I love Renoise, and I’m really happy to support it! Just bought my copy. I love you guys 
Thanks for this killer tracker and keep up the good work!
It just feels so damn good to support a quality piece of software !
Nice! Welcome to the club.
This always makes me happy, and makes me think; there is another respected l33t tracker dude out there 
YES! welcome to Renoise!
A quality and affordable piece of software too!
I love the fact that the demo has no restrictions other than ASIO support and render to WAV. This really helped me when I first started with Renoise as I was able to give it a proper test before I bought it.
I still can’t believe that I am 30 years old and only discovered trackers when Computer Music magazine did an article on them last year. When I had an Amiga as a kid I was crying out for a way to make music and knew nothing of trackers! I could have saved myself a lot of time (and money) on music gear/software if i’d only known back then what I found out less than a year ago…
Ah, you broke your cherry!
I can believe it. Most people don’t know what trackers are because the media doesn’t want you to know about them - too cheap, or free. Too powerful. They don’t advertise in their magazines. If everybody (or a majority of people) started using trackers, especially free ones, and ones which never advertise (which I presume is all of them) then the magazines would be stuffed.
It took Computer Music that long to do an article on trackers? I’m not surprised. They’ll hype up the latest version of Reason out of all proportion, but when there’s some fantastic free software around, they brush it under the carpet. That’s why I don’t trust magazines, at all. Use the internet and you can read what the man on the street thinks, and he isn’t being paid by advertisers.
The media like to present themselves as somehow representing the voice of the people, but how can less than 0.001% of the population hope to represent the other 99.999% on anything? On the internet, if somebody writes something on a forum like “Renoise is rubbish”, you can respond and explain why it isn’t. In a magazine, what recourse have we the public got, when we disagree with what they say, or when they simply hide the very existence of things from us? No recourse at all.
The worse thing about Computer Music is that, after years of people (me, probably) complaining about them ignoring (or rather, censoring the existence of) trackers from their readers, they will do a ‘special’ about trackers - as if trackers are somehow on the fringe of computer music and nobody really uses them. They don’t do a ‘special’ about sequencers, do they, because they’re in there every issue. Why don’t they just rename the magazine “The Reason 4 wankfest” and have done with it…
Also remember - people who review products in magazines don’t have to BUY those products - so their opinion of value is completely unreal, compared to the members of the public, who actually have to fork out the money for these things. There is a big difference to most of us between spending £200 for Reason 4 (or whatever it costs) and spending £20 for Renoise, or nothing for Buzz, etc.etc. For the reviewers, it’s practically meaningless.
Good job!
I hadn’t really thought about it, but Renoise is the ONLY piece of software I have ever felt the need to pay good money for (not counting bundles with PCs or whatever).
Affordability + unlimited trial + unstoppable and supportive community = cash outta my wallet!!!
I was very happy to buy Renoise too, all those years ago. I hate this kind of ‘elitist’ rubbish which the magazines have towards free or cheap software. There are two ways to make money from a product:
Sell a small number at a high profit per unit
Sell a large number at a small profit per unit
Obviously the way that benefits the most people is the latter. But the magazines are always hyping up software which follows the former method.
So we had the ludicrous situation (somebody please correct me if I’m remembering this wrong) where the author of Orion had to put the price UP in order to get the stupid magazines to review it, because they just dismissed it out of hand because it was cheap. And magazines think we should buy them? When they are causing things like that to happen?
(Happily Orion is now down to $149, but IIRC it was something like $299 some years ago, is that correct?)
These are the same magazines who will be hyping up the 100th version of Microsoft Office at £400 (more than a lot of PCs cost) instead of telling you to try Open Office instead - the magazines need advertising to survive, the internet does not. The magazines are commercial, the internet is ‘open source’. Anybody can write up a review on a website, on a forum, etc.etc. and the magazines don’t like it. The same goes for the news media - they don’t like the public being able to disagree with them and their ‘party line’.
The number of times I’ve looked at Computer Music in a newsagent (obviously I rarely bought it) and seen yet another piece of software getting a nine out of ten, it’s virtually every issue. Because they have to SELL that issue to you, and they won’t sell many if they say “Sorry, but this month all the software that came out was rubbish”, so they’ll happily hype up software, get YOU to buy it, and not give two hoots about the money it cost you.
One should also be aware of the problem implicit with somebody’s opinion when they’ve spent a large amount of money on a piece of software: I believe they are much more likely to defend any flaws, problems, etc. with that software, if it cost them £300, than if it was free.
I don’t see many Renoise or other tracker users (most of which are free) getting defensive about them when somebody moans that they aren’t as wonderful as Reason, Ableton Live, Cubase, etc.etc. And we’re the ones who are constantly having to explain to people what a tracker actually is, solely because the media don’t want anybody to know about them.
hey man - i actually like computer music magazine! they have recently started reviewing freeware software and in the latest issue started a larger monthly tracker section (first one was rubbish but i have high hopes) the reviews are biased but they always will be - they gotta support the business.
i used to buy it and then just dl all the stuff that looked decent but quickly found out it wasn’t worth the hassle - and since i bought renoise i’ve pretty much only used free ware plugins and the native dsps and rarely have i felt the need to use any of the warez that once litterd my hd (cept ableton for timestretching and cubase for the occasianal bit of editing but i aint paying a almost grand for them two bits!)
but whatever - rockfistus made a good choice yay!
hey welcome
a fun journey awaits you 
XG2003, I understand your points about CM (indeed about any magazine) but I am personally grateful to them: because I might not have found out about trackers without that CM feature, or at least not yet.
I agree the coverage of Renoise in CM does make it seem like a ‘fringe’ product but at least there is something about trackers in the magazine. Like I say, without CM I might not have discovered Renoise.
And as nsound says, CM does cover freeware (and put it on the cover DVD.) Indeed, last month they did a freeware ‘special’ edition of the mag. For more experienced people on the scene this might seem superfluous but to some it is very useful.
Well, for the past ten years they’ve done everything they can to censor information on trackers (i.e. by plain ignoring them as much as possible) and if they hadn’t done that, perhaps you would have found out much sooner.
You shouldn’t feel grateful to them - they aren’t doing you a favour - they exist to make money, nothing else. Unlike communities like this website, which exist purely for the sake of spreading the good news about Renoise.
CM will continue to make out that trackers are ‘fringe’ products, because they want it that way. Year upon year they’ll continue hyping up Reason 4, 5, 6, 34, whatever, and umpteen other products that no bedroom musician needs, all the while telling you how inadequate your current set up is, and how you need 192Khz recording and the like. But nowhere will they explain how to write a good melody.
But you’d be much better off just going to the internet and finding out from there. CM does this: they get newbies who know nothing about computer music at all, who buy the magazine for a year or so, eventually get fed up of the repitition (how many times do you want to read how to record a bass line in Reason 4, or whatever? Only once, presumably. You don’t want to buy the magazine in a year’s time and see the same thing covered), and then they stop buying it. But then there are another load of newbies who know nothing about computer music, buy the magazine, believe what they read in it, don’t know trackers exist, etc.etc. and so the miserable pattern continues. In other words, a handful of people with no musical talent are telling thousands of people what is or isn’t ‘good’ for making computer music with, and causing them to waste money in the process.
Everything you can read in CM you can find much more easily and for free just by going to Google. And you can read forum posts like this, by hundreds of other people, not a handful of self-appointed ‘experts’ who think they know what’s best, and you can get a much more reliable opinion by reading the posts on a forum, than by reading a magazine. Magazines have to constantly sell you something. Even if it’s just the magazine itself. They have to tell you, every month “Hey! You know that software you got for free which you’re very happy with? Well - forget it! Look at THIS! And THIS! It’s just sooo much better, and it only costs £300, so it MUST be better! Okay, it didn’t cost US anything, because it’s a review copy, but why should we care if you pay £300 for something that won’t help you write a decent tune, because you haven’t got the talent?”
Just listen to the readers’ demos (if they still have them) - absolutely atrocious. It’s obvious that most of the authors of those songs have f-all musical talent, but carry on regardless, no doubt buying more and more shite in the vain hope that it will make their music better, but it won’t.
Then listen to some of the music on this site, and you’ll see a world of difference.
Try:
GroovyOne: 80s State of Mind
Mick Rippon: Retro Winter
Sewen: Winter in Kairo
Tavvva Capoblud: Purple Autumn
Vincent Voois: Penguin Shuffle
(I think the last four were entries in a Renoise compo thingy).
Then compare them to the utter dross that appears on the CM cover disc every month. Chalk and cheese.
Don’t take this the wrong way XG2003, but you really have got a thing about Reason haven’t you? 
You are completely right about the internet being a good resource of information, and that in CM - indeed in any music technology magazine - a lot of the articles are recycled from websites.
All I am saying is that for the beginner to making music with a computer, which I was about 5 years ago, CM is a good place to start because it disseminates all that information into an easily digestible format.
The analogy I’d make is this. It’s sunny where I live today and I want to have a BBQ, and I’ll probably have a steak. Now I could rear my own cow, slaughter it, and then cut myself a piece of meat. Or I could just go to the shop and buy one that is prepared.
This idea of convenience might not sit well with you but CM has saved me a lot of time and really helped me out when I started. When I first started it wasn’t the reviews of gear that fooled me into believing I needed expensive stuff: it was the interviews with artists going on about their well stocked studios; and that was on the internet more than in magazines.
I am not for one moment saying you should believe in every word the journalists write. But also I wouldn’t say that everything they write is rubbish. I am openly admitting I have made mistakes in gear I have bought in the past, but wouldn’t say CM exclusively champions expensive equipment over cheap. Reaper has got amazing write-ups and the Nocturn did too. Both cheap alternatives to expensive options.
As for downloading free stuff from the internet… I do this, I’m on KVR, but CM still throws up stuff I’ve never heard of elsewhere. And I am sure those smaller developers that are featured in CM appreciate the exposure. Maybe I am not as into the ‘scene’ as others but I just don’t have time to spend all day searching stuff out: my job and home life are far too demanding.
Also, why can’t magazines and the internet co-exist? I still find a magazine easier to carry than a laptop and read on a bus/train… or in the bath!
You got a good point about Internet and openness. Yes magazines have to make money and sell their papers.
Obviously, picking for high price-ranged software means that usually folks that can afford that software buy the magazine as well, as those particular blend of people don’t hassle about buying a magazine and considering browsing the free internet resourceful.
The best stuff can’t be on the internet, or is not freely available on the internet. (I know a few managers who actually think so)
grats man! renoise is an immaculate example of quality software, combined with a great community 
I LOVE this program! glad to have you here!