Renoise is a

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...

(DAW) based upon the heritage and development of tracker software. Its primary use is the composition of music using sound samples, soft synths, and effects plug-ins. It is also able to interface with

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

and OSC equipment. The main difference between Renoise and other music software is the characteristic vertical timeline

sequencer Sequencer may refer to: Technology * Drum sequencer (controller), an electromechanical system for controlling a sequence of events automatically * DNA sequencer, a machine used to automatically produce a sequence readout from a biological DNA sam ...

used by tracking software.

History

Renoise was originally based on the code of another tracker called NoiseTrekker, made by

Juan Antonio Arguelles Rius Juan Antonio Arguelles Rius (November 2, 1978 – June 3, 2007), also known as Arguru (sometimes Argu), was a prolific music software programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a p ...

(Arguru). Then unnamed Renoise project was initiated by Eduard Müller (Taktik) and Zvonko Tesic (Phazze) during December 2000. The development team planned to take tracking software into a new standard of quality, enabling

tracking scene Module file (MOD music, tracker music) is a family of music file formats originating from the MOD file format on Amiga systems used in the late 1980s. Those who produce these files (using the software called music trackers) and listen to them ...

composers to make audio of the same quality as other existing professional packages, while still keeping the proven interface that originated with Soundtracker in 1987. Version 1.0 was released in June 2002. Over the years the development team has grown to distribute the tasks of testing, administrative, support and web duties among several people.

Features

Renoise currently runs under recent versions of

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

(

DirectSound DirectSound is a deprecated software component of the Microsoft DirectX library for the Windows operating system, superseded by XAudio2. It provides a low-latency interface to sound card drivers written for Windows 95 through Windows XP and can h ...

ASIO ''Asio'' is a genus of typical owls, or true owls, in the family Strigidae. This group has representatives over most of the planet, and the short-eared owl is one of the most widespread of all bird species, breeding in Europe, Asia, North and S ...

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

(

Core Audio Core Audio is a low-level API for dealing with sound in Apple's macOS and iOS operating systems. It includes an implementation of the cross-platform OpenAL. Apple's Core Audio documentation states that "in creating this new architecture on Ma ...

) and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

( ALSA or

JACK Jack may refer to: Places * Jack, Alabama, US, an unincorporated community * Jack, Missouri, US, an unincorporated community * Jack County, Texas, a county in Texas, USA People and fictional characters * Jack (given name), a male given name, ...

). Renoise has full

and MIDI sync support,

VST VST may refer to: * Vancouver School of Theology, a theological graduate school in British Columbia, Canada * VST, Stockholm Västerås Airport in Sweden (IATA airport code) * Vehicle safety technology * Virtual Studio Technology, Steinberg's stand ...

3 plugin support,

multi I/O cards support, integrated sampler and sample editor, internal real-time

DSP DSP may refer to: Computing * Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal * Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing * Yamaha DSP-1, a proprietary digital signal ...

effects with unlimited number of effects per track, master and send tracks, full automation of all commands, Hi-Fi

wav Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...

aiff Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices. The format was developed by Apple Inc. in 1988 based on Electronic Arts' Interchange File ...

rendering (up to 32-bit, 192 kHz),

Rewire ReWire is a software protocol, jointly developed by Propellerhead and Steinberg, allowing remote control and data transfer among digital audio editing and related software. Originally appearing in the ReBirth software synthesizer in 1998, the pro ...

support, etc. Supported sample formats

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...

AIFF Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices. The format was developed by Apple Inc. in 1988 based on Electronic Arts' Interchange File ...

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

Ogg Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality di ...

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

, CAF Supported effects standards

VSTi Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface that integrates software synthesizers and effects units into digital audio workstations. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional ...

, AU,

LADSPA LADSPA is an acronym for Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API. It is an application programming interface (API) standard for handling audio filters and audio signal processing effects, licensed under LGPL-2.1-or-later. It was originally de ...

, DSSI Renoise also features a Signal Follower and cross-track routing. The Signal Follower analyzes the audio output of a track and automates user-specified parameters based on the values it generates. Cross-track routing sends the automation of any Meta Device to any track. Computer Music magazine considered the combination of these two features to "open up some incredibly powerful control possibilities", and demonstrated how the signal triggered by a drum loop could control the filter cutoff frequency on a bass sound. Renoise includes an arranging tool called the "pattern matrix", full cross-track modulation routing, built-in effects including a signal-follower metadevice that allows sidechain functionality, automatic softsynth-to-sample instrument rendering, and improved MIDI mapping.

Versions

Renoise is available as either a demo or a commercial version. The demo version excludes rendering to .

, ASIO support in Windows (

only) and a few other features. Also, the demo version has nag screens. The commercial version includes high quality WAV rendering (up to 32 bit 192 kHz) and ASIO support.

Development

With the introduction of

Lua Lua or LUA may refer to: Science and technology * Lua (programming language) * Latvia University of Agriculture * Last universal ancestor, in evolution Ethnicity and language * Lua people, of Laos * Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...

scripting in version 2.6, users can expand Renoise. They are encouraged to share their work on the centralized Renoise Tools web page.

XRNS file format

The XRNS file format is native to Renoise. It is based on the

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

standard, and is readable in a normal text editor . This open XML-based file format also makes it possible for anyone to develop 3rd party applications and other systems in order to manipulate file content.

3rd party tools

A project for creating

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...

scripts utilities for needed advanced edit tasks has been set up at

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...

: XRNS-PHP project. In August 2007, a functional XRNS2MIDI script was published by Renoise team member Bantai. It enables Renoise users, via an external frontend, to convert native songs into regular MIDI files (.mid) and thus exporting their work for use in conventional piano-roll sequencers such as

Cubase Cubase is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg for music and MIDI recording, arranging and editing. The first version, which was originally only a MIDI sequencer and ran on the Atari ST computer, was released in 1989. Cut-dow ...

Reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...

. Since version 2.6, it is possible to extend Renoise capabilities by writing plugins in the

programming language. A specific tools mini site has been created to showcase these. Almost any aspect of the program, except realtime audio data mangling, can be scripted using the native Renoise Lua API.

References

External links

Renoise Homepage
{{Digital audio workstations Audio editing software for Linux

Audio software with JACK support Audio trackers Digital audio editors for Linux Digital audio workstation software Linux software Lua (programming language)-scriptable software MacOS audio editors Proprietary commercial software for Linux Windows multimedia software