I’ve been using Renoise for a long, long time and I’ve done more than my fair share of evangelizing, but I just wanted to post a quick note about how incredibly awesome Renoise is these days. I’ve always loved it, but it just keeps getting better and better. I was asking for something like the Pattern Matrix for a long time and I’m so excited to have it-- it makes it so much faster/easier to turn a few patterns into a finished song, it’s amazing.
At this point, I’m 100% Renoise (with VSTs, obviously) and I love it. I record my vocals directly into Renoise now and do all of my mastering in it as well. It’s so great to be able to do all of my work in one place, simply hit ‘render’ and have a song that’s ready to be played. I DJ a lot and it’s incredibly useful that I can write a song, master it and render it so quickly without having to jump back and forth between multiple programs. It’s especially nice that because it’s all in one place, it’s editable and non-destructive-- I can hear how a song works when mixed in a set, how it sounds on a club system, etc. and when I get home, I can load up the track, change/fix whatever I need and have it ready to play for my next gig.
Also, I constantly get compliments on how great it sounds. A lot of people have never heard of Renoise, but they’re amazed when I tell them that I wrote and mastered the tracks all in one inexpensive piece of software; I certainly think the sound quality is better than overpriced software like Ableton Live. I’ve even managed to convert several techno artists to Renoise.