so many thanks to all the insights… !!
I bought it before ever realizing the whole scheme of seq/pattern/track mode, and how it differed from other hardware sequencers.
I’m so impressed with the midi fx and live looper at the moment 
It only gets better 
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My biggest gripe about handling patterns and tracks this way is giving us only 32 Sequences. Let’s imagine you have 16 tracks and a (mostly) drum fill every four bars. If your track is changing up with new elements every 8 bars, with fills every 4, you will eat up 32 sequences rather quickly. Squarp just expanded the midi event count to 10,000 events. If a sequence only holds pattern, mute and track info, it does’t seem like much to ask to sacrifice 500 or even 1000, possibly more, to double or even quadruple the number of sequences. Does it? Does this seem like a reasonable request?
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I was thinking the same
I kind of agree, but I suppose there are some workarounds, like for example making longer patterns where the fills appear say after 8 bars, but the rest of the tracks are max 4 bars, the when you enter the seq list set length to 4 where you don’t need a fill, and to 8 when you do need the fill. It isn’t ideal but it can work, depending on the scenario.
It would be nice to be able to assign the memory where needed for a project though, I would rather have 64 seq and 32 tracks, at the cost of some events.
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Budget your resources…?
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Budget my what? No, we’re not talking about effects or translations or anything else, just the number of sequences. It doesn’t require any more resources at all, it just requires a slightly different allocation of what’s already present in the unit. It would not be anything major to change, apart from a few lines of code in the OS.
Now I can’t speak for others or their processes, but having to budget resources IS the problem, making me reluctant to use them at all. That is so not ok. And yet so easily remedied.
Oh but increasing the limit is not that easy. Increasing the number of sequences would require increasing the number of patterns to match due to the auto-pattern feature. And that’s just one dependency that’s actually visible to us users, we simply don’t know what other limitations and dependencies there migth be internally.
Talking about resources, I guess a lot of people don’t realize just how incredibly tiny everything on the Pyramid is.
It runs on STM32F427 microcontroller, which according to the spec sheet has
- 1M of flash memory (where the firmware goes, current PyraOs is around 750K)
- 256K of RAM (where all the midi- and other runtime data has to fit in)
Take a moment to digest those numbers: yes, we’re talking about kilobytes.
The main memory of Pyramid is less than half of what you’d typically find on early MS-DOS PC computers. You could easily fit the firmware + the contents of the memory on a single 3.5" floppy disk (anybody remember those?).
Going from 32 something to 64 of the same may seem utterly trivial in this age where even mobile phones have gigabytes of memory, but with something this small the game is totally different.
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Why would you imagine increasing the number of sequences would increase the number of patterns? It does not. Patterns are tied to tracks. A sequence is just a snapshot of currently playing tracks, patterns and mute states. Increasing the number of sequences does not increase anything else.
The auto-pattern feature links patterns to sequences too.
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That still doesn’t increase the maximum number of patterns per track beyond 32. Midi events are what… six, maybe eight digits of hex code? How much code does a sequence take up? Now remember, we’re not talking about more tracks, or patterns, just the actua snapshot of tracks and patterns playing, and mute states. That is not that much information, probably less than 64 midi events. It’s only tracks on or off and either the track number, or pattern 1-32. And that’s pretty much it. Not a whole lot of values to be stored, really. In fact, that’s probably less than 32 midi events per sequence currently.
But for argument’s sake, let’s say they’re equivalent. Currently that’s about 1024 midi events for the entire set of sequences in a project. So…we sacrifice that… Hell, even 2048 midi events to double our number of sequences. I’m not anywhere near alone in being willing to make that exchange of event storage per project.
But…if a midi event has channel, note number, on/off and velocity of 0-127 that’s more bits than a sequence. In fact, the only modification to sequences themselves would be adding ONE binary digit to their identifier. 64 tracks, 64 sequences, up to 32 patterns per track. Those are not unreasonable or anywhere near unfeasible numbers.
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Yep, I know that it isn’t going to happen but a ram disk on the card would mitigate the memory constraints, but undoubtedly this would be non trivial to implement if at all possible.
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seems like a sensible perspective. would love to know what squarp’s reply would be.
their support has disappeared but the product continues to sell and grow in popularity. I wonder how many more Pyramids need to sell for them to consider supporting the product again.
Interested to know for sure if this is the case? I’m not disputing what you say BTW and I do think the Pyramid is somewhat of a sleeper, so I could imagine this being the case. I don’t think there are many other sequencers that offer what the Pyramid does, perhaps some overlap with the Cirklon but still quite different beasts. So in that sense Squarp have quite a chunk of the dedicated hardware sequencer market to themselves, quite deservedly IMHO.
They haven’t dropped support. I have been in contact with their team, however, the person I spoke with said they only discuss upgrades, feature suggestions and such every six months or so. I do not know why that is, but I have mentioned more sequences, as well as pattern chaining, and several other features. I would highly recommend sending the team a message from the Squarp Contact page with this idea, as well as more sequences. This page can be found here:
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I keep seeing more videos on youtube of people using them, so I can’t imagine they’ve dropped in popularity. I mean despite the current limitations we bemoan, it’s still an incredibly powerful and fun machine to use.
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