A piano roll is the most useless feature ever for renoise. Renoise is a tracker. There is no need to split note pitch to one axis. Who needs that? It’s a pre-historic concept. Also there are plenty of piano roll DAWs, simply use that. You could improve visuality in Renoise by using resizable blocks for notes instead “note-off”.
What exactly does it mean that “Renoise is a tracker”? What defines the technical and user interfaceramifications ofa tracker that makes it incompatible with conventional DAW concepts? What ifone of the piano roll DAWs also implemented areplica of Renoise’spattern editor for alpha numeric representation of notes, would it then become a tracker?
Oh well. We already have had long threads in the past where people have debated features XYZ. Now it’s time to discuss the means to realize ANY of those features AT ALL. Because this is what some people in this thread are concerned about: the Renoise paradox and how to solve it.
Read what the devs saythemselves
Another reason why we wanted to concentrate on Redux, was also to expand into a new market. We’re a small team. A very small one actually. Renoise is an extreme niche product while also being a hell to manage. We love what we do, working on Renoise, but we also can’t do this job for nothing. So the idea of a new product, Redux, also, even though not primarily, was favored as well in order to keep Renoise alive in the long term.
This exact argument is the only thing that matters, really. So, if the devs finally comeoutin 2018andadmits “We love working on Renoise the tracker, but also need the financial resources to do so, that’s why we’ll now finallygo for the conventional DAW stuff likea linear arranger, piano roll and audio tracks - in order to expand our market shares, since that’s what will get 99.9% of all music producers on that marketto not feel alienated by Renoise. But don’t worry, this new compiled Renoise version will be sold as a separate product, so if you can’t stand piano rolls you’ll still have Renoise the tracker. The pile of money we’ll make will of course help to keep the tracker project alive for a long time.”
It’s as simple as that, really.No need to argue for features XYZ being worthless for userswho can onlycope with"the tracker", whatever that is.
I would personally applaudif the devs decided togo for any of these four possibilities:
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open up a full-blown C++ Renoise API and made it possible forthird partiesto grab the note dataand audio streams from Renoise, manipulate it, andget it backinto Renoise(no, not in the ReWire sense, but bi-directional and with everything required to e.g. build a linear arranger or piano roll outside of Renoise).
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use the ARA technology and partner with PreSonus Studio One, or partner up with Bitwig and build a bridge between Renoise and Bitwig Studio.
3)break out the pattern editor & tracker sequencer andFX stuffand sellthem as a separate plugins à la Redux.
- expand Redux into being alsoa host plugin for VST instruments and a MIDI data tracker.