I’m using Renoise now for about a year, used to work with Madtracker before (and tried a lot of other trackers back in the old days of Amiga )
One “limitation” really drives me sometimes crazy… I would love to see a more window oriented GUI in Renoise. E.g. I listen to a pattern and want to mix down the tracks, I always have to flip between Mixer Windows and Pattern Window. I know there are not a lot guys out there being lucky having to Screens (one 22" one 19") but with this setup I could drag the mixer to the second screen and mix and watch my pattern.
This would give Renoise a more professional and less “Home-Made-Tracker-Tool” attitude
I can understand your point. But a windows gui was the fact for me not to use svartracker, madtracker or buzz because I think the FT2-oriented style was and is the best work-environment at least for me. Of course, it’s nice to have the mixer seperated but here I must say, I don’t use the mixer at all. I do the mixing in the panels below the pattern editor.
agree with Marc Shake: your opinion is 100% understandable, but the majority of Renoise users seem to have choosen Renoise because of its one-window design.
as an optional feature this would of course totally accepted.
What a coincidence. I used MadTracker today after ages (because of its ReWire support ofcourse). Being able to have different views simultaneously on screen would be helpful, and IMHO renoise GUI has this potential itself. Even there are ways to have a more flexible GUI in renoise for now (without the need for major changes). I suggested some changes here before: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?sho…c=13434&hl=
Rearrangeable gui = would be kinda useful at times… though not very high on my priority list
Detachable windows = perhaps, as long as the original gui was kept, and there were “detach/reattach” buttons on the panels. Still, however, this is very far from the top of my feature priority list as a Renoise user. I’d much prefer focus be put on proper effect routing and such. I’m also an ex vb4 user, and to be perfectly honest, the vb4 gui was made up of detached windows with no background, and it looked like a complete mess. It was just plain ugly, and keeping track of all those floating windows was a pain in the ass.
A gui using actual windows widgets = frack no… if the Renoise ever starts looking like MadTracker or Modplug, I’d probably stop using it. Windows widget based UIs are amazingly slow, and damned ugly too look at… Not to mention, the Renoise GUI is already hella optimized and never glitches out.
AFAIC, the Renoise gui is already very professional, despite a few claims I’ve heard to the contrary. People seem to think that because it uses a graphically rich gui that it’s slow and cumbersome as a result, when in reality it’s completely the opposite. Renoise’s gui is customized and optimized based on it’s functionality, which is impossible with windows widgets that are programmed to be multi-function and often have alot of code dedicated to what would be unused functionality in Renoise. This unused functionality would take up extra CPU cycles and slow the Renoise down. I know this wasn’t part of your argument (I’m not even sure you wanted windows-like widgets) but I figured I’d rant a bit.
I agree with all of you, that Renoise already has a very well designed GUI, nevertheless sometimes I would appreciate being able to “drag” a window out of this structure on my second screen (most of the time it would be the mixing screen).
But as a summary, the reasons why I use Renoise is its easy-to-use concept, power and incredible speed. I tried Sonar 7 Producer Edition, had a look at Cubase’ Studio Software and always came back to Renoise.
I want to be able to use a nice tall file browser and instrument list so I can freeform sounds as radically using samples as I can in VSTi presets.
Those elements are so cramped. Gimme a resize handle, an expando arrow, something.
Maybe CS3-style folding panels (with cool Renoise sliding animations of course) is what we’re looking for. Or something like the way the DSP chain goes, but vertical, and with the panels able to be minimised.
maybe instead of dragable windows, the ability to split the center viewport into frames would be nice comprimise. I think 2 would be enough, especially when you can save those settings to the viewport setup shortcuts.
+1, but against the windowed idea…just split main window ability…if dual monitor is supported, then that would have ability to view ALL main window items at once…neato.
I think dual monitor with mirrored Renoise screens would be cool… that way you could have two pattern editors working on the same song… and open whatever you want on the second screen instance … and playback could have one instance scrolling while the other allows for edit… would be great for live performance
Also in favor of an re-arrangeable GUI. Not a high priority, though…
I’ve noticed that the pattern view and mixer view both feature the sequence editor, while the instrument editor doesn’t. This is the kind of implementation I would like to see - a kind of predetermined position, but with the ability to turn elements on and off. Also, it would be consistent with how the scopes and DSP chain currently work (the “upper” and “lower” part of the interface).
How would you manage keyboard shortcuts for such a scenario? I mean, two simultaneous pattern editors !?!
I reckon that the key-focus toggle would work nicely for controlling which pattern editor is in use by keyboard.
I propose there might be a selection control to designate one (or none) of the pattern editors as linked to the current playhead.
You could certainly have some nice “big-picture” pattern editing abilities with, say, all your chorus patterns lined up side by side for comparison / contrast. With track minimisation (per view or shared across views), this would be powerful indeed. You would have the equivalent of newspaper columns for your patterns.
We have bigger screens than ever, so let’s put them to smart use
This should work more or less flawlessly on Windows though just don’t tease Renoise by swapping the primary display with the secondary or changing the resolution of the primary/secondary display because it does not expect you to do such things.
(Not that it crashes but window boundaries may fall outside the desktop area scope.)
well … I have two monitors and the possibility to drag vst-windows to the other one is great. But a filebrowser or mixer-view as detachable windows would be really great.
But if it allowed to detach parts of the GUI and create separate windows for it, you wouldn’t be forced to use that, you know. Fullscreen pattern editor or scope & mixer sounds useful very useful to me?
floatable dockable windows could have a nontrivial benefit to a nonzero number of users.
changing things bigtime would have a nontrivial detrement to a nontrivial number of users.
in other words, being able to be a bit more flexible is probably useful to some, and perhaps
occasionally for all, but if it accidentally changed the way things are for people who don’t
fancy that flexibility, it would be perhaps a net loss.
First of all, I second the first post. I’d definitely enjoy if it was possible to move all the parts around the screen.
Secondly: I use the recording function a lot in Renoise, but it’s very annoying with two monitors. It halves the small recording screen (when Renoise is stretched to the max) making it very awkward to use. I’d really like to move around at least this block inside the Renoise.
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