MusicRadar

• Review

LPB refers to the resolution of your song, with the default value giving four lines (rows) for each beat in the bar – 16th-note resolution, basically. Increasing LPB to eight will give 32nd-note resolution, while six equates to 16th note triplets, etc, with the line that falls on the beat always highlighted correctly. You can also change LPB on the fly to, say, drop in a sneaky triplet.

Mac users will be thrilled to hear that there's now AU support. Furthermore, multi-output VSTs and AUs can now route all their channels to individual tracks within Renoise.

There are many minor improvements, too, such as support for netbook resolutions down to 990x550, GUI streamlining, the dragging and dropping of song/sample files, an all-new Ringmod effect and a Filter 3 module with numerous modes, and various Pattern Editor tweaks to enhance workflow.

In fact, virtually no aspect of Renoise has been left untouched.

The future

The best might be yet to come, however, as certain changes – notably the new LPB and Track Delays – are said to pave the way for intended future enhancements. Renoise reckons we can look forward to pattern zooms, a piano roll and more precise timing for effects automation. Fingers crossed, we'll see these implemented during the 2.x product cycle.

There are many pleasures to working in Renoise 2.0: the native plug-ins and their many presets cover a broad spectrum of audio production needs, automation is a breeze to use and, most of all, everything feels rock solid.

There's also a strong Renoise community and help is always at hand on its active forums (as are regular song compos).

Linux support

Renoise has been truly cross-platform since v1.9.x, as it also runs under Linux. Compatible with Mac and PC hardware, this free, open source OS is renowned for its rock-solid stability and security.

Getting Renoise up and running is very easy, as it doesn't need to be compiled by the user – just download and decompress the file to a folder. You can start the Renoise executable directly, or install it system-wide by running the supplied install script as root from the terminal.

While the Quickstart Guide PDF doesn't contain any Linux-specific instructions, the online Linux tutorial covers everything from the basics through to advanced troubleshooting.

Version 2.0 of Renoise has a few new features of note to Linux users: as with OS X, audio performance is improved, with lower possible latencies when running on multi-CPU/core systems, and you can change the Periods/Buffer in the ALSA configuration.

As for plug-ins, Renoise supports both the Linux-native LADSPA format and Linux-native VSTs. Unfortunately, there aren't many of the latter available, so to use them under Linux, you'll have to install the dssi-vst adapter.

Many plug-ins work well with this, though certain features may be unavailable, and those that use dongles for copy-protection are a total no-go.

Summary

It's hard to find fault with Renoise 2.0, and the only issue that v1.x users might run into is that, upon importing old songs, they may need to "upgrade" them to the new format to take advantage of features like the improved timing model.

If you're new to the concept of trackers, then trying the very generous Renoise 2.0 demo will certainly make up your mind as to whether or not they're for you, as it's near fully-functional, with only ASIO support, WAV export and sampled content missing from the full thing.

So, no matter which OS you're running, there's really no excuse for not giving this fantastic music application a go.

Listen to some examples of what Renoise 2.0 can do:

Dry drum track

Drum track processed with effects

Dry repeated note

Repeated note processed with effects

Programmed scratching