Some useful features found in "classic" trackers

Hello folks!

Since the light of day I’ve been using trackers. Like many other computer musicians
I started on the AMIGA with Karsten Obarski’s SoundTracker.

Here are lots of suggestions:

Sample editor:

Auto removal of leading and trailing silence (OctaMED Soundstudio).
AWave also has the ability to choose the tresh-hold in percent.
Very useful.

Extended VZoom Out feature (Like the one found in Cool Edit).
Useful if there is some noise at the beginning (or end) at the
sample and you want to remove it manually.

Recording facility.

Auto tuning of samples/instruments (AWave/SSTuner).

Chord editor (OctaMED Soundstudio).

General:

Please add a auto-save config switch. It’s better to save the config
manually. It is annoying that the config is being saved everytime the
tracker is being exited. At least it’s a good thing to have an option
for this. The user can for instance be asked if he/she wants to save
the config (if changed) on exit.

Interpoliation is great, but a switch where it’s possible to change
beetween no interpolation, linear interpolation & cubic interpolation
would be nice.
Some modules/samples sound better with no interpolation at all.
Chip tunes and samples are good examples on this.
No interpolaion = a crisper/clearer & more natural sound.
No interpolation support in the WAV-renderer is also a must for all
chip-tune composers.

Scroll-bar to scroll the pattern. Could for instance be put to the right
of the screen.
Velvet Studio also has a scrollbar which gives the user the ability to
scroll through the whole song (all patterns). Very useful.

A scroll bar for the instrument window would be nice (The one found in
Velvet Studio is the best solution I’ve seen so far).

Pattern Editor/Song list.
(ProTracker/Velvet Studio/DigiTrakker/OctaMEDSS).

Message Editor (Velvet Studio/DigiTrakker).

Make the block marker more flexible so notes and effect commands can
be maked separately (Velvet Studio).

Notation editor (OctaMED Soundstudio).

Built-in synth editor (OctaMED Soundstudio).
Great for creating chip-tunes.

Built-in module optimiser (Removal of unused stuff, cutting instruments
after loops etc.).

There are probably a lot more to mention, but I guess you will find more
useful ideas for your tracker by loading up Velvet Studio v2.01 (DOS),
OctaMED Soundstudio (AMIGA/Windows), DigiTrakker v3.2 (DOS),
DigiBooster Pro (AMIGA) and so on…
Usually there are som small genius features in these trackers that make
them special. If you could grab these features and put them in one tracker
then we don’t have to play around with the others anymore.
I’ve never seen a perfect tracker yet. Will Renoise be the one we’ve been
waiting for?

And yes, I think Renoise is looking very good already, but I hope you will
add more useful features like the ones I’ve mentioned here. If you do,
It’s hard to do anything else than registering it :)

Jeano / TRS :drummer:

i agree with all of these

except that renoise is hardly the best choice for creating chiptunes. i’ve done one with it, and it came out sounding great (even with interpolation), but the filesize was almost 200k!

i need to learn mad/modplug-tracker i guess… i was at my mother’s place the other day, and i set up ft2 to work on her computer (it wont on mine). in about three minutes i was caught up in the amazing fun of chippery that had been lost to me since i upgraded about a year ago…

…then it crashed :(

but i still got about four minutes of endorphins before that happened, and it felt great, and reminded me to find a good replacement for that side of ft2, so i can keep chippin’ :D

can you suggest anything? the closer to ft2 the better…

[sorry, that was off-topic and long :unsure: ]