KVR Audio

ls1xxx · Post by **ls1xxx** » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:14 pm

What can these Trackers specifically Renoise do that the Regular Daws cannot. Is one easier than another? Harder? This here is not a Daw vs Daw thread. Only Tracker VS Daw. Drum tracks sound different to me on Trackers. Im debating on whether or not i should purchase Renoise for 80s music making. Opinions please and thank you.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:41 pm

Trackers were originally geared to being a specific kind of sequencer, mostly triggering sample playback. They work via their own style of commands, which are actually a bit like MIDI in the way they work, but different in how they are presented. The control over sample playback is a bit more low-level than MIDI allows, and integrated into the sequencer.

Over time, some of them have incorporated a lot of the functionality that traditional DAWs have, but those things, the style of sequencing and the way they do sample playback are mostly what is fairly 'unique' to Trackers.

Redux, from the makers of Renoise, will give you that specific stuff as a VST, by the way.

toothnclaw · Post by **toothnclaw** » Tue Dec 08, 2015 3:32 pm

There are some freeware trackers you could try first.

bungle · Post by **bungle** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 10:02 am

Renoise for 80s music making = No it is completely pointless, Renoise is not even close to anything to do with the 80s, it is similar to some 90s trackers, however, the sound engine in Renoise is very much 2015
Renoise Vs Linear DAW, both can pretty much achieve the same thing nowadays
Recording audio in large sections is much easier in a linear DAW (As in don't bother even trying in Renoise, you will wish you hadn't started)
Intricate sample sequencing/editing is much much faster in a tracker, but that type of super intricate sequence/edit is only relevant to a few style anyway.

ls1xxx · Post by **ls1xxx** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 3:24 pm

dune_rave · Post by **dune_rave** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 3:33 pm

Best of both worlds:

http://revisit.info/

PurpleCatfishBettie · Thu Dec 10, 2015 11:31 pm

in renoise, i work with long samples (2,3,5,10+ minutes) regularly. it's not that big of a hassle. what renoise won't do is record say, 8 inputs simultaneously like a cubase or reaper. by itself, renoise only works with one input at a time.

if a person wanted to use renoise for mixdown, it would be possible to do the multitracking in reaper or whatever, then import stems into renoise for mixdown.

also, there's rewire for whatever it actually does.

btw, if memory serves the 'autoplay' of 'large samples' (audio tracks) in renoise is being further optimized for version 3.1.

in any event, you can definitely work with large samples in renoise. like any daw, there are bugbears, but to my knowledge an 'effortless music software host' doesn't exist. ymmv

ls1xxx · Post by **ls1xxx** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 1:12 pm

https://m.soundcloud.com/bastian-l-er/p ... zynth-pres At 00:32 in this track here are these Tom rolls or whatever you call them easier to do in a Tracker say for instance Renoise? I hear these alot on lots of 80s tracks and can't seem to get it right in Cubase or FL..

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 1:24 pm

ls1xxx wrote:https://m.soundcloud.com/bastian-l-er/p ... zynth-pres At 00:32 in this track here are these Tom rolls or whatever you call them easier to do in a Tracker say for instance Renoise? I hear these alot on lots of 80s tracks and can't seem to get it right in Cubase or FL..

I dont see any reason that would need a tracker, no.

musical android · Post by **musical android** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 1:51 pm

The best would be to try it out as there is several free trackers available.
My favorite software to compose in is SunVox that is a selfcontained system but no VST's.
But there is several with VST support and Renoise being the most developed.
But it will be confusing and you will be wondering wtf am I doing with this when it is so much more logical in a "normal" DAW.
Well if you give it a week you will see...
It actually makes a lot of sense and learning shortcuts etc it becomes faster and have a easier and more direct flow in many ways.
One thing I really like is that everything in many trackers have everything accessible at all times.
But as said above it is not great for recording or working with longer audio files.
So Renoise is a good choice with rewire.
In the end personally I do a lot of my music in SunVox but mix or do longer recording in Reaper and think that even if I was using Renoise I would still be mixing in Reaper as mixing makes more sense in a regular DAW...(for me).

skyscape · Post by **skyscape** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 8:56 pm

It really just comes down to what workflow you prefer - I love the tracker workflow, but have been using it for years - it can be a bit inaccessible to begin with, but it's one of those things that once you learn it it can be a lot faster for some things. I think that trackers are very very good at purely electronic music, they allow for very intricate hands on editing that can be tedious in conventional DAWS - what they're not great at as others have mentioned (although still capable) is the manipulation of very long recordings, and I don't think they're that great if you play live either - but it all comes down to how you use it - they can certainly do those things. Trackers are great for writing 80's style stuff, but so is a conventional DAW. If you want the best of both worlds Renoise + Reaper is a great combination, and both are reasonably priced too. If you already have a main daw then go with Redux, as it's like a mini renoise + sampler that you can load into another host and you would be able to program those 80's style sounds in its phrase editor.

a-type · Post by **a-type** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 12:48 pm

Long time tracker user here. I've been in trackers since the Amiga days (late 80s), and now use Renoise.

OK first up... no DAW is going to be "better" for any particular style of music. Yes, Mitch Murder uses Renoise, but you can be sure that someone of his calibre could get his sound in anything. I know that he chooses Renoise because he comes from a tracker background, so like me he's just used to this approach. And that's the key - it all comes down to practise and experience. Regardless of which DAW, they're all excellent, functional tools, and with enough practise you can pretty much make anything in anything.

OK with that out the way, let's talk about trackers!

In my experience trackers are good because:

they allow you to see all your music in one view. There's no opening and closing discrete clips of music data. It's all there. This is why trackers are often easier to use for drum patterns, because you can see all your note triggers in one eyefull. It's like working with a massively functional hardware drum sequencer.
they allow you to efficiently step-input your notes with a QWERTY keyboard. Back in the day before MIDI controllers this was the way it was done, and Renoise maintains this legacy. If you're not a good keyboard player and normally find yourself clicking away at a piano roll, then you'll find trackers extremely fast to work with. I'm a bass player and suck at piano, so banging away on the QWERTY in Renoise will always be faster for me than trying to play lines and then fixing up the timing/bum notes.
they give you highly granular control over sample playback (slicing, probability triggering, quick reversing, pitch slides, volume slides, etc). It's nothing that you can't do with any other DAW, but it's just easier and faster.

But each of these points has negatives, which a regular DAW solves:

Seeing all your music in one view can be confusing when you have many tracks. A traditional DAW gives you a better overview of your whole song. Renoise has features to address this, but a regular DAW is arguably more practical for huge track counts.
As I said above, if you're a good keyboard player then you won't find much benefit in the tracker step-input paradigm. Yes of course you can also record keyboard playing in Renoise, but because trackers are basically grid-based (like hardware sequencers), Renoise has to add a lot of extra data in order to reproduce the minute timing variation of your playing. Not ideal. If you prefer playing your parts instead of inputting them with a mouse in the Piano Roll, a tracker DAW might not be the most efficient choice for you.
The flipside of highly granular control over sample playback is you're not seeing actual graphical sample representations, you're seeing raw note and playback data. A traditional DAW is a little easier in this regard, because you can see graphical representations of the waveforms in your arrange view, and that often makes working with long samples more intuitive.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to practise. My advice to anyone would be to try demos (and actually write a song, not just click around), go for the one which speaks to you, and then stay with that DAW for at least a year or two. Really get to know it, and you'll find yourself making great 80s style music regardless of which DAW you've chosen.

Good luck!

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Sat Dec 12, 2015 6:13 pm

I started my music life through trackers. I started on a very primitive one: MOD Edit v2. I moved on to each new tracker program that came along on the PC. 669, MTM, IT, XM... They served their purpose but my enjoyment of it was on a continual downward trend once I got used to the idea of being able to make music at all.

Today I am glad I've moved past trackers. I'm not a very programmerish thinker. While I appreciate the ability to control minutia in a tracker, I don't find it offers me enough justification for the learning curve and frustration I personally experience. I'm tired of learning each tracker format's effect codes. I suck at memorization. I need a more intuitive workflow and I don't get that from trackers.

While I've used long samples in trackers to simulate digital audio playback tracks, it's not remotely convenient. DAWs are far more appropriate for straight audio.

So that's my opinion on it.

Edit: but like the people before me suggested: test out the freeware / demoware trackers and decide for yourself.

ls1xxx · Post by **ls1xxx** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 1:18 am

Hey guys thanks for all the advice here!

However im confused on how the Quantization works in Renoise and other Trackers. Whereas im used to using 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 notes etc.. All i see in Renoise is a "Q" button with a menu next to it that says 1 through 32. Also in the Sampler, Plugin, and Midi Windows there is another "Q" button that has another menu with an option of using Line, Beat, and Bar. I dont really understand what the 1 and or any of the other numbers stand for in Regular Quantize terms.. Im confused..

a-type · Post by **a-type** » Mon Dec 14, 2015 1:35 am

OK so things work in a fundamentally different way in a tracker.

Basically, everything is quantised because all the note data is placed on a grid. Have you ever used a hardware sequencer or hardware drum machine before? Think of it like that... in the case of a Roland TR box, you have 16 slots to put notes into (for a 4/4 pattern), and you basically choose when to trigger the notes on that grid. Trackers work exactly the same way. You set your grid resolution, and then place notes into the grid where you want them to trigger.

Now, Renoise can also record your live playing. You might be wondering then, if everything is confined to a grid, how it captures the granular timing of your playing. It does this by assigning "delay" offsets to each note, so that each note can be before or after the strict grid. If you don't want this, you can enable the "Q" setting, which forces your note input into the lines, with strict adherence to the grid structure. The number then represents whether you want your input forced to 1 line, 2 lines, etc.

OK, so you're probably thinking "Wow it must be restrictive to have everything always on a grid!"... indeed it is restrictive. That's where the inherent strengths and weaknesses of a tracker interface become more relevant. At the top of the pattern editor you'll see a setting for "LPB" which stands for "Lines Per Beat". Using this, you can make the grid (for the whole song) either more or less granular. If you really need ultra fine resolution, you can set this to something high... and then you'll find that the "slots" you have for triggering notes within a measure become very granular, and as a result when you press play the pattern data will fly by extremely fast as it goes through the notes. If that's not practical, you can set it to something like 8 or 16, and get decent resolution without having to do a whole lot of scrolling around. If you ever need notes in between the lines, you can trigger them with delay settings to have them play after the grid line... giving you that extra granularity.

Yes, it is restrictive, but if you think of it like a hardware sequencer, you start to see the benefits too. If you're mostly writing strictly sequenced music, then it becomes incredibly efficient because there is no quantisation... you just enter things on the grid and you're good to go. If you like to play in your parts from a MIDI controller and really need that "human feel" in your music, that's certainly possible in a tracker, but you might find a traditional DAW is more efficient for your needs.

The Tracker "VS" Regular Daw thread