Renoise Vs The World

General Discussion
9

The pro´s to me are

The availabilty of vst /vsti ( click, there you have it is insane fast to me),

Build in dsp´s are all i need. a new one for surround would be nice.

I find the automation also as simple a kid could do it.

The meta devices give control in such ways I return to renoise every time I worked with a other daw.
I did not even think of this kind of manipilation before renoise.

Stability is like driving a expensive german car.

The keyboard approach turns the pc in hardware.

The wav editor is great .

Sample manipulation is indeed quick and deep.

The renoise community is great.

The lack of floating windows, i hate them.

The cons are

Copying of automation does not always work.

There is no proper adsr

no sample layering

The keyboard in the instrument editor is eye candy, there is no mapping possible and if you hit a key in it
you lose your sample in the layout.

No ctrl alt drag of samples to vsti´s like poise/shortcircuit

No zoom in, before you start a song you must allready think how many lines you think you need. stupid.

No pianoroll because some guys need to feel different from the rest of the world.
There is no new solution needed, just a simple pianoroll like in every other daw ,positioned in a new tab between
pattern editor and mixer.

No audio visualisation . This should interact with the sample editor and not be seperate channel.

Pre roll for recording. There is a api tool now for it but should be standard next to the metronome button.
Takes too much mouse clicking now.

there is no Shift option to select multiple tracks in mixer.

No shift option to select multiple fx instances. it is now copy a single fx or a whole chain.

The api tools are great but only as a idea. The great ones should be implemented in renoise without a
floating window

matrix editor proved not to be a solution to quick arranging, buzz style arranging would be nicer.

No midi input from vst´s

besides this don´t let me lose my license. renoise rocks :yeah:

10

In Renoise, I have the feeling I am ‘building’ my sound, using the DPSs, pattern fx column, etc… It really feels like Lego to me, while in other DAWs, you don’t even have half the options for manipulating a sample so quickly AND internally. Indeed, “one thing leads to another” when you know what you’re after and know how to achieve it. Then, when your sound is built, it takes only minor changes to TOTALLY change the sound DRAMATICALLY in a non-destructive manner. That is SO immensly powerful!

11

Lots of stuff that makes sense here! Glad to hear people feel somewhat the same as me… and also some that feel they allready have what they need. I guess for, a part of the joy of composing are the tools themselves… and sometimes I do get cought up in playing with the tools. Rarely do they yield better results… but oh so much fun! :)

I have friends, really good musicians, who work in Live and Pro-Tools etc. Sometimes we compare notes… and I say… check out what I can do in Renoise… and then they do the exact same thing just as fast in their DAW. The only difference being - they would never actually do it like that. Hehe… so… I think I will keep using Renoise as my main composer weapon… and back it up with some other goodies just to make the experience (not neccesarily the results) more enjoyable.

Cheers;)

PS! A little self promotion: http://www.xerxes-music.com - new EP. Once again, 100% renoise made, and quickly mixed in Logic. No mastering for this one. Studio album coming in… uh… its coming :)

12

Will just throw my 2 cents in…

To me Renoise is super-streamlined and now that I have a streamlined plug in folder w/ 1/3 the plugs, I am working very quickly.

I love the mixer view, actually…its my favorite view…

To me, writing, mixing and mastering are all a cinch in Renoise…as long as u got the proper vsts and an analyser and real-time waveform vsts to help…pff a breeze.

Ppl will say oh, but u write DnB etc…I work w/ audio etc… I also work on a guitar-centric metal project, while I agree that audio could be handled more efficiently, the new autoseek function improves the situation greatly…plus i like how its easy to chop long audio files and just turn it into an xrni instrumnet.

I think the addition of tool support can address many greivances…I find it has streamlined my workflow even more…er for the ppl still complaining about a pianoroll, don’t we have a new piano er…ticky roll.xrnt, plus scale helper…so thats a moot point.

Personally I think a lot of this is placebo and marketing, other DAWS are marketed and spoken about as being “pro”, FL studio, Renoise etc …er dunno, “not pro?” I think its a bunch of bs as there are pros who use both, and I am right on my way to making pro-quality stuff if I am not there already.

Mind u I have never used another DAW so my view has to be biased…there may well be things that are easier in others…but I don’t know and don’t care to find out.

My motto is “Love your DAW”. The best tool for workflow imo is the power of decision…I have decided to get the best out of Renoise and the plug ins I have, therefore no second guessing, “oh should I get this plug in, oh maybe renoise isn’t good enough, maybe i should use logic like all of my contemporaries etc”

Pure focus, the best tool you can get…this a by-product of obsession I think.

However, if one gets gr8 results ReWiring thru another DAW, thens that’s the way 4wd for them…sounds like a bit of fun actually!! Just fun I won’t be having. :walkman:

edit:oh yeah and btw, I love the GUI!! :yeah:

13

What do you cannot do in Renoise?
What could not be done in Fast Tracker / Impulse Tracker?
What could never be done in Protracker?
What did Noisetracker lack of? (This is the first tracker on amiga i jumped in on the mod-era)

In all the period i was creating music, i only tried two other daw’s back then to see if i could have some use of it: Cubase and Cakewalk studio.
I hated both the first hour i tried to get somewhere in these apps. Besides the fact that handling was incredibly ackward, they were also crashing all the time and completely not stable for over 20 minutes in a row. The only thing i had to use something different than a tracker was mixing vocals into a song. For mixing vocals, a tracker was too ackward to do this so i used N-track studio to record some vocal tracks along one of my productions.

Reason one for me to stick to trackers was the pace of setting up a generic framework. Reason two was stability reason three was the precise crafting of single notes that one could not do to a song in any other DAW.

We get spoiled with too many features these days and sometimes in a while, i just pop up Juha Kujanpää’s 4-chan mods and have a listen and look to how this stuff is created and then remind myself again that i should call myself an incredibly lucky fucker i have all the nice better features he didn’t had and he still pulls off gaining my respect today and i’m actually still enjoying his music today.
The other lesson that can be pulled out of it and i see folks dashing these words here onto this forum many times as well: It is not the tools you use to make stuff. It is the stuff you make from the inspiration you have along with the motivation to push it through.

We seem to be better off having less features than having more. The more features we will gain, the less productive we become.

I don’t use all features existing in Renoise.
The newer features i really like are the auto-seek function and the quick way to duplicate complete track contents in the Pattern Matrix across several patterns without having to navigate through the sequences for it. The automation does its job in some occasions, but the fact that you can’t have dynamic ramping and precise tick or delay based point-targetting does not yet make it the full-time favorite pattern effect command alternative.
And then there are many minor adjustments, like the custom adjustable frequency bands inside the EQ filters.

If we pull it down to the basic needs, what is then still essentially lacking in Renoise?

I guess some components could be detached and separated considering the fact attaching two monitors to a pc is becoming a default or at least much more affordable these days. The idea of having everything inside one window is probably the most outdated part of Renoise itself while it used to be its biggest strength back then.

14

Putting it simply and quickly:

  1. Renoise cannot disk-stream samples, it runs from the RAM instead. This means songs with large audio recordings are impossible (esp when you’ve only got 2gb of RAM like me). For this I have reluctantly moved to Reaper to finish these respective songs. Reaper has similar ethics and feel to Renoise, so I’m comfortable with that. I will continue to initially build my tracks in Renoise.

  2. Sure, we could always do with a better mixer, but Beatslaughter’s Mixer Utilities tool makes for a pretty amazing feature-set.

  3. I’ve used a lot of audio and music programs and I find Renoise GUI the best. Nothing’s perfect, and it would be very hard to please everyone.

15

  1. If my computer covered just the basics: keyboard, mouse, screen, then I wouldn’t want to touch any other DAW with a ten-foot-pole. Renoise is way more productive when you’re limited to the basics. A mouse requires that you look on the screen, has your hand on the mouse, and still you can only control a single pixel. Keyboard-centric workflow FTW. With Duplex, we now have a controller-centric workflow to compliment that, of course.

  2. I’d like to see the mixer being continually improved upon. There’s plenty of ideas to choose from, from what you are writing it sounds like you’re suggesting a “automation view” to complement the mixer? Or how about a search feature? I can get lost when there’s a gazillion DSP devices.

  3. The GUI is another area that should continually be improved. The trend goes toward both smaller and higher-resolution screens (mobile devices, netbooks, workstations). Touch-enabled devices should also get some love.

16

For me personally i hope the creative side of Renoise gets advanced
I can’t really see it ever competing with the usual suspects in terms of HD recording and so on, so why even bother ?

My own personal take on it is lets take Renoise all the way now as a fully interactive tool, with Duplex and the possibility of maybe clips and such (Expanded Matrix) then Renoise could easily become the best live interactive tool out there (OK we need a piano roll for this to be reality but hey)

I really believe that Renoise can become the defacto no1 in this area

B

17

Renoise 1 - World 0

18

It’s just the default theme.

19

Very relaxing, ur da man :)

20
  • Sub-track lengths.
  • Better automation overview and possibilities. (Atm I don’t even use it as much anymore, I more likely go for command lines or the lfo device…)

The GUI is nice, no floating windows.

21

DAW’s evolve. So does Renoise, and hopefully it will continue doing so.
Many people claiming that you can do this and that much better and faster in this and that DAW usually just don’t know the tools good enough to do a really fair comparison, I think…
There are of course exceptions. And sometimes there really are some PITA differences for specific things that you can’t live without in your workflow.
If we can clog the really obvious gaps (whatever these are…) without compromise the simple basic tracker feeling, I think we are in the right path for Renoise.

@Xerxes
Perhaps you could try to be more specific about some things.
What do you really think should change in the GUI? Should anything change, or just be added?
Is it the tools we have/lack, the layout of things, the (lack of) flexibility? etc…
About track view, do you mean visualization of samples/wave and notes, automation etc?

And about the mixer/mixing stage, what can be better you think?
Another mixer on top of the mixer? An clip arranger etc? In/out device for easier external bus handling etc.

It’s kinda impossible to discuss and improve without being more specific here.

Anyway, I have many of the same thoughts as you. My dream music making tool is renoise/tracker kinda interface in the creative process, and on top of that a more daw like arranger/mixer. But everything within the same app, so you can much easier go back and forth in “creative mode” and “mixer/arranger mode”.
For instance:
Even if you work with long audio clips in an arranger for instance, you can still “extract” and modify this clip back to where it was originally created. Like, after a pattern selection rendering I can get a long audio clip, but could still have the “history source” of this clip attached to it (Midi/instrument/sample, pattern/fx data that was rendered etc). So I will mostly just arrange or do some other stuff with this audio clip in the arranger, but whenever I need to, I can extract and modify the source of the clip and rerender it for instance, no need to “store” stuff in hidden patterns etc. Just be able to stick different clips and variations of clips together as one clip in a clip list. Gives you much better overview in more complex setups. Gives you the best of “both worlds” IMO, and makes it up to the user to pick the best suited workflow.

However, quite a lot of improvements and new “tools” and editors are then needed for something like that, and most of all a more flexible GUi…

22

But… I love the pattern view!

23

strange. i recently ditched reaper and decided to focus my entire workflow (both the creative aspect and the mixing aspect) into renoise. this is after having dealt with the more traditional horizontal sequencers for quite some time.

can’t stand them anymore.

24

Every DAW has it’s flow, it’s strengths and it’s weaknesses. And sometimes weakness is an advance of a DAW. I really really like trackers! I have worked in years in them and haven’t found too many complaints about their way of work. But indeed there are some important things that could be handled different in Renoise, and that could help making them more fun, complete and powerful.
For me, first thing is: more advanced sampler! I think that currently it’s to skinny. Trackers are just that, samplers that can make some crazy things with samples on a different kind of levels not possible with traditional daws:

  • velocity layers (more samples per note and per layer) - sample slicing (create regions that are bind to notes, cc or similar) - some advanced modulation (envelopes and lfo’s per note, per sample, not only per instrument) - direct2disc recording (and saving to a file inside project folder) - real-time sample effects (stretching, pitch shifting, re-synthesis) - track structure as seen in Aodix (or just TPB zooming) - some form of piano roll (also Aodix could be inspiration for this, because it just has that slick overview of note lengths) - some internal generators (like old 303 and synth from Noizetrekker, they were great!) so that renoie could be self-contained tool in every aspect - track routing to internal busses (not only to output channels of a sound card… to send whole stream to dedicated send track for processing)
    Some of these are not so important, but some of them can do a magic to a workflow. I have just finished a fast remix of a song and working with tracker and samples was a great and refreshing experience.
25

I don’t know… I have a friend who plays the guitar but he owns many instruments, he has an electric guitar and a couple of acoustics, he also has a 6 stringed banjo, tuned as a guitar, and an ukulele, tuned to fit the 4 highest strings of a guitar, and no matter what instrument he plays it sounds exactly the same.

26

midi

27

Wisest words spoken on this topic.

Edit: oh yeah, and Xerxes, I love your music :)
Soooooooooooooo chill.

28

I sign this one :)

FocusPocus rock da Bus :]

Essentially all DAWs are the same: arrange sound on timelines. Nothing will ever change that because that’s just what music is: sound over time.

So, just love your DAW.

I already made love to Cool Edit, Ableton, Ardour, Milkytracker, Renoise, Samplitude, Ableton again, then returned to Renoise - i just love to work as mouse-less as possible at the moment and 'til today i couldn’t find any way to keyboard-control midi-blobs in a piano-roll - but i am really looking forward to new interfaces like kinect to combine kung-fu and renoise-programming - and brain-machine-thought-control-interfaces will be fun too.

CUT!

Hey - just found a new recipe: Tuna-Apple-Peanut-Salad = Perfect Healthy Lazy Slackerhackers Meal and ready to eat in 45 seconds :]

I SAID CUT!

:]