HAPAX General Questions for Use with DAW

Hapax
1

Hey guys! Hope you’re well.

I’m on the verge of buying the HAPAX , I already know that I want it, but just wanted to clear up a few things. I don’t own any hardware at the moment and am very new to this world so I apologise for the redundancies and the super long message but I would be really grateful if you guys could help clear my doubts!

Here’s some context on how I plan on using the Hapax :

I have been producing music In a daw (Ableton) with a mouse ever since I started 6 years ago. Last year I tried the Elektron Analog Rytm II and I was blown away by how intuitive it was to program and automate patterns and get an idea going and also have a lot of fun while doing it, as opposed to working with a mouse in Ableton.

I produce melodic techno which is a genre that requires lots of intricate and complex , evolving , melodies and I tried using VST Sequencers but I didnt find the workflow intuitive. So being inspired by the Analog rytm , I realised that I need a hardware sequencer for the melodic elements of my tracks.

I still want to work in the DAW to take those ideas and refine them and arrange them but I want the Hapax mainly to generate ideas for the lead elements quickly.

I only work with VST Synths at the moment and Im more comfortable with that.

That being said here’s a few things I would love to get clarity on before I make the purchase.

  1. Probably a stupid question but just to be sure as this is my main use case, can the Hapax send midi information to multiple vst instrument channels in the daw , so I can program patterns on the hapax for all instruments and create a compositon and jam out arrangements on the hapax.

  2. I read this in the manual " When Midi thru is enabled, between an input and an output it forwards instantly any Midi event (including notes, Cc…) directly to the selected output. "

What does Midi thru do exactly ? Is this where the notes from the Hapax are printed in the Daw channel that is Armed?

It sounds like the feature im looking for as I need to send midi from the Hapax to all my vst instrument channel to tweak , arrange and layer with more sounds.

Can I send/print midi to multiple channels on the daw at the same time?

Whats a more convenient way to export MIDI from the hapax to your daw? Midi thru or Midi Export?

  1. I read in the manual that you can’t import/export MIDI files on a drum track. How do you guys work around that? I would like to take the drum grooves in programmed on the Hapax and then take them to the Daw to maybe tweak or arrange or layer with other sounds.

  2. Lets say im programming a pattern on the Hapax for a specific channel. Then after programming the notes , I use the modulators or midi fx parameters to make changes to the pattern and I want to capture all those changes in midi information to the daw so that I have an evolving midi pattern that I can use in my daw. Is it possible to record live changes of the parameters in midi ?

  3. Have they sorted out the Note preview feature yet? I read that its a problem for a lot of people, if its not implemented yet, are there any workarounds for that?

  4. Can I use the Hapax to trigger the play and stop button, scenes and clips in Bitwig/Ableton session view?

  5. Are there any major issues that I might face for my use case that I might be missing?

Thank you advance for taking the time to read this!

2

I have been using it with bitwig with some external hardware synths. But have experimented with vst.

Firstly, midi thru is not a feature you’d necessarily want to worry about here, something you would typically use in certain hardware setups but probably not here. I think generally speaking, midi export is also not a feature I would focus on. Unless you compose a full track with the hapax and want to export it all at the very end, but if you are trying to be more fluid with it, you more likely are going to record the midi into ableton as it’s sequencing things.

  1. Yes, there are 16 channels for the USB host connection, so if you assign channels to specific tracks in ableton, you’ll be able to control up to 16 tracks at once via the USB host connection. Assuming all the tracks are armed to receive midi, and you have properly filtered incoming midi channels per track. You could potentially get even more possible tracks by adding another midi IO endpoint to your computer and attaching a physical midi cable to one of the outputs.

  2. Like I mentioned earlier, midi thru is more about chaining multiple pieces of gear, not relevant here unless you have a keyboard on the midi input of the hapax and really want all of the midi data to go through to your DAW or similar.

  3. I wouldn’t use export, I would just record into my daw, and then quantize the recording.

  4. If you record the midi into the ableton piano roll, it will record all of the effects applied to the original midi sequence. I’m not so sure about using export here, I’m guessing export won’t handle that but I’ve never tried.

  5. I believe note preview was added in v2, unless theres problems with it that I don’t understand you’re referring to. If you have a midi keyboard hooked up to your hapax, you can also hear a preview with that before inputting a note. You can press a note or chord on the midi keyboard if in learn mode, and then when you press a step on the track it will input that chord or note. Makes programming very fast

  6. You can’t use it to trigger scenes and clips, the hapax has it’s own notion of these concepts in a similar fashion. But it’s not a replacement for the Ableton Push controller or similar. You can however sync up the transport via start/stop buttons on the hapax to the DAW, but you can’t jump to specific parts of the arrangement afaict.

  7. I found getting the sequence synced up perfectly to the daw to be kind of tricky, I don’t know about ableton, but in bitwig you can configure synchronization settings for bitwig to compensate for some delay for the hapax midi incoming. I was able to get suitable synchronization after messing with it for a bit. You will still probably want to manually quantize and adjust the notes after you record them into ableton.

This is my initial assessment of your questions, I don’t have a ton of direct ableton experience w/ the hapax so maybe someone who has can weigh in and correct me on these things.

3

Thank you so much for the information, that makes sense. Recording midi into each channel seems like the best way to achieve what I was looking for.

I’ve been using Ableton but im learning Bitwig at the moment and planning to switch to Bitwig.

Any Ableton users experienced issues syncing Midi with the daw?

4

your experience can vary depending on what sort of hardware, system, buss traffic, methods, etc. but i have never had a problem if you use the audio pulse method to hapax cv in. no problems ever in fact and its super tight!

5

Got it , thanks mate.