I own a Deluge and a Minilogue XD. These two devices complement each other perfectly. The most important advantage of the XD is its sequencer, which can be seemless combined with the sound generation. The XD’s sequencer is extremely intuitive to use and delivers a lot of musical happy accidents on the fly.
Do further research on this to, eh, try and dissuade myself (honestly!!!) and one thing I’m unsure of is whether you can set different lengths for each of the motion sequencing lanes. I don’t think you can as far as I can tell but perhaps someone can confirm for sure?
It also occurred to me when reading the manual that the SQ-1 is the perfect companion for it’s CV in’s given how hands on and tweakable that is…
I just sold my A4 to my best pal (mates rates naturally) and he is over the moon with the A4 being his first bit of hardware in 20 years and for joining the wonderful world of Elektron… which seems like a sign that the XD should be in my very near future.
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The pulse 2 is a mono synth though, whereas the minlogue is four voice poly. I wouldn’t say the pulse could substitute at all really.
The Pulse 2 is Paraphonic, up to 8 voices. So while it is not the same as fully polyphonic synth, you can use it for playing chords.
Just throwing this out there… I’ve had the Pulse 2… and currently have the XD. XD is far more flexible in terms of sound creation. Plus it has an amazing effects section. But, the Pulse 2 filter is so good. It’s really a superior filter to the XD’s. I’d love to get another Pulse 2, down the road - one day. It’s quite a beast
Oh yeah, I forgot about that 
personally i’d go with Xd , more knobs , buttons , a keyboard , some nice sounding fx , programmable digital things … , motion sequencer / parameter modulation looks nice too , built in usable sequencer.
the pulse 2 is nice i’m sure , but the interface wouldn’t be as fun.
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some really nice sounds in here:
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How does the XD compare to something like a Behringer DeepMind or Novation Peak, or are they totally different beasts?
Don’t forget that the Pulse 2 is 8 note paraphonic. It sounds fantastic, and the modulation options are easy to use and really powerful. However, how much you’d like it depends on how much knob-twiddling you want to do. I had a Pulse 2 and while the matrix editor is easy to work with in theory, in practice the fact that you can’t see the position of a knob before you turn it makes is harder to program than something like the Minilogue that has one knob per function. I ended up selling mine and buying a Korg MS2000R.
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Compared to Novation Peak:
MXD
-keyboard
-half the no. of voices (4)
-just over 50% of the price
-user assignable/programmable 3rd oscillator
-less sophisticated modulation options
-on board sequencer with parameter locking
-no arp
-fewer filter options (only one LP slope)
are the ones that come to mind.
Best,
Hans
The Minilogue xd does have an arpeggiator. And since there are user FX slots, there’s scope to extend the capabilities where filtering is concerned.
The Peak is a lush and high quality instrument so comparisons are difficult to make . The Peak is more mature though - my Minilogue xd has a few bugs, which seems sadly inevitable these days.
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My bad. It’s not user programmable, though.
The paraphony isn’t from the 3 main oscillators tho, it’s from a separate chip dedicated for that purpose. Can sound cool, but nothing like 24 stacked oscillators.
Just reporting back in as yesterday I made a final decision and nabbed an XD from Rubadub when I was up in Glasgow. For me, the two instruments that had been competing for my attention (and cash) was the XD and the Microfreak. I guess that they’re not all that comparable especially as the XD is a good chunk of cash more expensive. However, they would both perform a similar role in my setup (and live setup if I can score anymore gigs). Ultimately it came down to that the extra’s that you get with the XD were worth it for me… proper polyphony, in-built (and great sounding) fx, 3 distinct oscillators for each voice.
Right from the first go, I was really blown away by how immediate it is… they really have struck a nice blend of front panel accessibility with some deeper functions in the menu system. Whether it’s from an initialised patch or tweaking a preset you can get pretty far, pretty quickly. Though I’m not much a factory patch chap, there are some nice presets in there which are good starting points.
I’ve not yet loaded any user multi engine’s yet - getting the Mutable Instruments ones loaded is a wee task for after dinner. But before even getting to that there is a surprising amount of depth in the various VPM modes and the wavetable oscillator mode. The various noise modes are good too - the decimated noise being particularly fun. Indeed the analogue oscs are pretty dispensable in a lot of situations (or just using them as tweakable sub osc’s supporting the main tone from the multi engine).
The various voice modes are pretty decent too. Again, I was surprised by how much I was using these for the various features. I’m pretty sure I lost 45 minutes to detroit techno chord stabs using the Chords mode.
Overall then, my early impression based on about 5 or 6 hours use between yesterday and today has been overwhelmingly positive.
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when using the cv inputs on the minilogue xd in cv/gate mode:
is the input quantized? (to semitones for example) and does using the voice mode knob for creating a chord work? (as note is generated from cv, instead of midi\internal keyboard)
maybe someone knows this or have tried it? it is not in the manual…
xd might be a nice addition to A4, even if using the two cv ins only for modulations…
You mean a seperate VCO chip for the voicing, that sounds a little bit weird.
I heard someone say the 8 note poly mode is really limited, and if I’m going to have polyphony, 4 has always been enough for my synth moves and I’m glad I backed down on the pulse as I really disliked the microkorg for the control scheme.
Just realized mine needs to be sent in, because some of the sequencer buttons don’t work 
Considering getting either this or the peak. I know they quite different, but still. Each one seems to be good in different ways. My only concern with the minilogue is the filter. For any of the original minilogue owner, is the filter on the XD the same on the original? The original was waay to haarsh for my taste. For that and few other things I’m considering the Peak.