustration posts in here.

That nails it !

87

Making music is the most important thing here, after all.
It doesn’t really matter how you do it, or what tools you use, it’s only important that you do it.

Well that’s the classical though-terminating cliche that is used very often here. Bring it and kill all the criticism, yeah !

So I have another suggestion for you: why not close the complete forum and make more music instead ? At least that would be consequent.

88

So I have another suggestion for you: why not close the complete forum and make more music instead ? At least that would be consequent.

And what should I do then all day long? :stuck_out_tongue: Maybe it would be enough to “close” / make-readonly the suggestions section. Since it implies somebody does care.

89

Most of these features are essential and not just “nice to have” options, whereas things like “tracker in tracker” are IMO more on the esoteric side of life. I don’t understand the devs feature weighting here. Feels not balanced at all.

I disagree. What you call the “esoteric side of life” is basically the unique features that sets Renoise apart from everything else. The “tracker in tracker”, i.e. phrases, is IMO the best feature ever implemented in Renoise. You simply can’t find that kind of great stuff elsewhere. It’s pure genius.

90

Renoise team is always very pro and nice as support. But just ignoring users for a long time - yes, that’s kind of lousy? Wouldn’t it be much more clever ift you had announced “we will make a renoise pause now, developing other ideas” instead? Really, that would have prevented lot of frustration posts in here.

I don’t think the Renoise team’s “radio silence” (as I use to call it) is about being lousy towards the userbase. It has probably more to do with practical matters, such as avoidingbuild-ups, speculations, expectations,frustrations, etc.Because: Where one user sees an essential and favorite feature (e.g. phrases), another user seessomething that’s more on the esotheric side of life… You get the point.

But yeah, I’d saythat developers could probably help to stop negative energy from self-oscillatingin the Renoise forums by making an official oneshot statement (i.e. not posted as a small comment in the forums, but rather as a permanent information page on the site) regardingsuch matters that many users are frequently concerned about. Such issues include for example: will Renoise developers try to adapt to advancements in hardware, i.e. should I assume Renoise willfollow with meon my next computer? Butthey also includesome basic information about the limitationsof the project, such as the info that Renoise isa hobby project.

This last point is probably crucial to spell out in explicit terms.It needs to becrystal clearfor the potential user/customer is that Renoise/Redux is not a full time project and that the developers are not aspiring togrow a company like for example Bitwig, Steinberg, PreSonus, Ableton, etc. Probably many people are making thewrong assumption thatsince Renoise is so good and stable, it must also be backed by a solid team that’s working hard (full time)at competing with the other players on the DAW market. And when they discover that it’s justone of taktik’shobby projects,well… they feeldisappointed. I can certainly understand that to some extent.

Personally I feel more like “OK, so THIS great stuff is what’s possible from ahobby project?” Then WHAT on earth could be possible from a full timeprofessional project? While I accept the facts of reality, I can’t help to feelthose stabs of saddness aboutthat metaphysicalpause button that seems to have been pressed down by some malevolent cosmic powers to preventgreat potential from getting more life.

91

@Danoise, nope i speak for myself, the scripting updates have been a mess that have left tools non working.

As for the nonsense in this thread about customer support being bad, utter and complete bulls**t, when you contact them, they are polite and get whatever needs done, done.
Updates are not customer support, unless you have a showstopper bug, then yes that needs an update.

92

To clarify things: I never claimed that the support wouldn’t be overall polite and friendly. It’s the opposite.

What I addressed was primarily their awfull information politics and non-clever/non-existent marketing / sales strategies. Also some decisions in the past led to a lot of disappointment. Many users were deeply disappointed after the release of Renoise 3.0. My impression is that the devs just don’t listen good enough. Maybe they don’t want to, maybe they don’t have to. Anyway, from my perspective I call that lousy customer management. Politeness is absolutely not the point here.

93

They don’t listen at all before release, they implement whatever they like, it is their software, they then listen to bug reports and fix some of them.

I don’t know of any developers in the audio world that listen in any other way than this ?

Possibly the only ones are the Reaper developers, but they only listen in a slightly different way, they ignore all feature requests, implement whatever they want, then listen when people say “That doesn’t work, do it like this instead” then they change it.

94

Since spending time on the old Reason forums, I have found it is customary that a good products fans eventually turn on the developers for not doing enough for to them enough and start thinking and typing in click bait

I call it Forum Depression when you spend too much time on forums and not enough time making music

I also blame the internet in general, but in an age where everything has daily updates seeing something not have those might make some think the project is dead.

But I agree, why would that even matter? If it works, why do you need constant development? Is that the new way to tell if something is good now?

Maybe it’s wrong place to post it, but.

Wtf with this people that running around forums and complaining about features from another software? Why is renoise lacking some features is like end of the day for them, the sky is falling and other bullshit. And yet the guy who use peace of technology from 80’s considered cool. What wrong with people who can’t even learn basic stuff, likerandomisingpanorama and such, complain so much. Like people who can’t even use the functionality of the tracker thats presented in one form or another from the begininng of such trackers… WTF?

As I said earlier, it’s a running trend lol

But again, their music will improve so much when the next version comes out and they can spend money and act like it’s investing in their music! (and again next year and so on and so forth)

I wanted to make another post in this about how the limitations of software/hardware is good, as you referenced the 80s and lets be honest 80s tracker tricks were insane, but now the merger of big developers and yearly cycles just makes it easier to complain on forums for something “sucking” because it can’t do what “Generic Daw #12” does. So I save my breath because complaining about complaints is just as unproductive :slight_smile:

95

E.g. years ago, short after I bought Renoise in 2009 or so, I wrote taktik a mail regarding wav tracks. He replied that this feature would be probably implemented later on. So I waited and hoped. Fought some fights with Rewire and Reaper and out of sync problems, and 7 years later we have tracker in tracker, but still no wav tracks.

Precisely illustrates why its probably better not to promise any features.

However overall it’s always going to be a lose/lose situation with some folks, there is plenty of solid rationale for not publishing roadmaps e.g.

http://dataerous.com/post/51810660125/dont-publish-a-product-roadmap

https://signalvnoise.com/posts/694-you-dont-need-a-product-road-map

Maybe the culprit here is the way Renoise is marketed, perhaps it should be:

“Hey guys, we like trackers and built this cool software but don’t expect it to do everything, we are going to develop this at our own pace because we want to innovate. Oh and if you like it buy the full version for a ridiculously low price because bills”

96

I don’t know of any developers in the audio world that listen in any other way than this ?
Possibly the only ones are the Reaper developers, but they only listen in a slightly different way, they ignore all feature requests, implement whatever they want, then listen when people say “That doesn’t work, do it like this instead” then they change it.

LOL. This is funny - I guess it has something to do with having a software that serves many different purposes and people use it in a gazillion different ways? That certainly rings a bell. You try to figure things out in advance, but there’s always something you’re missing out on.

This is why “dogfooding” is important: by using your own software instead of just developing it, you have that perspective too. You become aware of the small workflaws that lead to frustration, down the line. I think that’s what happened with Renoise 3.0 - it introduced so many new features that some felt… a bitunfinished. Actually, I don’t think that happened due to the lack of dogfooding, but rather, that we decided to ship before some of these annoyances were properly dealt with.

However, I believe 3.1 did an excellent job of addressing those issues. Especially the closer integration of phrases and improvements to the pattern editor is something I enjoy every time I boot up the software.

Anyway…anyone reading this whole thread (which is now on page 4, so less and less chance of that actually happening) should know that taktik clearly stated that development hasn’t stopped - but for now, focus is only on fixing bugs and making sure it actually works across the various OSes. This, I guess, is information that bears repeating.

And also, I would like to join the chorus of people pointing out that it makes little sense to wait for a software to implement feature XYZ, no matter if that feature got promised or not. Use it as it is, switch to something else, or learn to combine things.In other words, “live in the present”.

97

I think - like said many times - Renoise is not enough attractive for the developers to invest much more effort, since they believe (for good reasons maybe) it’s not possible to sell it often.

On the other hand Renoise development is really slow. Maybe the most slow in DAW market. What I miss here is not a roadmap. But announcing some status at least. Even if it’s a different project. So I know now, what to expect / hope for and what not. Some minor updates, some info. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Look at the other DAWs: Most of them constantly publishing bugfix releases. some constantly even update.

Also lot of missing “standard” features are not that time consuming to implement. Renoise is at 80%.

If Renoise was considered as a spare time project, the testing and development would benefit from breaking up the current development planning structure, like public alpha testing, open source code (at least some components like dsp interface).

And why insist on big version number jumps? Instead, you could do that like Mozilla or Bitwig. Adding some stuff here and there, providing a alpha build of the recent state all the time. And let the early access been paid extra.

98

Maybe the culprit here is the way Renoise is marketed, perhaps it should be:

“Hey guys, we like trackers and built this cool software but don’t expect it to do everything, we are going to develop this at our own pace because we want to innovate. Oh and if you like it buy the full version for a ridiculously low price because bills”

Now that’s a good point.

Even cooler IMO:

“Hey guys, we like trackers and built this cool software but don’t expect it to do everything for you. If you do expect it and think you’re entitled to dictate what we should do or not do, just go and f-ck yourself.The official Renoise version is developed at a slow pace because we want to experiment and innovate our way to make it rock solid. However, you are free to compile your own customized products, using theRenoiseDevelopment Kit(RDK) which is similar to how e.g. the Unreal Engine license system works. The RDK is essentially the Renoise source code minus some 3rd party DSP’s andthosefeatures that are exclusive to the official Renoise version.”

99

You know what, some people should keep in mind that the developers working on this in their spare time is pretty much keeping Renoise alive, if it had to pay bills, bye bye Renoise, so lets not be thinking a spare time project is not a good thing.

In fact on hobby projects, if the developer is actually wanting the project themselves, they tend to move forward very very quick.

100

You know what, some people should keep in mind that the developers working on this in their spare time is pretty much keeping Renoise alive, if it had to pay bills, bye bye Renoise, so lets not be thinking a spare time project is not a good thing.

In fact on hobby projects, if the developer is actually wanting the project themselves, they tend to move forward very very quick.

I would ask, even if the developer wants and uses the project, what if the current build is his perfect rendition?

That wouldn’t move development forward

As said previously, people all use this software for different things and have different needs. So it’s quite interesting to think “what does the developer want” and wonder if this is it. Or has it gone another route where that has been met and now it is mostly being developed for the users. And if that is the case, you can imagine experimenting with every idea or drawing a road map must really get bogged down as popularity increases since addressing every want and need into a functional product means not everything can be addressed.

And at that point if the goal of the project, from the developer, is this goal, if the users want another goal, etc I doubt that even if the developer wants and uses the project that it can progress quickly to please everyone. IF anything the constant updates or changes could ruin it for a lot of people (as happened to me with another program). So treading carefully is often the best option