What about the MPC 1000 makes it better than the Hapax for drum sequencing? Anything specific ideas Hapax could implement to shore up the gap?
no not really. the life of the project will impart a ‘personality’ so to speak, to a piece of gear. a vision is more important than including everything so you can consolidate to a smaller footprint.
the mpc 1000 is decoupled from hapax and is fine tuned for sample based percussion and has several strengths over hapax while certainly not eclipsing hapax which has a huge list of strengths over the mpc. i dont want to put my mpc into the hapax. and my mpc cant do what hapax can. if you havent ever tried the mpc with jjos i highly recommend it. it wont write your song for you however. but it will allow you a sequence of literally any length where hapax has a 32 measure limit (i think). believe me, its better to have both and simply tempo sync them together.
anyway this thread is about the hapax beta. ask me in the hapax companion sequencer thread i started! ill gladly list it all out. but its just my opinion!
Ah right. That makes sense (“MPC 1000 is … fine tuned for sample based percussion”) ,
I’ve never used and MPC, but I have an Analog Rytm mkii (ARM2), so I get the concept. I like fucking up kicks in modular so I also got a Rossum Assimil8or 8 channel sampler which can be externally triggered and controlled by MIDI or CV. So I might let go of the ARM2 at some point. I’m continually trying to simplify!
yikes! Oxi Instruments made 19 releases for Oxi One in 2024. Hope Hapax can up their game!
January: 4.0.6, 4.0.10, 4.1.0, 4.1.1, 4.1.3, 4.1.4
February: 4.1.7, 4.1.8, 4.1.9, 4.1.10, 4.2.2, 4.2.3, 4.2.4
March: 4.2.7, 4.2.8
April: 4.2.11, 4.2.13, 4.2.14
May: 4.3.6
June: 4.3.7, 4.3.8
August: 4.4.7
November: 4.5.6
Total releases in 2024: 19 distinct version releases
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Why don’t you keep on with the Oxi then ?
I still have my Oxi One. I’ve only had the Hapax for a few weeks. So far, there’s a lot to love about the Hapax. I feel it was easier to learn and the UI seems more accessible and rational to me. But that could also be, in part, because I learned the Oxi One first. At first I didn’t know anything about Hapax, so I thought the Oxi One was the best sequencer. Only later after learning about Hapax from Krista Bourgeois, did I learn that Hapax has some advanced features that not even the Oxi can do, like dual projects.
I just started with electronic music production about a year ago. At first I got the BeatStep Pro, which is a great starter sequencer with CV/Gates for modular.
Six months later I upgraded to Oxi One as it has much more to offer in terms of features – modulation lanes, LFOs and around two dozen waveforms, generative capabilities, 8 x CV and 8 x Gate outs, clock dividers, quantizers, and the smaller size is nice too.) To be honest, I highly-recommend Oxi One. It’s a very capable sequencer, it’s well designed, and it makes an excellent control center for a modular system (you can save hundreds on LFOs, modulation sources, and clock dividers…)
I started getting a little annoyed with the Oxi One because of the learning curve. I think the additional features have exceeded the intentions of the original UI, so you end up with a lot of submenus and multi-key combinations which get hard to remember. Sometimes I just waste stupid amounts of time trying to remember how to do something. I never got around to learning the Arranger, and I keep tripping around with the UI during pattern and song saving and renaming. Saving patterns it Sections and Songs was a breeze in Hapax. I didn’t even need to watch any videos or read any manuals to figure it out.
I started looking more closely at Hapax, learning more about my associate’s workflow, and read numerous testimonials of people who switched from Oxi One and said that Hapax is a much better experience.
So I bought a Hapax. I was relieved about how easy it was to get started. It also has it’s share of multi-button presses, but on the whole I feel it’s more logically laid out and I find myself more productive with it. But there are many ways it could be improved. Top of mind:
- OXI ONE has more options for Gate length beyond 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc. With the Oxi One you get more granular control
- OXI ONE has more Rate options for LFOs. With the Oxi you get 1.5 bars, dotted and triplets (1/8d, 1/16t) and also free running (Hz; not clocked to musical times)
- OXI ONE LFO’s can be routed to internal destinations, such as another LFO’s rate or amount, or a sequencer’s pitch!
- OXI ONE has better Generative options (as mentioned above)
- Euclidean implementation in Oxi One is more simple, direct, easier-to-use, and useful.
So I hope you don’t get me wrong. Being critical of a company’s products or policies doesn’t automatically mean you don’t like them. I’m a Product Manager and a business owner. I work to make products, and companies, better everyday. I want the best tools for myself and for the industry, so I want Squarp to be successful, so I hope they hire a larger team if resources are holding them back.
It’s interesting how similar these two companies are:
- both have a small team
- both have a flagship sequencer and two Eurorack modules
- both released their flagship sequencer, just weeks apart, in early 2022.
And both of their sequencers have a lot of overlap, but each has their own strengths and weakness. Personally, I’d love to see Hapax shore up some of those gaps. They’re all just software coding issues. But having larger screens is something Oxi will have a hard time fixing in their current model 
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OXI use SemVer (https://semver.org). Squarp do not.
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Oxi One has a public API?
The fact that they are not using the same versioning spec means that you should not be trying to compare the release schedules of the two.
In the “19 releases for Oxi One in 2024” you mention, every time only the third number of the version changed - nothing happened, only some bugs were fixed.
Compare the changelogs of the products instead, if you need to try and understand the efforts.
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The distinction between “major” and “minor” releases is a red herring here. Research from “Accelerate” (Nicole Forsgren) demonstrates that orgs which make smaller releases, more often consistently outperform those who batch changes into larger, less frequent releases.
The evidence shows that frequent deployments:
- Reduce risk by making each change smaller and more manageable
- Enable faster feedback loops with users
- Allow quick resolution of issues
- Lead to better quality software overall
- Correlate strongly with higher organizational performance
Take the Oct release (almost entirely bug fixes), their first release in six full months: holding bug fixes for 6 months (April-to-October) means users lived with known issues for half a year, each fix became riskier to deploy because it was bundled with many other changes, and the feedback loop between developers and users was significantly delayed.
Counterintuitively, the research shows that teams deploying more frequently (like Oxi’s approach) actually have lower change failure rates and faster recovery times when issues do occur. This contradicts the traditional thinking that holding changes longer for more testing leads to better stability.
It’s not about the version numbering scheme - it’s about getting value into production. The data is clear: frequent, smaller releases are a key characteristic of high-performing software teams.
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i started buying electronic music gear and using sequencers in 1992. if that means something or not i guess is down to your perspective. i stopped being an annoying prick oh, err, maybe that hasnt happened yet. but the fact is there are many ways to do it and this is why you need to do your own thing or find a partner who sees things the way you do. i made my own gear so i could do it my way. i listen to peoples suggestions but pretty much dont let them dictate what i do because im satisfying my own prerogative first and foremost. i do get good feedback here and there, but its my own vision that i follow. i dont really want a forum telling me how to do it… its a big step to release your own gadgets. it costs a lot of money and time and doesnt immediately pay off. ive paid into my gadgets more than i have made. i didnt ask people for money before i delivered a product. crowd funded projects would seem to fit your style of feedback. im not sure squarp follows this model! theres got to be a reason for it being the way they have chosen to do it!
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Or perhaps you just think they are not customer driven because it’s not transparent. Other users has said they are very customer driven and responsive by email. So maybe you only think they are strictly following their own vision like some kind of Steve Jobs visionary, when actually many of their best ideas arrived via their inbox. You don’t know do you? 
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no, but im not so keen to know. im satisfied with squarp for the most part. its as if they could see my wishes and made hapax to my specifications. with minor exceptions. ive seen people wax on about this or that and its ended up in the pudding. hey bottom line is i have come to accept their prerogative the way it manifests. get stronger at using your brain for workarounds rather than attempting to hijack squarps prerogative. this doesnt mean dont voice your wishes. by all means, do! but dont push so hard? thats not going to expedite changes.
this guy softwares
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I’ve finally come to the same level of “acceptance” across my gear and audio software. I’ve seen such a vast array of hardware and software and each and every piece has a long list of “gripes” by the users and exasperated individuals expecting that “some day” such and such feature is going to show up and everything will be better. Life is too short to bank on some feature showing up in a product years down the line that will magically make my creative flow better. When I was younger, I didn’t care, I invested my skills in what I did and all my progress could be made there, with far far more limited tools than I have today. I’m excited about what my tools do for me today, and I don’t really think as much about what they could be doing vs what I can be doing with them. Or at least I try, I do get caught up in the GAS and feature request modes but I’ve started to learn more to let that go a little bit and embrace what I have.
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I agree we shouldn’t use our dissatisfaction about some limitation as an excuse. But there’s a wide gradient between the two extremes of total acceptance and constant dissatisfaction with our tools. I think there’s a sweet spot in finding peace with what we have while actively exploring and contributing to innovations and enhancements that could genuinely enhance our workflows and creative process.
And while some gear may never reach its full potential, it’s not like everything is stagnant by any means. This industry is super dynamic creativity and many companies surprise and delight with unexpected innovations that push our artistic boundaries in new directions.
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