Rendering by Instrument

[psishock]

That is very true Rxn, and to be honest very little of the (potential) musicians like the idea of the hex stuff. They are looking for the simplest way to make their music, and dont want to start learning or getting used to any "special" technologies, unless its totally necessary. That is one of the main reasons why people choose the piano-roll vs. the tracker grid interface. The people just feel the piano-roll to be more friendlier and self explaining to use. The dark grid and all those mathematical alphanumeric numbers on it are scaring the s**t out from most of them. But in the end, that is what trackers are all about.

I've seen on Renoise forums that they are brainstorming about implementing a piano-roll to it too, possibly to make their appeal to wider audience. If they find a way to do it, i'm sure that the users could choose from tracker or piano interface when entering notes. So us "geek people" will still have the grid system untouched, but people who may not like that system, will be able to use the program too.

[Rxn]

I don't know about the piano roll, but if there was more customizability
and improved look to the pattern view that should be the first step to
make to appealing to a wider tracker audience to get started with.

Also, I think I was a bit too quick about decent multiple ASIO I/O, you
can have only one send per track. So if you want to route a track to a
specific hardware output and then route it to an FX track you'll have to
duplicate the track for every output you want to use.

No good, that unnecessarily increases the number of tracks and CPU load.

[Saga Musix]

Well, having Hex codes everywhere is certainily something that makes trackers fast and unique. You have to get into it, but admit it, it's easy. I cannot imagine a tracker that's not using hex at all. If someone is seriously interested in making music with a tracker (which you really have to be IMHO, because else you will very soon give up), they will also be willing to learn the basic of Hex.

[Rxn]

I'm not sure about that, modplug uses decimals for the instruments and
vol/pan column, no-one has complained so far.

Actually, I figured how to use multiple ASIO outputs per track, not as
straight-forward as I thought but seems to be working okay. The new
pattern matrix view is something that I have contemplated for a while
only in form of "macro instruments" but their approach appears to have
more advantages.

[Saga Musix]

I'm not sure about that, modplug uses decimals for the instruments and
vol/pan column, no-one has complained so far.

Yeah, that's ST3/IT style. It makes sense there because those columns were only supposed to to up to 99 respectively 64 (though modplug broke that by allowing more than 99 instruments).

[Sam_Zen]

I agree with Jojo.
If you want, understanding Hex (it's not even 'learning') is a piece of cake, quite easy.

I have told my granddaughter, when she was 8 years old, about the hex-system.
She got it within an hour, recognizing hexnumbers and being able to convert to decimal and vice versa.
The main obstacle was the awareness that Decimal is just one of those number systems.
After that, I could even explain the binary system...  Or, if I had wanted, the octal system.

And ModPlug is not the only one. So complaints are somewhat premature.
For example many graphic utilities use standard colorcodes in hex like '9C33C9'.

[Rxn]

There is no need to force people to learn what is not necessary to know.

HEX system was used in older trackers because monitors of those days
had limited resolution and size and you wanted to keep every millimeter
of space you could gain. On modern half a meter size screens it really is
no problem any more. By the way, modern monitors is another reason
why Renoise's dark scheme is no good: everyone is on LCD panels
theses days and they are no good at displaying dark looking stuff, but
maybe this approach made sense back in CRT times.

And I am not even saying to abandon HEX altogether -- only give an
option to switch between DEC and HEX, that is all.

[Saga Musix]

There is no need to force people to learn what is not necessary to know.

Indeed, there is no need to force people to use trackers.

HEX system was used in older trackers because monitors of those days
had limited resolution and size and you wanted to keep every millimeter
of space you could gain.

Maybe you should ask Karsten Obarski again if that was really his intention.