Re: [LAU] renoise vs rosegarden

I have been using Renoise new Linux port for about a month. It's the first software I ever paid for, to get the full .wav exporting features etc. The Renoise community is very friendly and supportive. It runs fine on Linux, but it's still 32-bit so you can't run it with jack and vst instruments on 64-bit just yet. But the 64-bit port is just round the corner. Renoise is blindingly fast once you learn the keyboard shortcuts. You can run the whole shebang off the PC keyboard with very little mousing but I also use a Korg drum controller and a MIDI keyboard. It is very easy to map pan, vol and fx parameters to the faders and sliders on a MIDI keyboard. The sample editor and instrument editor are very good and you can get an infinite variety of sounds from the included set of basic sounds. So the lack of jack and VSTs in 64-bit is not such a problem for keen tweakers. Its very easy to add effects to tracks, sub-groups and the master and again the included effects are very good. I never used a tracker before Renoise and it does take a little while to adjust to the different way of composing. I also use Freewheeling, Ardour2, seq24 and Rosegarden (and others) depending on the project. But for quickly blocking in a musical idea it is hard to go past Renoise because you can compose multi-pattern, multi-track pieces almost as fast as you can think them up. And then take the piece to full production quality. And not just music - people are using it for soundtracks as well. But its not as fast as Freewheeling and for live improv Freewheeling is the king IMHO! But Renoise gives you more control over mixing, panning and effects etc. after the fact. Hope this helps, Norv