Setting Up Audio Devices

Setting Up Audio Devices

Audio devices are what allows your computer to create the sounds you hear. This is not necessarily a sound card; it can also be built into your computer's hardware. Whatever does the actual sound output, what you control in Renoise is a driver, which is the software that communicates with both the hardware and software.

Default Setup

By default, Renoise is configured to use the system's default audio output device at a high latency, ensuring that in most cases Renoise is ready to go and output can be heard. No input device (something you can record with) is selected by default. Because the default settings are often not the optimal settings for your particular machine, you should have a quick look at the Audio Preferences in case adjustments can be made.

Audio Preferences

To change the audio settings in Renoise, select "Edit->Preferences" from the Upper Status Bar. On OSX you will find the "Preferences" in the "Renoise" menu at the very left.

(Example of the Audio preferences pane on Windows)

For a more detailed explanation of the Audio Preferences, take a look at the Preferences section of the manual, as this only a quick overview on how to set up devices.

Audio Setup on Windows

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

• Direct Sound: This is the Windows default setup for audio and will work with all devices that are recognised by Windows. It is reliable, but also has a relatively high latency (the time it takes for the sound output by Renoise to be heard). Direct Sound only offers one stereo channel as input or output, so if your sound-card offers multiple audio channels you will not be able to use them in Renoise via this method.
• ASIO: An audio architecture created specifically for professional audio applications like Renoise. It offers low latencies and combines recording and playback into one driver, making recording more reliable and stable. It also allows software such as Renoise to access multiple channels at once. So if your sound card has more than one output, you can directly address them in various ways when using ASIO.

Because of its many advantages using ASIO is highly recommended. Even if your sound-card does not provide ASIO drivers (your device does not show up in the ASIO device list in Renoise), you could try out a free general ASIO driver for Windows: ASIO4All. This driver will work with most audio hardware, but may not be as reliable as your specific sound-card vendor's 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 jackaudio.org 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 creating music on Linux: linuxaudio.org

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 quality. 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.