Most trackers, Renoise among them, could be characterized as a standalone sequencer instrument with some DAW features.
Renoise specifically is sampling-first. It has the gamut of typical sampler features and built-in effects, plus you have multiple ways to sequence everything(besides high-level pattern reuse across the song, you can abstract a lot of stuff into key-triggered sub-sequences or macro knobs). It has built-in effects, you can record automation curves and if you have something very specific in mind, there is Lua-based scripting and a little community of third-party scripts. In general, step sequencing is faster here than in any piano-roll based system, with the knock-on effect of it being extremely easy to build complex percussive sequences with a lot of timbral variation. Melodic lines and harmonies can be more frustrating if you are used to reading the piano roll to establish pitch visually. Renoise does have a tool to snap note entry to a scale of your choosing(with plenty of options for scale type) which smooths out the entry process tremendously, and if you're using a lot of block chords, they can be macro-ified as well to reduce the visual noise.
The VST support is OK. They recently started supporting VST3. I occasionally encounter glitches with it - particularly one longstanding one where it renders stuck notes - but not enough to dissuade me. Worst case, I isolate the problem notes and bounce them to samples(which is easy).
I haven't used Reaper, but from what I can tell it's a traditional DAW with a piano-roll interface (with the closest free/open-source alternative probably being Ardour).
Renoise, on the other hand, is a DAW with a tracker interface. It's a very different workflow.
I paid $75 for Renoise about 6 years ago and it's been great using it on Linux via Jack. It works flawlessly and is highly polished.. it's as good as any other commercial audio application that I've used, but it's very different from anything that's not a tracker. I use it in conjunction with a lot of VST plugins that I run through Wine and some native Linux plugins from u-he, which also work great.
My impression is that most people use Renoise for making electronic music (which is how I use it too), for which it's very well suited.
In my own experience, however, using the usual tracker workflow is not that great for manual exploration, however Renoise has lots of free third-party Lua scripts that can help with that, and it's also great for manipulating and sequencing samples.
Here's a video on doing some advanced reverb processing with it: [1]
Lots of ways to use it.
The other thing I've heard that at least in older versions of Renoise (not sure how it is in the newest versions) it wasn't great for recording really long samples. So if you want to do something like record a live band's jam session or something you'll probably want to use something else. Renoise is best for working with shorter samples (or with synths or other VSTs or generating its own music).
REAPER is basically a Vegas Pro clone. As one of the early Vegas devs and a Mac user, REAPER feels like home to me. It’s solid, and it’s my go-to for time-focused audio editing when I need to move quickly.
However, as an old Scream Tracker user, seeing the sequence composition model alive today is a real treat. An entire lineage of loop timeline products owes its heritage to sequencers driving samplers, and it’s a really useful way to think about the macro structure of music.
Somewhere in my garage there’s a pile of floppies full of mods waiting to be listened to.
REAPER to me has been wonderful. Very light-weight and can do anything that the big ones do. It just doesn't come with a ton of it's own instruments and sounds like Ableton or Logic or others might. But if you have a ton of VSTs (like I do), it doesn't matter.
It's a very good DAW if you like using tracker interfaces. It supports sample-based tracking (the old Amiga style) and VSTis. It supports the usual sample effects, has it's own effects and can pretty comfortably use VST effects as well.
I haven't dug super deep into it, but it has a lot of automation options, and some clever ideas, but it's a very complex tool. I'm not entirely sure it's worth all that over a piano roll style DAW, but it's probably the current pinnacle of tracker-style tech.
It's definitely not simple, but I wouldn't say it's any more complex than, say, Ableton.
It's just a different workflow that more traditional DAW users aren't used to, so they'll have to learn. Fortunately there are a million great tutorials on it on youtube.
I gave my daughter a Nektar midi keyboard for her birthday, and it came with a license for Bitwig Studio. I saw that it was available on Linux and thought that this was fantastic. I'm sure that she'll get there eventually, but she's doing everything in Garage Band on an iPad at the moment.
I think the newer version even opens Live projects with varying results. You'll obviously have to swap out any stuff that came with Live since even the samples only open with the right license.
Trackers are very, very different from the clip-manipulation style of Reaper/Logic/Pro Tools. They are typically seen as being best for electronic music, though this is partly historical. You would be learning a whole new workflow for a DAW.
I'd love to hear HN community feedback on how this stacks up against Reaper (my current DAW) that's priced at $60 for personal use.