A lot of people have said they would like to see waveforms in the editor, like other DAWs. Personally, I came to Renoise because it was a tracker, and having waveforms in the actual tracks seems to me like it’ll look very convoluted and difficult to follow.
However, I would like to be able to see the waveform somewhere. One can always click on “sample” while things are playing, but I find this extra step a little distracting, and then you can’t really see exactly where you are in the track compared to where the sample is. (It’s nice to track them side-by-side, especially if you’re dealing with long samples - guitar parts, for instance).
I think a very simple and easy-to-implement solution would be to also have the sample appear at the top of the ‘edit’ screen just like the attached screenshot. You can then switch between ‘track scopes’ and the ‘spectrum’ pane, and have another pane, simply ‘sample’. Then you can see your sample playing in real-time. It simply plays the samples in whatever track you’re selected on OR maybe just plays whatever sample you select in the instrument pane (the latter will probably be less confusing if you have multiple samples on one track). If you push spacebar to pause, the line will pause in the sample wherever you are in the track (like it does already in the sampler). You can now match where the sample is in the track with your eye quickly. What would be cool then is if you could mark the sample right there in the pane and it would create flags in the sample - so if you then go to the sampler you can cut or change as necessary.
This would be especially helpful when recording. Perhaps even you could see the waveform fill up while recording. You’re then bringing some of the other (classic?) DAW elements in without breaking the tracker concept and creating some weird Frankenstein. I think it’ll be a very easy solution to implement as well, it doesn’t require a massive change or rethink of the process.