I have both. can confirm… they both rule 
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How is it going, using these two together? Or not?
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Unfortunately, I no longer have either. I have the urge to pick up a M8 again though when the next batch drops.
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I sold. my M8, just didn’t like the workflow…screen very small for a tracker, lots of muscle memory needed. Sound was good and power to size ratio amazing! I did buy an XY and for me it is the better portable. Keyboard style entry for chords/notes makes me more productive, xox drum sequencer more my taste. General use for programming/tweaking synths and fx far easier (knobs!), although the screen is small it isn’t need as much, the form factor in general is just much better for me and small enough!
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I find the synth sounds to be way nicer on the M8, and with tables, envelopes, LFOs and FX, the possibilities are much wider.
And for samples, the M8 is—for me—miles ahead. I like to chop samples and screw with the slices. The XY doesn’t come close.
I do miss easy chord input though.
As for playing vs programming, I like both. Having both in the same machine would be ideal, but on the other hand, I’m happy using the XY to either play the M8 synths, or just sampling stems from the XY into the M8.
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I think the main advantage is that, with the M8, if you think hard enough, you can do any effect you can think of, whereas in OP-XY you have to limit yourself to what’s there.
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For me, a musician and multi instrumentalist, I work by hearing music in my head and then playing in each part, edit some of the midi and onward. This is OP-XY all day long. I’m in this to be having fun and jamming out music is great fun.
I haven’t used a tracker but imagine the programmy-ness to be a rather sterile exercise. For me, I can’t see how programming on a grid would be fun; I want to sing it through an instrument. Maybe because I’m already an engineer/programmer I’m wanting to get away from MS Excel for my music too?
So for me OP-XY is the better value because (I imagine) the M8 would not be fun for me to use.
OP-XY has great sounding synths with somewhat limited sound design capabilities. Lots of bread-n-butter stuff and a multi-sampler. Hardware quality seems very good on mine. It is “ultra-portable”. Has useable speaker.
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To add to this, one niche feature both devices share—quite rare among grooveboxes—is microtonal tunings/microtunings.
Further, on both devices, these tunings are limited to 12-note, octave-repeating tunings, and also, on both devices, there are multiple slots for saved tunings. Beyond that, there are some potentially important differences in their respective implementations of this feature, but it’s probably not worth going into those details here.
Note: I am a longtime M8 user, but have no firsthand experience of the OP-XY, so of the latter device I’m just reiterating the manual and statements I’ve read on this forum, with no knowledge of their accuracy or the reliability of its microtuning implementation. However, I can affirm that the M8 is great.
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Let me do a quick TL;DR of the whole topic, thank me later:
- Do you identify as an electronic music producer or sound designer? → M8
- Do you see yourself as a musician or instrumentalist? → OP XY
P.S. I own an M8 and a whole bunch of other stuff but at the end of the day I spend 95% of my time in Ableton.
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I think it boils down more to whether you’re comfortable with trackers or not.
As a side note, I consider myself as a musician (definitely not a sound designer) and I couldn’t stand the op-1 keyboard, and I prefer the op-z to the xy. But as a musician/arranger, I still rank the old QY-70 above them all. Yes, without sampling. Go figure.
It’s just so personal to click with a device or not.
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The two devices are informed by completely different missions and that impacts user experience. Dirtywave is community driven and oriented whereas imo Teenage Engineering has remained aloof and sometimes disengaged from their community, if not openly hostile.
Dirtywave gives hacker/nerd vibes, TE on the other hand is pretty much jet-setter famous deejay with expendable income vibes. These things matter when you put the device into your hands.
I feel like the user community around the M8 is a lot more interesting – when you buy an M8, it feels less like blind consumption and more like you’re pitching in your funds to participate in an ever-evolving community driven experiment or sound project. The developer is wonderfully engaged and there is a very strong dialogue around the device on Discord. I think this makes a big difference.
I’ve owned several TE devices including an OP-1 F and none of them have ever made me feel like I’m particpating in something bigger when I use it. I always just felt slightly guilty for splurging so much money on a slick looking product, which I am ultimately left alone with making the same bloops, bleeps and medicore 4-bar loops that I make with everything else.
In other words, my engagement with TE has always been sort of consumer-ey. Not the case with Dirtywave.
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This is just such an absurd take and seemingly is yet another outgrowth of the price discussion, with some of the old “TE is only for hipsters” rant creeeping back from the dead. Where is this alleged open hostility toward their users? They did a livestreamed demo just this morning of a substantial firmware update, coming nearly a year after the release of a very powerful device. They politely answered a question that I, a user, asked. I did not detect any antipathy.
And that demo was given by a programmer who I’m sure cares very deeply about the products he’s building. I’d bet that TE has quite a few more like him. I’m an engineer myself, about as far from a jetsetter as you can get, and I’ve got my XY on my desk right in front of me. It’s my favorite musical tool.
What Tim does with the M8 community is great, but you can’t expect that for every company, and it certainly doesn’t mean those other companies bear any kind of ill will toward their users.
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As somebody who has used and owned both (and sold the m8 twice) this is just wrong. I don’t care about “participating in something bigger,” I care about “does this tool allow me to do what I want?” The m8 did not, either version of it. I don’t gel with the tracker workflow at all, I prefer playing things in. I never got used to how m8 handles a variety of things, including editing its synths. The XY mostly does the things I want in a way that makes sense to me, and I get closer to making music that sounds like me with the XY than I did the m8. They are both outstanding instruments, and in their respective niches I think they’re both top of the line.
All that said, yes, I love the tight-knit community Tim has created with the m8, it’s very cool.
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The community aspect of the M8 is pretty cool. But, for me also, that matters not a bit when I buy something for making music. It’s a bonus for those people for sure so that’s cool too. I’d rather have the XY as I also like playing into and not programming but the M8 is top class for what it is.
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I really don’t want to get into the debate, as both points of view resonate with me but just one thing:
TE makes products, it’s a company, and as such it’s profit oriented - nothing wrong with that at all.
Although it’s not super cheap, I don’t think the M8 is a product in the commercial sense, but rather a passion project run by a fully dedicated musician. Dirtywave probably make a lot of money with the M8, incidentally, but I’m not sure Tim is primarily driven by profit (cf. headless).
Just my perception, I could be totally wrong.
Also, in terms of music making, this probably doesn’t matter much.
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