I completely agree, especially when it comes to any sequencer for that matter. Plus, with step components that are scene-based, there’s already plenty of flexibility built in. 
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its possible to love the OP-XY and also acknowledge that the 9 pattern limit creates frustrating limitations and friction in what is generally a very fluid user experience.
i bet in a year we’ll have 16 
The point of hardware is limitations. I mean, right?
You already have no limitations without hardware.
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I made the same discovery this week - super fun and dead simple to generate some really complex, live-sounding drums. I find the drums I program on the XY to be much more interesting than the ones I program on the Rytm - yes, skill issue for sure, but also the punch in effects are so much more intuitive and accessible than scenes / performance macros on the Rytm which are tedious to program and feel comparatively limited.
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Personally I think doing something like you have always done it is leaning into redundancy.
Learning new ways of doing something, opening your creativity to new avenues, learning something new, that is not redundant.
So stating that 9 patterns is little is leaning into redundancy, when you haven’t even explored the other avenues of modulating the patterns…
I’m not saying they are wrong, I would love more patterns, but 9 is more than enough for a song. IMO of course.
And I was not being sarcastic, I genuinely want to hear these songs where they have used up 9 patterns of brain, punch in fx and instrument tracks and feel the need to do more.
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I think 8,9 patterns are enough to make a good song, but… two FX per track, and same envelopes/filters for all the drums not.
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It’s not two FX per track. It’s two tracks of send FX, each with their own 9 patterns. You can swap them out throughout your song, as each pattern can hold its own FX with different settings and FX parameter locks and so on. The only restriction is that only two different send FX can be active at any time.
I don’t think the way the FX are set up is more restricting than on the Elektrons for example. DTII has one send FX more, true, but they can’t be parameter locked. And they can’t be swapped out for other FX, as on the OP-XY.
The architecture regarding the envelopes and filters is pretty much the same as on the DTII as well. Each track has their own filter and amp settings and envelopes. The difference is that on the OP-XY, every track can be polyphonic. And you can parameter lock the envelopes per step. Just as on the DTII. If you p-lock a different sample on the DTII, it also uses the same envelope settings as configured on the track. You can bypass that by using sound locks and the different trig modes allow for other cool things as well, but the basic architecture is not unlike the OP-XY, minus the polyphony per track.
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That’s what I mean… only the same two FX sends for all tracks…
I can’t not use Delay & Chorus in track 1 and Delay & Reverb in track 2!!!
It a completely non sense. Definitely is not what Elektron, or most of grooveboxes works…
In my Digitone 2 for example I have 6 different effects per track.
It’s pretty much exactly how it works on many Elektrons. The original DT, model cycles, model samples, and the analog rytm only have two send FX, delay and reverb.
They sometimes have more options per track (e g. overdrive, BRR, SRR), sure, but regarding the send FX, it’s mostly delay and reverb, and sometimes a chorus (DTII, DN, DNII, A4).
I still find it very limited when it comes to composing songs entirely with the OP-XY. I understand that the device has more than enough processor for that.
I do think that the holy trinity of effects (reverb, delay, modulation) should be usable at the same time.
This is one of the few points that is still holding me back from buying the OP-XY, at least at the moment.
I don’t think that’s ever going to change, as there are only the two FX tracks. If you think that’s too restricting, don’t go ahead and buy an OP-XY.
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Sure. I haven’t yet decided whether this is a showstopper for me.
For an all-one device like the OP-XY, I feel that this is at least an unnecessary restriction.
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Everyone’s approach is different. I used to use a buttload of FX in all my music and it sounded great to me, as I wrote and recorded it all and knew exactly what I did at every moment. For other listeners, it tended to sound way too busy most of the time. I try to adapt a more conservative approach now, use fewer FX, but make these FX shine, as apposed to being buried in a soup of other FX. E.g. when it comes to composition, introducing a very prominent phaser in the middle of a song will have a much larger impact than a phaser that’s warbling along in the background all the time. The flexible architechture of the OP-XY is perfectly suited for that.
I don’t think processor power comes into the design of music hardware, other than that it must be capable enough to support the design.
The limitation in hardware is the UI. How might you add these extra FX, for example? If you have insert FX per track, then where do they go in the UI? The M1-4 buttons are all already occupied.
Of course you’d be able to do it if you redesigned the UI around that feature, but then other things would have to change. You’d lose an M-button feature, perhaps. Or you’d need more buttons. Or maybe running all those FX at once would reduce battery life.
If the argument is “the processor is powerful enough to do X,” then one should probably be doing X on a PC or Mac.
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Speaking of FX and the XY, how are people incorporating external FX? The send/return is amazing, but then you have a pedal or whatever hanging off the side all the time.
How do you “print” those FX back into the XY?
So far, I mostly used it to resample one-shot drum sounds, short vocal phrases, or other melodic phrases like a 4 note synth melody through my guitar pedal chain (CB clean -> CB genloss2 -> Line6 HX one -> CB Lossy), so I don’t have it constantly hooked up.
I simply resample them back to a new drum sampler patch.
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This two are …. 
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This is kinda funny in light of your comment above about too many FX, no? 
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lol
To my defense, for a guitar pedal board, 5 pedals is pretty minimal, I guess (didn’t list the strymon iriduim as I only use that with guitar).
And when resampling with the OP-XY, it’s mostly the genloss2 that I use for saturation and EQ. Or lossy for weird reverb. Just because they are in a chain doesn’t mean I always have all of them on when resampling, it’s just the order I have them in for my guitar.
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