Yeah, it’s sooooo close.
1 Like
That’s right.
What bothers me, however, is that resampling is also threshold-controlled. In my opinion, this is counterproductive, as it should be the start of playback that triggers sampling in this scenario, not the level.
5 Likes
also: effects per track and mutlistream usb audio output, but I doubt this will ever happen.
Imagine a deep elektron synth like the analog four with the opxy sequencer, brain track and punch in fx track
3 Likes
Seems like comparing apples to oranges to me.
That being said, I absolutely love my OP-XY for my commute. It has changed the way I feel about going to the office.
4 Likes
Power handle incoming.
I’m not sure that it would make sense for it to be portable in that sense, it’s not a groove box, and is clearly intended to be used with other gear. I think that Elektrons primary market is studio and live use.
A sort of syntakt V2 could be very cool if battery powered but you’d probably want to drop the analog componentry to make it viable.
1 Like
A machinedrum v2, purely digital, cool machines, portable, sampling, thin formfactor. In essence a op-xy with a good digital drum engine 
4 Likes
Wait what? … you have to reload the resampling?..
I figured it was ‘‘arm sample record’’ as in push one button
then press the note/pad with the sound you want to resample
Bang your recording/resampling that hit, press stop
Its now visable as waveform Trim mode …
hit asign to and press the same note/pad again to assign it to kit
Then you save all your resampling as whole kit
That be like 3 steps: press record > press note> resamples to waveform/trim> select note/pad to send it to and confrim… please dont tell me it works like this on the TV as Im cheering for a no backpack & cabels
IMO Akai got this very right with ‘‘flatten to pad rendering’’
couldn’t agree more 
Yhea I agree and the TV really has my heart… …
… Yet with all the XY conveniences + the more expressive playable keys… Im trying to find reasons that may be ‘‘replace some the TV power’’
Like it may not have sample/loop point modulation but you can live record these over a few bars if Im not mistaken
It may not have all the sonic sculpting with all the mods, filters & FX etc. but that may lead to quicker song creating ?? … you just move on with the groove instead of endlessly tweaking a sound/step
FX may not have LFOs but you can juggle lines and presets in the arrangement …
Just trying to balance the strengths vs weakness of the two
How does the workflow compare?
The TV seams super logical and has 8 encoders … Would love some real world input from actual power users
Wanna go deeper into that? … 
The OP-XY’s approach to building complete songs is much faster. Not in every situation, but in most.
Examples:
Need to extend or shorten your pattern? Hold BAR and hit + or -. Done.
Want to adjust the note length? Hold the first and hit the last step. Done.
Do you want to mute some tracks in a song’s scene? Easy! (Try this with the TV 
)
I own both devices. I prefer the TV when I really want to get into the details, turn knobs and do crazy things with FX. On the other hand, I prefer the OP-XY for achieving very fast musical results without feeling like I have to sacrifice flexibility or sound quality.
7 Likes
And you can also connect the OP-XY to the Tonverk via USB-C for adding FX, I assume?
I own — or have owned — every Elektron box except the Monomachine and the Tonverk.
Sample management on the OP-XY is messy and slow.
Everything else in the workflow feels brilliant. The scene/clip system makes it easy to test new combinations of patterns and presets and shape a track in no time.
On an Elektron machine I sometimes build very elaborate patterns full of p-locks and then get stuck, not knowing where to go next — it’s a me problem, I know, but the OP-XY helped me get past it. On the OP-XY it’s simply a matter of trying new punch-in FX combinations, a transposition on the brain track, or one of the many step components to keep evolving the pattern.
One thing people rarely talk about with punch-in FX (which could be far better if improved and if Teenage Engineering allowed some level of customization) is the drum-mute combined with step components. If you want to mute the drums every four or eight bars, or create a fancy roll/fill, you can do it instantly with step components. The composition becomes richer as you play, and much more playful. On Elektron you really need to think ahead — and even then, half the crazy stuff the OP-XY can do simply isn’t possible on the Elektron sequencer. (ofc the opposite is true if we talk about sound design)
Also: I use conditional trigs over automation in every track, and I had actually suggested this to Elektron support before the OP-XY even came out. There’s a strange bug tho: when you smooth the automation (another feature only the Analogs have as far as I know), conditional trigs over automations stop working.
Another powerful thing is the “jump to X step” component (to which you can also add probability). This gives you elastic patterns that never repeat with the same length. If you add all the other step components inside the pattern and the transposition of the brain track (which also has step components), you can literally make a three-step pattern evolve into something that never repeats itself the same way twice.
Also: the ability to solo tracks while in mix mode — soloing one or more tracks with a single press it’s extremely performative.
Nothing like this is possible on Elektron machines.
If they ever added a step component that modulates step length, it would basically do almost everything I do on the Cirklon.
The OP-XY sequencer is basically the summa of the best ideas from all the top sequencers around (Oxi, Cirklon, Hapax, Elektron), obviously with its limits (and with my wishlist), yet implemented in such a smart way that it goes beyond the individual features and makes you feel completely connected to the complex structures you build while playing — without needing to overthink everything in advance and killing spontaneity.
A small downside: on the OP-XY it’s hard to tell which bar you’re working on — you can figure it out, but Elektron’s LEDs are a thousand times more intuitive in this regard.
Another downside — and a really strange decision from TE — is velocity. It’s only a step component that you can adjust in increments of 9, not a specific value like on every other groovebox, unless you play with a keyboard or an external controller. This is probably the biggest drawback.
As I said earlier though, on its own it becomes boring pretty fast because the sound design is too limited for my taste. I don’t want this to sound like a criticism of Elektron. I still have a Rytm, a Digitone, and an A4, and the OP-XY is always connected to one of these three. To me that combo is fantastic.
11 Likes
Great summary, thank you for taking the time to write it all down.
I do have one small comment regarding your statement about solo:
What really bothers me about the XY’s solo feature is that it’s momentary. Having to hold down a button while soloing is very annoying in practice.
However, a poor implemented solo function is better than no solo function at all (hello Elektron).
3 Likes
yeah and also: it doesn’t mute midi tracks, making it unusable when integrating other gear. I forgot to mention this.
3 Likes
Yeah. I actually use the XY at the same time as tiny MIDI controller and additional synth source for the TV. Using a single USB cable, which I like. Of course it’s also possible to route the XY thru the TV’s effect chains. But I only tried that once, briefly.
4 Likes
Toneverk is probably the better option if you don’t care about portability. Opxy is fun but IMO it will sound pretty sterile if you don’t have good samples and the fx are pretty vanilla. Also it has a limited number of patterns per project and even with all the step component options it gets tricky if you want to make long live sessions that cover many different styles of music or if your changing to a completely different sound per pattern. You will eat up patterns quickly.
4 Likes
I think the Tonverk is much more powerful than the OP-XY, but the XY has the advantage of being an instant device. In other words, I see the Tonverk as being for multisampling in a fixed setup, where I can sit down and start working. The OP-XY, although less powerful, has the advantage that I can pick it up on the sofa, and one second after turning it on I can be working with it, turn it off to have dinner, then take it to bed and continue working immediately.
4 Likes
What an exelent summary.
Confirmed my vission of awesomeness the XY beholds …
Can the step Fx be ‘‘xox edited’’ after recording… like can you nudge their timing backward/forward and adjust their length?
I am going to wait on December ( I would expect both companies to bring out new OS for the Xmass rally.
On that note
the TV will completely rock with: macros, scenes, granular and okta track timestreatch Fx blocks … give it synth machines and it would be phenomenal
On the other hand the XY designer /OS program mentioned (seams to have creative freedom) that a 2nd LFO might be possible (and reading up on that LFO destinations include sample points) that is very exciting!!
A drum synth and perhaps a few more FX would really push this to fair investment… I do wish the LoFi/Bit reduction and EQ was built into every track though, and I dont understand how the kits cant have their own parameter settings, the actual value of CPU is held within the poly (as in 24 voices (24 filters and envelope at once regardless if set up 50 parameter copies: only the ones that are in play tax the CPU and apparently the XY has like a quad core ferrari inside ( the 25-year-old MC909 and SU700 could do all of this and real-time timestearch too with 1/5th of the processor, so I don’t know maybe all the complexity comes from the real-time calculations of polymeters and step fx it does have a steep note limit… But Ive read from users that the CPU goes into read even without using up all the tracks … is this just a optimization thing (one of the last thing the code implanted with or is it an actuall HW limit?
1 Like