Renoise 3.4 update - Raspberry Pi & M1 support

[The Space Disco]

Also new skins, made a little piece!

Check Renoise website for the update.

[wuff_miggler]

that's sickk - after seeing a polyend tracker - i've always thought renoise in a rasbpi would be sick as shit, with a touch screen or something - idk.

[The Space Disco]

Yes!

Best tracker in the world!

[The Space Disco]

Its hard NOT to open Renoise everyday after work just to get away for a while...

[The Space Disco]

Resets with Renoise and Reaktor



Who needs more than 8 lines really? :-)

[everydaycurry]

Need to download this and give it a spin again.

I couldn't get it to work with my iMac on the previous version - for some reason, switching to step record would also start it playing and it would just record the same note in every line until I killed the app. Not an issue on the laptop, but tried different QWERTY keyboards and even disconnecting the keyboard and the software just hated my iMac.

[The Space Disco]

Need to download this and give it a spin again.

I couldn't get it to work with my iMac on the previous version - for some reason, switching to step record would also start it playing and it would just record the same note in every line until I killed the app. Not an issue on the laptop, but tried different QWERTY keyboards and even disconnecting the keyboard and the software just hated my iMac.

That’s weird. I use it on a daily basis with iMac (late 2015).

Hope the update solves it for you - it’s such a beautiful piece of software and shouldn’t be wasted…

[uniqview]

Trying this out on a Raspberry Pi 400.

Absolutely and totally amazed. That it works, that it works so well, and that it works so well on a RPi.

Well done!

[tom]

Do you know if it's possible to resize the GUIs of effects now? The EQ window in particular?
I have been using Renoise some years back, but that small EQ GUI was a real downer for me.

[pentd]

recently came across zensphere's videos, dude is quite deep into renoise

[jsu]

Trying this out on a Raspberry Pi 400.

Absolutely and totally amazed. That it works, that it works so well, and that it works so well on a RPi.

Well done!

Dang, that is a wonderful idea. Pi 400 would be perfect for the tracker. You should add a little cyberdeck hat so you have a portable display, hehe.

[D.Tilbury]

Man I gotta try this out. I used to love renoise. It was so cool to build songs in it and the features they were adding back in 2007-2008 were killer. I need to see how far along this has come.

Then, using it with an Rpi....thats an even cooler combination....maybe better suited for installations in some odd way? What are some ideas for using it with an Rpi?....as in, other than it being deployable on a tiny box....what are some cool ideas for this regarding the physical use of it on an Rpi?...does the software have any live looping?

[wuff_miggler]

Man I gotta try this out. I used to love renoise. It was so cool to build songs in it and the features they were adding back in 2007-2008 were killer. I need to see how far along this has come.

Then, using it with an Rpi....thats an even cooler combination....maybe better suited for installations in some odd way? What are some ideas for using it with an Rpi?....as in, other than it being deployable on a tiny box....what are some cool ideas for this regarding the physical use of it on an Rpi?...does the software have any live looping?

i thought one amazing use would be pairing it with a grid of midi buttons and triggering midi CC automation clips with it. basically making it a hardware device

[D.Tilbury]

Man I gotta try this out. I used to love renoise. It was so cool to build songs in it and the features they were adding back in 2007-2008 were killer. I need to see how far along this has come.

Then, using it with an Rpi....thats an even cooler combination....maybe better suited for installations in some odd way? What are some ideas for using it with an Rpi?....as in, other than it being deployable on a tiny box....what are some cool ideas for this regarding the physical use of it on an Rpi?...does the software have any live looping?

i thought one amazing use would be pairing it with a grid of midi buttons and triggering midi CC automation clips with it. basically making it a hardware device

You have piqued my interest even further!
One of those novation units may work for this? I can't remember what they are called. I saw one being used for that nerdseq unit on the forum most recently....
I have this ableton unit like that...I think its a Push or something alomg those lines....itcame with the software and it would be rad if you could get under the hood and use it for whatever you want.....i.e. renoise.
I am seeing some of the newer features/eye-candy/layout of the program and I am wondering how far you can take the programs inputs and outputs. Making it supportable by raspi makes me think there would be ways to script control parameters. As in, the lanes, maybe they have more control for i/o of the program.
A cool thing that the program used to do is provide each channel or lane's sound as a scope. If you could hack one of those fancy grid panel controlers with the screens....such as the native instruments model or that push device....maybe you could provide the scope outputs to those screens/screen.


If I find some cool stuff, I will post some ideas in here. The program always made me feel liberated from standard workstation composition.

[D.Tilbury]

Nice handle, btw, wuffmuggler. I still can't help to refer to this place as muffs.

[wuff_miggler]

Nice handle, btw, wuffmuggler. I still can't help to refer to this place as muffs.

lol thx, the dude in my avatar's surname is actually Miggler (without the patch cables)

[depthbuffer]

I'm a pretty heavy Renoise user - love the unlimited tracks, the automation lanes, and the whole concept of "song mode" is, to anyone used to tracker interfaces, *obviously* how everything should always work. When combining Renoise and modular, basically I want Renoise as MIDI sequencer via MIDI to CV, as I work melodically and don't always want to be limited to step sequences.

I only recently started getting into modular, and have a Pam's as my hardware clock. Running into some teething troubles getting everything synched and playing nicely together. Basically, it seems that even in "line-in return" mode (https://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/MIDI ... nstruments), incoming audio in the line in device isn't correctly compensated relative to audio generated from VSTIs; I have to either turn plugin delay compensation off and live with the consequences of that, or use its per-track delays to add around an additional 60ms to any tracks running software-generated audio. It seems like it's massively overcompensating the offset being added to incoming audio (or the size of my audio interface's input buffer is much larger than what it's reporting), or the PDC on the line in "plugin" is just plain broken. And even though it outputs a rock solid MIDI clock (no detected BPM wobbles on Pam's at all), you can only "negatively compensate" up to the length of your audio interface's input buffer.

Basically I want MIDI clock & notes out, hardware audio back in, then combine that with software audio & mix/master the lot inside the DAW. This should be possible, per that manual page, but it just doesn't work that way in practice. Same problem reported at https://forum.renoise.com/t/is-there-pl ... vice/63219

You do get a bigger range of negative latency offsets when running it as a clock follower instead of leader, but 1) I don't (yet) have the pexp-2 to get MIDI clock out from Pam's, and 2) I'm still not entirely convinced that won't still mess things up, as if it can't figure out how long to either hold on to external audio or delay internal audio when using its internal clock, I don't see why it would magically get it right with an external clock.

Enter the ARM port of Renoise and a Raspberry Pi 4. My genius plan: use Renoise on the pi as clock leader and MIDI sequencer only (no VSTs or tracker audio), running clock to both Pam's and Renoise on my main PC, and compensate any difference between received audio & samples/VSTs using the wider range of negative clock offsets available when running as follower.

Trouble is, unlike when running on my beefy PC with proper ASIO audio interface, Renoise on the Pi *doesn't* generate a rock solid clock. At least, not using a USB MIDI adapter (ESI MIDIMate EX - which is not the problem in and of itself, again works fine hooked up to the full PC). Not even when using a kernel patched for RT preemption and 1000Hz timers. It always fluctuates by a few BPM here and there.

Either I'll bite the bullet and buy a pexp-2, run Pam's as master clock, and hope the jitter isn't noticeable when just running MIDI clock in & notes out from the pi, or will end up with a full on two PC setup; one to generate stable clock and sequence MIDI, the other to receive, run plugins, mix, and master.

Because no hardware sequencer I've looked at matches the flexibility of a full on tracker with MIDI automation.

I am confused and disappointed that Renoise on the Pi can't put out a stable clock, though. Not even when running at full 1.8Ghz, CPU frequency scaling turned off, GUI turned down to 30FPS. I'm not entirely convinced this is a pure horsepower problem. If anyone has a Pi with a MIDI "hat" or similar UART-based MIDI interface, rather than USB, could they give it a go and report back?

[gentleclockdivider]

Enable :improve midi jitter in settings
Available in last version of renoise

[depthbuffer]

I only see the option "fix received MIDI event jitter", which won't do anything for sending clock out...

I'm trying another few kernel tweaks, but even seq66 and midish (both much, much lighter weight than Renoise) have trouble putting out a rock solid clock; will also try them straight from a TTY, no X11 running, but it may just be the best the hardware can do, at least over USB.

Perfectly usable as a soundtracker, but can't recommend as a master clock for external gear.

[D.Tilbury]

That's interesting. Have you emailed the tech support and developers over at renoise to see if they can advise or if they know of this bug? Its gotta be an under the hood issue. They should know if this so it will help them prevent any issues related to this on the arm architecture going forward.

It would be interesting to know what sort of hardware related kernal issues are causing this if it is a syatem wide issue. The usb to midi drivers aren't getting the attention they deserve under the hood.

Edit:
Could it be a linux scheduler issue....related to my last facetious statement?

[depthbuffer]

I think it is most likely either a kernel thing - the generic kernel configuration used by Raspbian not being low-latency ready (but so far, applying the RT patches, upping timer frequency fun 250Hz to 1000Hz, and a few other tweaks like disabling Spectre mitigations & disabling some debug options, have all made no real difference) - or a hardware limitation. The Pi itself may just not have a high-resolution enough timer; it has no x86-style HPET.

There's an option in the MIDI settings to toggle Renoise-internal MIDI sequencing vs. using the ALSA sequencer API, and the latter is definitely better, but still not 100% stable. Between that, and not being to get a rock-solid clock going with much lighter-weight sequencers, I personally don't think it's a Renoise bug (line-in latency mishandling yes, MIDI clock stability no). Either the Pi is just the wrong architecture for the job, or it requires a level of Linux tweaking that is beyond me.

[D.Tilbury]

I wonder what sort of tweaks the ubuntu studio distro provides to get midi to be rock solid. Tbh, I've never tested it before....but, I've installed it more times than I can remember.

[PAC Systems]

is that raspi 64 bit support?

[depthbuffer]

Yep, I was using 64-bit Raspbian and 64-bit Renoise.

Personally I still suspect hardware. Not a raw CPU power issue at 1.5GHz+, or a Renoise issue, given much lighter-weight sequencers also had problems; either a lack of sufficient high-precision timers, or something about the architecture inducing either latency/jitter in responding to timer interrupts, or latency/jitter in the USB output.

It would probably be fine sequencing MIDI events synced to an external clock, I haven't tested this but suspect the jitter wouldn't be particularly audible, especially if the sequence data comes from live performance rather than quantised steps - just not suitable for use as a master clock. I've moved on to other avenues myself.

[depthbuffer]

If anyone has one with a MIDI HAT or similar UART-based MIDI interface, I'd be very interested to know if that performs better than USB, but I'm not going to spend the money on one myself with no guarantee it'll be any better