Setting Up Audio Devices

Setting up Audio Devices

Audio devices are the parts of your computer, which "make" the sound you hear. This must not necessarily be an internal or external sound card, but can also be built into your computers main board, or can be combined with other parts of the computer hardware. Whatever does the actual sound output, what you do “see” and can control in Renoise and other software is a “driver”. This is a software which communicates with the hardware and software, bridges both. This is also the reason why you maybe will have multiple choices on some platforms to use access the same hardware. We'll now go on and quickly describe how to make Renoise ready to produce some sound:

Default Setup

By default Renoise is configured to use the systems default audio output devices, and to use no input device (something you can record with) at a high latency. This will ensure that in most cases Renoise is ready to go, can be heared. Because the default settings are often not always the optimal settings your your setup and also affect the overal performance of Renoise, you should have a quick look at the audio setup in Renoise, even when it works out of the box for you.

Audio Preferences

To change audio settings in Renoise, you have to open up the Preferences. This is done by clicking on the main “Edit” → “Preferences” menu entries. On OSX you will find the “Preferences” entry in the “Renoise” menu. The one on the very left in the menu bar.

(Example of the Audio preferences pane on Windows)

For a detailed explanation of the audio preferences have a look at the Preferences page in this manual please. We will only give you a quick overview on how to setup devices here.

Audio Setup on Windows

On Windows you will have the choice between two different audio architectures:

• Direct Sound: is the Windows default setup for audio and will work with all devices that are recognized by Windows. Its reliable but also has a relatively high latency (the time it takes till the sound which leaves Renoise can be heard). Direct Sound only offers up to one stereo channel as input or output, so you will not be able to use multiple channels of your sound-card in Renoise via Direct Sound (when present).
• ASIO: audio setup which was made for professional audio applications like Renoise. It offers low latencies, combines recording and playback in one driver, so recording is often more reliable and stable with ASIO. Further it allows software like Renoise to access multiple channels at once. If your sound card has more than one output, you can directly address them in Renoise in for example the mixer when using ASIO.

Using ASIO is highly recommended and thus should be preferred. Even if your sound-card does not provide ASIO drivers (your device does not show up in the ASIO device list in Renoise), then you could also try out a free ASIO driver for windows: ASIO4All This driver works with most audio hardware, but might not be as reliable as the vendors official drivers.

Audio Setup on Mac OS X

On OS X there is only one driver architecture present, which will work out of the box on all available Macs. This architecture is called Core Audio and offers like ASIO on Windows low latencies and allows to use multiple outputs of your soundboard in Renoise (when present).

On OSX all you have to do is selecting the device for the output and recording and to select a latency and sample rate you want to use for Renoise. Please see below for a more detailed description of the latency and sample rate setup.

Audio Setup on Linux

On Linux you will have the choice between two different architectures:

• ALSA: This is the default audio architecture on most Linux setups, which should work out of the box in Renoise. In most cases its very reliable and fast but sometimes needs some system fine tuning before being usable. Please see the general comments below for more info about this “tweaking” that is needed for Linux Audio in general.
• Jack: Is not installed by default on many Linux systems, but is a common and very advanced way to access your sound hardware and to create music on Linux. Jack does not just bridge Renoise to your sound card, but also allows routing audio between multiple applications which all use Jack. Please have a look at the official Jack audio pages at [1] for more info about Jack.

Configuring Linux for Audio in general: Many Linux distributions are by default not optimized for real time audio creation, as needed in Renoise. So when either using ALSA or JACK with Renoise its recommended to:

• use a real-time kernel
• configure PAM (/etc/security.conf) to allow Renoise and other application to create low latency and high priority tasks

Both topics are described in our Linux FAQ in depth. This general Linux and Audio FAQ is also recommended when using Audio on Linux: [2]

Latency & Sample Rates

Beside of the device and architecture you want to use, you should also pick a latency (or buffer size) and sample rate for your device.

Latency basically is the time that it takes until sounds in Renoise can be heard on your speakers or your headphones. How much of the sound is buffered. The lower the latency, the quicker Renoise will respond to what you play or what you modify in Renoise. So its good to keep the latency low. But lower latencies also require a bit more of CPU so Renoise is not able to transfer the audio “in time”. As soon as this happens, the audio starts to crackle or choke. If you are hearing such unwanted crackles in Renoises sound output, the first thing you should do is increasing the latency in the preferences.

The sample rate defines how “detailed” the sound is calculated and then also delivered to your speakers. So the higher the sample rate is, the more detailed will be the sound. 44100 kHz is the rate that is used in CD players, so that rate offers an excellent playback. Everything above that rate often does not result in a noticeable better result, but if you can hear the difference or not, is of course up to you, so your should try it out and to decide by your own. Rates below 44100 are not recommended because they easily sound more “dull” than higher rates.

Another important point is the CPU consumption at different sample rates. Basically doubling the sample rate means a doubled CPU consumption in Renoise, because everything is done at twice the rate. So if you select rates above 44100 you should also be aware of that you may reach your computers processing power limits sooner.