Yeah I love rhe Deluge. The only downside for me is that I normally start a composition on something with keys. OP-XY has that, Deluge has pads. But any external midi device solves that of course, and community firmware has added a pseudo piano key pad layout.
There is lots that I love, but some highlights:
Stream long stereo audio or multisamples from SD card. I used Logic’s auto sampler to grab the piano from my Nord, put those WAV files on the SD card, loaded into an oscillator on the Deluge, bam, piano multisample.
Clips can change type - if I have a synth clip I’ve put notes in, playing that multisample, I can come home and plug the deluge into the Nord with midi, press midi and the synth clip is now a midi one, same notes directly play the Nord, can record the whole part into an audio track on the deluge.
(Drum) kits have a different sound per row. These can now be a sample based synth or a VA synth or send a midi note out, very flexible.
Anyway I guess I won’t go on and on, there’s a lot to like, but the main benefit is the ease of creating editing, zooming in and out. It’s dipping your fingers into the piano roll.
it’s LFO Voyager’s video that looked to be about the OP-XY, that got me to consider Deluge. I’d dismissed it originally because A) no keys and B) 7SEG display only. Community firmware has vastly improved the oled display usage, shows ADSR curves while editing etc, but yeah after owning it the display is almost irrelevant - can navigate without it. All the pads are shortcuts, labeled but you learn them over time. So it’s not a knob per function synth, but it’s pad per function, and that’s just fine.
it supports instrument definitions now too. A text file on the SD can contain the names of what each midi CC does on your other gear, then in automation on a midi track when you scroll to midi CC 16 it will say filter cutoff if that’s what your synth has there. This is handy.
So yes I love it, but I haven’t owned OP-XY (I do own OP-Z and OP-1 Field though.)
