Unhappy pairings? [now happy] (fixed)

I’m just curious if anyone has had any pairings that haven’t worked with Hapax. Not asking for troubleshooting help here as I’ve already submitted a support ticket to both companies, Just curious if this is a known issue,

I spent a couple hours today trying to get it to play nice with my Norand Mono and kept having problems. Same settings on the Hapax work fine with a Dreadbox Typhon. Or UDO Super 6. Same settings on my Mono work fine with a Linnstrument or my computer. Put the the Hapax and Mono together using cables that worked for the others, disconnect everything else, and all sorts of problems.

I admit that user error is a possibility……

What exact problems are you facing connecting the Hapax to the Mono?

Stuck notes, notes from Hapax not going through, general glitchiness, lack of tempo sync. It’s like they won’t properly “shake hands.”

As I said, I sent a long detailed note to support. I will reproduce it below but I’m not particularly looking for tech support on the forum.

What I’ve tried to do: set up the Hapax to send MIDI (notes, CCs) to the Mono and control the Mono’s transport and tempo. It would be ideal if I could sequence events on both, keeping in mind that the Mono is a mono synth.

Sorry this is so long but I am trying to detail the problem and clearly lay out my troubleshooting steps.

What I know:
The Hapax works perfectly fine to connect and send MIDI to other instruments like the Dreadbox Typhon, the UDO Super 6, and an iPad.
The Mono is perfectly happy to receive MIDI input from my iPad, or from my Linnstrument’s DIN connection.

So there’s something about how they connect. At first I thought maybe it was because the Mono was a mono synth and the Hapax only has poly channels, but the Typhon doesn’t have this issue.

What happens when I connect the Hapax to the Mono:
Glitchiness! And not in a cool way (ok, that’s debatable). Not all notes play if I’m playing a sequence on the Hapax, or playing notes in manually. Often I’ll get stuck notes. Adjusting tempo on the Hapax works on any events on the Hapax but does nothing to the Mono even though transport responds to start/stop commands and I’ve set the Hapax to send MIDI start/stop and clock to the Mono.

For troubleshooting purposes, I have connected the Hapax and Mono to one another, and the Mono audio out to my mixer. But I’ve disconnected everything else. I am using the DIN MIDI cable I used to connect to my Linnstrument to the Mono, and my Hapax to my Super 6, so I know it works. Ditto for the USB cable (which was tested with the Typhon).

On the Mono, I am following the directions on page 23 of the current manual: hit [func] + MIDI, then I’ve selected channel 1 [seq 1] and then either [B] or [C] (the sequencer page buttons), for DIN or USB, depending on what’s connected. Then I hit [func] again.

On the Hapax, I set the channel to the DIN channel I’ve selected on the Mono, or I select the USB host channel and set the Mono to receive USB MIDI. I have also set MIDI sync to sending run and tempo messages.

This is a real head scratcher and it’s consistently reproducible.

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That’s a bummer. Does the Norand have issues interfacing with anything else? I’ve been considering adding one of those to my setup, but now will put that thought on hold until this is resolved…

I’d check for possible midi feedback loops.

Next step, is to check midi messages going to /from synth using the hapax midi monitor. Look for suspicious messages :wink:
If the that doesn’t show anything using an external midi monitor in between hapax and device.

in both cases make sure you monitor all comms between devices - so bidirectional.

Almost always the issue is something to do with midi traffic ( rather than voltages etc) , so users have got the tools to diagnose.

—-
(*) assuming you are not using usb bus powered devices which can have issues with power delivery and you should always try with external power.

It was a feedback loop! Squarp support replied promptly and I had a very happy 30 minutes with it this morning. I feel like I should delete the thread – since apparently there are no unhappy pairings, but that would also delete your useful replies, so I won’t.

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Can you edit the title or original post to include something like [EDIT: fixed!]?

you’d be surprised how often this is the case :wink:

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