How does quantizing work on the Hapax I’m confused

Hapax
1

Hello,

I come from the Elektron workflow on the Digitakt and Digitone and enjoy the easy quantizing across their 16 pads, the key will stap in nicely when enabled.

I’m trying to understand it on the Hapax and get it set up in a similar way, but it never feels like anything is quantized. I record a short melody live so naturally times will be off and I like to enable quantise to fix that, but nothing seems to change if I enable a quantize of 1/16 before I record a melody or after.

What am I doing wrong here?

2

Quantize on Hapax is non-destructive: it doesn’t actually change the recorded notes, but it will quantize the output of it.

You can do something that comes close to destructive quantizing by holding the ALL button to select all notes and then hold the uTime parameter to snap the start position of all notes to the grid. This will actually shift the whole note though, so the end position of the note moves too. This can potentially result in unwanted outcomes, as this may change wether a note overlaps with another note or not.

Hopefully Squarp will add a proper destructive quantizing function in the future…

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3

Thanks for your reply.

So is the destructive quantizing function like how the Elektrons do it?

What I struggle with is recording a melody live and it will be off time in areas and when using the Elekton device like the Digitone, it would sort that as I’d have quantising enabled (before or after recording) and it would sort this timing issue for me and make it all sound in time.

Is there no way yet to do this do you think? I can step mode and manually key on notes, but not as fun and quick.

Thanks

4

Please fill in the contact form to suggest this feature. I did as well, but the more people asking for this, the higher the chance they will implement it :slight_smile:

5

maybe i’m getting something wrong… what exactly do you expect?
When you enable quantize (2nd + Track) you can set quantize to 1/64 etc and how strongly in percentage it should quantize.
This will affect your recorded notes playback.

The second option is to change all notes as described before here by Maarten.

6

I think if I’m understanding correctly here you’re talking about “input quantise” or “record quantise” rather than output/playback quantise.

So for example, “record quantise” or “input quantise”:
If you are recording and you play a note, it won’t place the note on the grid part way between steps where you played it, but rather on the closest quantised location (eg at the start of a 16th note step if you have record quantise set to 16th notes. Then when you go back and look at the recorded pattern, you will only see quantised notes.

On the hapax, you have playback/output quantise. So you want to set the track quantise to whatever value you choose (eg 1/16), and strength to 100%.if you only want notes to appear on quantised intervals.

Say you’re on 16 steps for a 1 bar pattern, and 16th note quantise in hapax,
if you are recording and play a note a quarter of the way between steps 1 and 2, it will record it on the grid as step 1, + 1/4 of a step value of microtiming.

When it plays back, it will play back on step 1 without microtiming if hapax quantise strength is 100%

The resultant playback will be the same as if you had 16th note input/record quantise enabled on a different device. The only time it will sound ‘wrong’ or ‘different’ between the hapax and the other quantising device, is if you record a note closer to step 2 than step 1. Say if you play the note at step 1 + 3/4 of a step, it will play back at step 2.

In the case of input quantise/record quantise devices, how it records the note depends on the device you’re recording to and how they’ve implemented it.

Some will record the note to the previous closest step, eg if you play the note late, but step 2 hasn’t begun yet, it will always think you meant to play on step 1, even if the note you played was closer to step 2 than step 1.
Then alternately, some will record the note on the actual closest step to where you played, eg if you play the note late, but closer to step 2 than step 1, it will place the note on step 2.

Case 2, where it records to the closest step regardless of if that step is ahead or behind where you play, will result in the exact same playback timing as the hapax, except that in the hapax you can reduce the strength of the quantise effect, or change the quantise size, after the fact of recording. This is why it’s called “non destructive” - because all the timing information of your initial performance is still saved in the pattern, you just choose how it is played back by adjusting quantise.

Some devices have both input/record quantise AND output/playback quantise. So you could record your input to the closest 32nd note, then play it back to the closest 16th note.

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7

Wow what a wonderful and helpful reply, thank you. I’ve read this a couple of times too :slight_smile:

I’m saving this to my notes!

Out of interest what gear do you sequence?

8

Glad I could be of assistance!
I sequence lots of stuff, and have owned many midi sequencers over the years. I have been on a mission to find “the holy grail” if you will. Up until recently I was quite disappointed with what was available vs. what I actually wanted to do, but current gear is getting close to satisfying me now - the Hapax is the closest I own for now, although I’ve yet to try the oxi one which is definitely in the same ballpark Then there is the torso t-1 that encapsulates a lot of what I want to do, although misses out on some other features.

My main interest is in writing fairly simple lines/patterns/chord progressions, then splitting that to multiple midi tracks and applying midi effects to make it unique, alter it in realtime with things like rhythmic/timing variations, arpeggios, harmonisers, MIDI LFOs, euclidean rhythms, etc.

In terms of what I sequence - synths, samplers, fx, everything haha. I’m also working on ways to combine visual generation.
I play a bit of keyboard, as a means of coming up with ideas, but as I’m trying to be more of a live conductor than an instrument virtuoso, I’m more interested in doing things with lines once they’ve been sequenced. I have looked at live looping midi , but find that once the track is recorded, I still want the ability to alter it in realtime. The problem of course is balancing things like staying in scale/key/rhythm, with being not boring.

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9

It works like shit and it AMAZES me that this is still a thing. Sqaurp PLEASE FIX YOUR SEQUENCER. This is the single most annoying thing I’ve ever experienced on any piece of gear. Its so sad that this thing can be so amazing yet cant even get the most basic simple thing that is on EVERY sequencer since the late 80s. Please fix it already! Been asking for over a year now! Im so tired of manually moving everything Ive recorded in live to the grid. SUCH A WORKFLOW KILLER!

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10

Totally agree. I thought is was me though, I come from an Elektron sequencer workflow where this is standard for them, but I thought they all did it and thought I was doing something wrong with the Hapax. It’s a pain for me.

11

Its not you. They tried to reinvent a standard of how something works for 30+ years(on like every sequencer ever made) into something that is not good at all.

12

I wonder if they will listen to your request and take notice. Seems like a standard important feature to me.

13

They told me it was on their list of things they want to do but its not a high priority. This was in feb. 2024 and I think I even mentioned the issue a year before that when I first got it in jan 2023. It was my second time contacting them about it and then I contacted them again in june. IMO its the top priority because is the most simple basic feature of a sequencer that makes the workflow fast. The workaround is extremely annoying. This sequencer would be pretty much perfect if they fixed it imo.

Just so everyone is clear what the issue is. Ill break it down.

Every other sequencer works like this: You put the thing in quantize mode and every thing you play in for a live recording is quantized and notes are actually moved to the grid in the threshold you define. And when you take quantize off and you play something in live it lands where it lands. The issue with the hapax is that if you put the global non destructive quantize on it doesn’t actually move the notes they are still where they were when you played them in.

So now with this this workflow(which is a very typical workflow) I am about to describe comes the issues.

  1. I want to play in notes quantized to the grid.
  2. then I want to play in humanized stuff after I lay down the rigid stuff

This workflow is super easy on a every sequencer:

  1. You put on quantize and play live. Every note is moved wonderfully on the grid.
  2. Now you disable quantize while the track is still armed for recording and everything is now humanized but your original recording is still on the grid.

So now you have quantized stuff and unquantized stuff living on the same track done very easily and fast with one toggle of quant on and off.

Now explain to me how you do that on the squarp and once you start to try and explain that you see where the issue lies.
Ill give you a hint:

Its many more steps then it should be with a traditional quantize implementation.

  1. from live mode you arm to record. You play in all your notes you want on grid
  2. you exit live mode and goto step mode
  3. you unarm the recording
  4. you hold the ALL button and then move all notes to grid by holding down the time encoder
  5. go back to live mode
  6. arm it again
  7. play in your unquantized stuff

And this is just one time you play something in that you want on the grid. You have to do it for EVERY single recording if you are also going to have unquantized stuff on the track.

And if you tell me to turn on the quantize just think about that for a minute before you say it. This doesn’t work if you want stuff on the grid and some stuff off the grid in then same track. And the workaround is above. And it SUCKS.

DAWS all implement it like this, all MPCS work like this since the 80’s all sequencers every created basically except this device.

There isn’t one good reason to keep it like the way it is. Its terrible. Why re-invent the wheel badly? They were trying to be clever but its simply just a bad feature that no one ever needs in any use case. Sorry to be crazy but this just drives me nuts and it needs to be fixed already.

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14

A quick fix for the quantise i always use is, record in your live stuff as best you can, go to the steps page, hold the all button and click the utime knob. Everything jumps to the step on 0%, normally its all good, sometimes you might need to nudge a note or 2 forward a step but its really quick. My bad if you already do it this way

15

yeah I already said this above. Its a terrible clunky work around.

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16

The problem with resetting the uTime to 0 is that it also moves the end of the note, potentially resulting in unwanted differences in wether the next note will overlap or not.

Destructive quantizing usually only quantizes the start position of the note, leaving the end position, so it actually changes the note length a little bit as well. Sometime it is optional to also quantize the end position, but it shouldn’t be standard obviously.

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17

Exactly this, I thought I was being spoilt with the quantising on my Elektron Digitone/Digitakt sequencers or it was something they implemented with snapping notes to the grid when quantised and other sequencers hadn’t, it frustrates me this simple feature isn’t an option (yet I hope). The amount of great programming they have already done on the Hapax then you’d think they we add this.

They are usually really good at listening to us and make changes, so it’s odd they haven’t acknowledge this in some way yet.

18

When I read this it suggests it should work the way we think like yours and the Elektrons?

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19

No dude you aren’t being spoiled this is STANDARD live quantization implementation on EVERY machine and DAW that has quantization ever made. This has been a standard for 30+ years. No other quantization implementation works like this on any other device ever. @squarpadmin please get this FIXED already. I consider it a huge bug and not a feature.

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20

I would expect the green note to shift to the right instead of the left? Guess that’s just an error in the image, not the actual behavior…

Also, I’m a bit disappointed that it apparently also quantizes the end position. Granted, I don’t use the standard quantize feature since I don’t like nondestructive quantization anyway. But now I’m even more sure I will probably never use it (except maybe if I decide to do live playing during a performance).

Just hope Squarp will add destructive input quantization with optional note end position quantization in the future. Knowing Squarp, I’m pretty sure they will improve this at some point.

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