OXI One versus Hapax

Hapax
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DHL was sandbagging the estimate, Hapax showed today, not Fri like they told me to expect. It’s beautiful, seriously. I have only HW first blush, I’ll probably film in some impressions soon. I’m really digging the OXI but my immediate impression is this is the machine I want to sequence tracks with, and the OXI I want to spend time developing ideas on an instrument or synth. The Hapax is definitely a lived at home device, while OXI plus iPad plus anywhere has been amazing.

Hapax knobs are … ok? Not soft touch, not metal like OXI. They got swapped before using them so… yeah. The replacement chroma fatty aren’t deep enough so they stand off a dumb looking amount, and neither are the tall rubber encoders. The chrome ones fit great.

More to come, I have some things to compare against if anyone has questions on build stuff.

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The Hapax seems to be the magical beast I’ve been hunting for a long time.

I’ve barely scratched the surface and every section I start to dig into makes sense and makes something cool sounding happens. I need to pivot into the steps sequencer and the algos I got it for in the first place, but I’m having too much fun exploring the chords and master transpose to even make it that far.

Hapax the drum track setup is really on point. Each row/part is assigned a note. It’s really easy to dial in a kit against hardware and the 16 pads Live layout is such an improvement over single trigs. The random fill worked great on hats and perc. The added row of track buttons makes a big difference because the grid can always respond as if you want to play notes, and doesn’t have to be selected first instead. It’s really easy to pivot into velocity or any automation.

The OXI I keep struggling to align with how kits work. You map the root, then each row/track is an offset from the root. The rows are more flexible like a Electron in that any trig can be assigned a new sound. I’m not sure what I keep doing wrong but I often put in a step and it trigger the wrong drum like a step on the HH lane will play a snare, because the default note shifted. its easy to pull it back to the correct note with hold and dial, but I need to figure out how to manage it better. The random is seemingly as random as on the Hapax (I mean, right?) but the OXI also has MI Grids which I haven’t used but sounds cool and it was fun to mess around with. OXI you can pivot into velocity really easily too, and there’s a one click humanizer and it sets up automation ranges really easily.

Both machines feel like they can take a drum groove you’ve built and start to tweak with it. setting up felt easier on the Hapax. Step sequencing did too. The MI generator is cool though and I wish Hapax had it too. OXI sort of wants you to harness chaos into your HW machine a bit more and it’s sounded lovely so far.

MC-101 and either of them is doing great work. the acoustic bass presets sound amazing and so do any mallets. it has so.many.good.synths and you can load sounds into it in stupid amount of ways and it seems like I can start mapping the effects and prog changes, too.

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thanks for this. I own an OO and looking for reasons to get a Hapax for Black Friday :slight_smile: Your review is insightful

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Did you end up selling your Oxi One or are you using both? Oxi One for noodling around with generative stuff and Hapax for locking it down?

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I have both and after a month decided to get rid of the Oxi. It’s a great machine but not a good match for me personally. Regret the impulse buy and now looking to sell it without losing too much cash on it.
Bought it to have something more portable than the hapax for live use, or even to replace the hapax as I had some annoyances with that too (but the latest update already addressed some of them).
Got the split option and a splitter usb-c cable to have more USB/Midi I/O so I could get closer to the Hapax I/O.
With the Oxi, silly things annoy me, like how the start and record button order is flipped in position compared to gear i’m used to, or how some key commands work, or how the menu’s are navigated. I frequently had problems because my intuition / muscle memory did the wrong thing and I ended up deleting things or getting unexpected results.
The instrument definitions on Hapax are awesome, I find it very hard to live without them any more. Using template patterns (which took me ages to set up for my drum machines) on the Oxi is really not the same experience. The bundled definitions are useless to me and I hate having to remember Midi channels.
I love being able to use the Sd card on the Hapax and backup tracks, import midi files, etc…
The config options on Hapax are also way more advanced, making it easy to set up in most complex midi studio configurations.
I understand the love for the Oxi, it’s a compact and cool machine and perfect in modular setups or modern computer/ipad stuff. But in my Midi-only setup, I was just bumping into way too many limitations. I totally don’t see the point of adding a battery to a sequencer either, just seems like a timebomb to me :wink: I don’t like having to switch the Oxi off independently from the rest of my studio as the damn battery keeps it on when I cut the power.

After I got fed up with the Oxi due to some synchronization issues (it drifted like crazy as a slave receiving midi notes), I briefly took out my Pyramid again. Which felt like using a time machine to the past :smiley: And after a few sessions the Hapax was returned to it’s throne in my studio. I’m not going back.
If anything, owning the Oxi made me appreciate the Hapax more than I did before :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the through write up! I share your frustrations with the Oxi One UI, project and pattern saving, etc. I’ve not throughly explored all the Hapax features yet, but on the whole I found it easier to get on with. But there are a few things I’ve hardly dove into yet.

Did you not use the Oxi One generative stuff much? That’s the only reason I’m handing on to it. I feel the generative features are more capable with the Oxi One, but I haven’t tried the latest beta release either.

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not in depth, I was impressed by what I saw on youtube. Actually own the Torso T-1 as well and that motivated me to check out the Oxi in the first place.
But with the recent updates on the Hapax and the T-1 I’m more than satisfied.
Again, don’t want to downtalk the Oxi, I’m sure it’s perfect for many people, but it doesn’t fulfill my personal needs.
Seeing what has been added with the latest Hapax beta, it seems they are very aware of generative shortcomings, and I still have a lot to learn about what is possible currently. The main thing annoying me at the moment is the 8 sounds limit for drumkits (same issue on Oxi afaik). Ideally they would ramp that up to 16 or even 32.

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Cool, that’s encouraging to hear. I’ve been busy, so haven’t looked close, but hope to dive into 2.10 soon!

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I’ve had the oxi for a long time, sold it and bought the hapax,
I’ve had it for 2 days, and already everything is where I want it to be, and how I would like it to work.
In my view everything in hapax is built around the main sequencer, and then you just add to it, in a very modular way, just like you can do in eurorack wit midi mudules, and that makes it insanely powerful.
The main sequencer is so much better built, and a great overview, you actually see what’s happening, and much more logical one button per function.
The buttons are great, on the oxi it’s much thicker plastic, so much more travel, on the hapax it’s more easier to paint automation.
I bought it now 2025, so the pots may be more stable, they maby fixed it? I think they are really solid.
I understand track view, mixmute directly.
Overall, in my personal opinion hapax Is much more superior sequencer. I would maby use oxi if I was moving around, or playing live, because of the batteries, but I would prefer hapax for workflow.

Just my personal opinion. Cheers Bobb

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News has surfaced that Oxi One mk2 is in the works. Double the amount of sequencer tracks and maybe some new generative sequencers.

2025 looks like it will be a big year for sequencer addicts like myself. Besides Oxi One mk2, Reliq is likely to be released to the general public by the end of the year. And perhaps Hapax firmware 3.0? One can hope.

And just this morning, I found out about this thing:

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Supply chain issues are delaying the production of Reliq and just 50 or so of the Indiegogo backers have received their units, so an end of year release to the public seems unlikely. Plus, the firmware at present is buggy as hell and feels more like an alpha release. The Oxi One firmware is a quantum leap better in terms of features and stability, and I might be tempted by the mk2.

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Yeah, I’ve seen some of the chatter about the delays in recieving Reliq on Elektronauts and Mod Wiggler. One person in particular said they just got a notice that their Reliq shipment has been delayed until July/August (at the earliest). When I saw that comment, I knew that it probably wouldn’t be until late fall/winter that Reliq would see general release. And that’s being generous. More likely first or early second quarter of 2026.

I’m also looking at the Oxi One mk2. As much as I’ve championed the Hapax, both here and on other forums, so many of the features I’d like to have on a sequencer look to be coming with the mk2. Some of them look to be features that I’ve requested from the Hapax team but have yet to be implemented. I think Hapax is superior in terms of workflow (for how I like to work, anyway), but the new Oxi One (alongside the attendant firmware update) seems to be winning in every other department that I care about. I think pre-orders go live at the end of this week and I plan to put in my order at that time if the price is right.

In the meanwhile, I’ll probably shelve my Hapax until version 3 is ready. I have nothing but love for this sequencer and hope to return when it’s made more progress in its feature set.

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nothing wrong with both!

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Had an OXI for over a year and a half before selling it off in frustration and replacing it with Hapax.

Number one reason? The firmware development is a mess. This is also the reason I won’t be considering OXI One MKII or any of their other gear.

Constant workflow-breaking tweaks, constant regressions, a promise of an all-powerful app with every major version that never materialized (promised again for 5.0), etc. Firmware versioning was a mess. You’d find yourself running a certain release FW number and find that the beta for the next version was a lower version number. Or updates would be posted over a short period of time without updating version numbers. Or the betas would be fed to the release stream and the updater app would notify you of a new version number without indicating it’s a beta, and you’d find yourself with a buggy, regressive device when you thought you were getting a tested, polished update.

Mutes kept getting broken then fixed then broken then fixed. The UI pages for saving, loading and arrangement look identical, so it’s easy to accidentally lose what you just changed or accidentally reload or overwrite when you intended to do something else. LSB/MSB to this day don’t work properly, making program changes on some devices impossible or needing a mod lane workaround, in addition to the fact that the settings for each are split across UI pages. (This is promised to be fixed in 5.0. It was also promised to be fixed in 4.0 when I brought it up before selling the ONE.)

Fixes and feature tweaks/additions are not separated, so a new FW update might have a really cool feature, change a feature you depend on, a bad regression, and/or fixes to important things all at once and you’re forced to cross-reference which of those will affect you and weigh if it’s worth it.

THAT BEING SAID…

The OXI ONE hardware is amazing. It has double the CV/Gates as Hapax and has some unique generative ideas that are fun and musical. And obviously the size and battery and build quality are stellar. (Though the size does limit the amount of UI real estate, causing a lot more dependence on shift combos and UI paging. This is understandable and a fair price to pay for the smaller size.)

My advice to any potential OXI ONE owner is to first dig through their Discord and see if any issues might affect you. And then, if you are on a firmware that’s stable for your given use case, to not update without doing a ton of research.

To OXI’s credit the team is super responsive, but they take the implementation of community-requested features to an extreme that causes all sorts of problems. If they were more disciplined with the development and split fixes and feature changes/additions to alternate release cycles, or spent a LOT more time testing between releases, I think it would be a lot easier to recommend.

Overall, the Hapax’s biggest strength is the size. The simple fact that it has more room for a much more thought-out set of controls makes it simultaneously more intuitive and fun to use. Going to Hapax from OXI felt like it gave me room to breathe. OXI felt cramped, and the layers upon layers and fear of loss of work stoked constant anxiety.

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Good description, although I didn’t find the FW circus quite that troublesome.

Hapax wins for immediaxy and usability. And the amount of shenanigans you can cook up with effects is off the hook esp. with the recent new effects included.

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oxi key combos mk2
oxi bloat mk2
oxi feature creep mk2
oxi set and forget mk2
oxi rtfm mk2
oxi nice hardware mk2

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I think there is a lot to like about the Hapax. Especially when it comes to the workflow. Squarp has really mastered the “DAW-in-a-box” feel. I’ve been a fan of Ableton for ages, so I like how Hapax mirrors their Session View for launching patterns. And because there are two screens, neither is bothered with too much info so there isn’t a lot of menu diving needed.

That said, I feel like I’ve been waiting for over a year for Squarp to take the Hapax to another level. Take the drum sequencer for example. It’s nice for programming basic beats, but it pales in comparison to what is possible with the Oxi One. With the Oxi One, each lane can run on independent time divisions and in different directions simultaneously for crazy polyrythms, if that’s what you’re going for. This still isn’t possible on the Hapax.

I can connect the Oxi One to my computer and directly make updates and add files directly using their app (soon to be updated). With the Hapax, I can’t even mount it to the desktop so that it can be recognized as an external drive. So if I want to add MIDI files or upgrade the firmware, I have to remove the SD card, place it into an SD reader connected to my computer, then reinsert the SD card into the Hapax. Maybe not the worst thing in the world, but not as convenient as the Oxi One. Especially considering their new app is going to offer new features and the Hapax doesn’t even have anything like an app for that kind of direct interaction.

And then there are all the generative sequencers on the Oxi One: Matrecial, Stochastic, the MI Grids-inspired beat generator, etc. And now they’re adding Performance Mode, updated sequence generators, and an Accumulator. People have been asking for an Accumulator on the Hapax for almost 2 years now, and the Oxi One beat them to it (that is assuming Squarp was planning to add one).

Yes, the Hapax has a few cool MIDI effects. But they’re not as deep (or as fun, fro me anyway) as any of the sequencers on the Oxi One, And with version mk2, it looks like they’re taking things to the next level. I’m not saying their haven’t been any upgrades of note to the Hapax. But as far as I’m concerned, none of these updates are on the same level as what I see happening with the Oxi One.

Of course, I’m not here to try to convince anyone that one sequencer is better than another. We all have different needs and tastes. The Hapax as it currently operates is more than enough for a lot of people, and I’m happy for them. But for me, the Oxi One mk2 is fulfulling a lot of the requests that I’ve sent directly to Hapax for the past year or so. If there’s another sequencer available that suits my needs, I’m going to jump on it.

Ultimately, I am cheering for the Hapax because it’s still an awesome sequencer even if I feel it’s lagging behind in areas that are important to me. I hope that with the version 3 firmware Squarp will come out of the gates swinging. I genuinely look forward to what they will do next with the Hapax.

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sequencers are really about you, not them. i know i want to hear what the user made it do, all those automatic things start to sound the same to me no matter who is using them. like you can pick out what was assisted and what was genuinely inspired. inspired stuff tends to sound intentional and backed by vision. vision is what im in for! personality! depth!

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Haha, that’s another conversation altogether . . .

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to me there is only one conversation.