In comments section of the most recent Squarp post on IG, someone asked if there would be an update of Hapax soon. To which Squarp replied, “You’re not prepared for what’s coming!” That’s quite a dramatic pronouncement. At this point I’m plenty ready, but the response from Squarp has raised my expectations. Here are a few things I’m hoping to see:
Ping-Pong Alternate. An additional alternative ping-pong style option that runs the sequence forward (as per usual) but when it reaches the end of the first fun, it plays the last step twice before going in reverse, and when it returns to the beginning of the sequence it plays the first step twice before going forward again, etc.
Accumulator. I’ve seen a couple of posts requesting a feature or MIDI effect that is similar to the Accumulator function on the Metropolix. Even though I did not include this particular in the requests I sent via the contact form, I’ve seen several demonstrations of how it works on YouTube. I hope the Squarp team has noticed these requests as well. I think adding something similar to the Accumulator to Hapax would take it to another level.
Saving Drum Patterns. One of the most requested features is expanding from 8 drum lanes to 16. I hope that there are other more advance features added to the drum sequencer to assist in making great beats. It would be great if there was also an option to punch in drum patterns and save them for use in other compositions.
Bonuses: Making Hapax discoverable as a hard drive by my computer so I don’t have to constantly remove the SD drive whenever I want to drag MIDI files onto it or update the firmware. Also, not sure if this is possible, but I’d like a way to “extract” grooves for unquantized MIDI files and apply the groove to individual tracks/patterns or even globally. Along those same lines, maybe there will be a “Humanize” MIDI effect.
It’s been over six months since the last update, so hopefully we don’t have to wait much longer to see if it matches up with Squarp’s sensational claim.
The Reliq sequencer, likely to be the most capable rival to Hapax, is scheduled to ship within the next few weeks. (So be prepared to see “Should I buy Hapax or Reliq?” posts on a recurring basis.) I plenty happy with Hapax, so I don’t have any plans to buy Reliq once it becomes available to the wider public. But I am curious about what features it will have. I’ve already noticed a few MIDI effects on the Reliq website that I wonder if they could be translated to Hapax. What could be most exciting about the years to come is seeing these two teams push each other to make better sequencers. The next HapaxOS update could be a great start.
Last I read, around $1700-$1800. But that was about a year ago. Not sure if it will change once it’s released. That’s already a lot of money and I’m sure they don’t want to scare off potential customers.
The Reliq seems less capable on the midi sequencing front and more interesting as a sequencable matrix mixer. It is a very different type of device and definitely not a competitor to the Hapax. They lost me at 8 note polyphony per track.
Hapax in its current state seems pretty strong, i’ve had very few bugs, & the added functionality provided over the last big updates has made it so feature-rich for me.
updates & additions are always welcome of course, but i’m hoping they keep the stability & ease of features currently in place.
USB midi support with 32 ports and hub support? :-)
I do wish that squarp had a public feature request system like polyend with voting, so we could figure out if our personal favorites are actually important to the community.
And as I often do in these request threads, here’s a reminder that if you have a desired feature request(s), send Squarp an email to let them know your thoughts on the matter: Contact us | Squarp instruments
They don’t always read suggestions made in the forum but are very responsive to suggestions made through that contact form.
another one i’d like is for the chord mode to be set up per track. you can lock stuff like power chords etc by pressing the 2nd button then the chord type but when moving to a new track the locked things stay locked.
It’s really bad community policy to silo off feature requests in direct emails to squarp. It’s always interesting to hear what people are trying to do and the discourse that follows can clarify ideas.
I’d love to hear from squarp why they don’t want to engage in bugs and feature requests publicly.
My colleague’s “clickbaity” comment seems to have really piqued y’alls’ curiosity
I must confess, the very next update (days away from release/beta-release) is bug fixes only, which is not very exciting, but we do have a lot of cool stuff brewing for the subsequent one.
I hope it’s not too much of a disappointment, sorry for the premature hype
