Setting up audio hardware

With Renoise, there is not much to setting up your hardware properly. (*)
It’s actually just a case of choosing the proper audio device driver you want to use, and you’re ready to go.

(*) A lot of external audiohardware (USB / Firewire related) can cause problems, such as not being detected, or consuming lots of CPU / Memory resources. We’re trying to keep an eye on such cards and update the trouble-shooting area whenever a solution pops up. A lot of problems are driver-related, so if you experience such problems try to perform a driver-update prior to reporting problems on the board. If you did encounter problems you could resolve, you are welcome to post your solution either on the board or here on the contribution pages.

*update*
Problems with USB / Firewire audio cards may relate to the chipsets of the mainboard that supports the device.
Certain vendor chipsets do not seem to support USB / Firewire communications in the expected order the audiocard manufacturers intended. You are advised to avoid mainboards with a VIA chipset.

Now, to continue with our hardware setup:

Go to the menu-bar, select Edit then select Preferences from the dropdown box.

Pick the proper latency value so Renoise responds quicker to your key inputs and lets you hear the audio quicker when the rows are being played. Also set your audio-in device for recording into the sample-editor.
As soon as your audio starts to crackle or choke, set the latency value higher, or the samplerate lower.

Whether you are using Windows or a Mac, you may have required to set your audio hardware limits in order to utilize its full features in Renoise (e.g. buffering or frequency rate). This may be different for each soundcard, but I have attached a screenshot of my own soundcard’s settings which do not affect Renoise’s directx-driver approach at all. If you get strange quirks in audio output or input, try to lock the sample-rate in your audio device drivers if you have the option (like i have with the example below) or fumble with your hardware acceleration in your Direct Sound settings (dxdiag).

Audio management for Mac OSX

Using ASIO (Registered use feature)

With ASIO drivers, you have more direct power over your audio hardware, without the fuzz of the Windows core drivers interfering and doing a lot of checkups. Renoise supports ASIO hardware, but it’s a feature you get only if you register Renoise.

If you want to use the ASIO driver as a registered user, simply select it in Renoise:

The Limit Stereo In/Out disables the Channel Routing. As you will see the Channel Routing buttons disappear from the the upper-left corner of each track.

Now, as I said earlier, there may be some settings you have to change in order for Renoise to control its features, and again, this may differ per soundcard. Renoise adds this control button in the audio-hardware panel when you have selected the sound-card’s ASIO driver. If you click on it, it will open the audio-hardware’s personal ASIO property panel.

You may be required to change your sample / buffer size in order to tune your hardware-driver settings to those of Renoise:

You may be required to set your speaker set properly in order to use the channel-routing accordingly:

Channel Routing?

More about channel-routing at this part of the site.