I’ve never owned an OPZ, just the op1f and ko ii. But the XY is honestly the fastest machine I’ve personally ever owned. It only takes a few seconds to get something going. Of course this is totally subjective! I’ve used MPC, Roland and Elektron’s sequencers, which are all amazing. You can definitely tell TE’s former Elektron designer has incorporated their magic. It’s almost too fast, haha! I end up saving every noodle. I know it’s been in development for years and years, but it really shows. Truly hope everyone has an enjoyable experience with it.
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Yes, totally–bigger scope means more decisions, which means slower workflow and more redundancy.
It’s wild how much slower it is than OP-Z. It seriously throws me off sometimes.
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You’re the master of the OP-Z, @jtswearingen! I love watching your XY content. It’s the most informative out there. Would you say you prefer the Z over XY?
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Thank you! I definitely prefer the XY because of its depth, project management, and sound but I think Z will still have its place.
I answered it a bit more in depth earlier in this thread (just now realized I was actually replying to you…? kinda funny!) but of course my perspective continues to change.
I’m still obsessed with the sound, but navigation is waaaaaay clunkier than I’m used to from TE stuff. It’ll be a long learning process most likely.
One day I’ll make a more opinion-focused comparison video, but it’ll be a bit until I’m comfortable enough with XY to do that.
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What are some of the biggest workflow hang ups for you?
I’m realizing I need to change how I use it to avoid some issues (issues that I don’t think I had as much on the Z) and it’s kinda working out better so far.
The OP-Z just had better overall visibility into everything that was going on. To me it seems like the XY has deeper hallways that I can go down, but need to back out of a bit before moving to the next hallway.
The biggest workflow weirdo for me right now is switching between the synth and aux tracks, so either I set up something I need to in Aux in the beginning, or I avoid it until after I’ve worked something up that’s worth progressing.
I’ve found the effects not that great haha, I mean they maybe aren’t bad sound quality wise but UI wise they detract from my experience, and I haven’t gotten around to actually swapping those out per scene using patterns, which I believe you can do, it’s just kiiinda beyond my brain capacity to start thinking of FX that way. I’m bummed there aren’t per-track FX (I know that wasn’t on the Z either) but basically I feel like how I’m using the XY, I always want a reverb on the 2nd slot and generally no other effect is worth having on the first slot because they don’t have a universal appeal (maybe delay), the rest seem like effects I’d rather want to dial in per track, not send a bunch of tracks through a phaser, etc. this gripe is mostly my lack of ability to wrap my head around the FX, the complexity is too deep and maybe the implementation as swappable sequenceable send FX is too obscure.
I also stopped trying to think about the arranger in a linear way, at first. It helped me to think about it like Ableton clips, just making clips and then later ‘arranging’ scenes
I don’t love working this way, as I’m less of a clip type person and more of a linear arranger but it seems to work really well when i let go of trying to set up Scenes first, or even as I go, and instead do that arranging towards the end.
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Also, I gotta add that right now the sample selection interface is a bit of a mess.
I mean, the positive side is that it exists and it’s much more like the industry standard sample management views, but would benefit from some folders or a cleaner look overall.
Right now it’s scrolling through every top level folder being a different sample-based preset amongst all the actual sample folders, which makes so a weird experience, though if you know what you’re looking for it’s there and you can find it.
Just never realized how convenient it was to have drum samples organized in kits old TE style. I’d rather not deal with the kits I think, but admittedly it was cleaner.
XY has some kinks to work out but fortunately they’re mostly software/firmware based so hopefully that means they can be ironed out over time.
Oh no, James, you’re right! Sorry I asked you twice! I’m really looking forward to your opinion comparison video. I feel like I might need to go backwards from the XY to the Z to see what I missed! You mentioned the XY’s interface was slower and waaaaaay clunkier (haha!), so it’d be awesome to see how they differ.
It just took me so loooooong to wrap my head around the OP-1F workflow (still learning), but the XY felt so immediate when I turned it on for the first time. I’m still just making one-bar patterns, but playing with all of the punch-in fx’s and step components is so fun!
If you ever offer private lessons, I would be the first to sign up!
@jtswearingen
Do you know if it’s possible to duplicate a scene?
I’m creating a few patterns and then trying to make scenes out of them, but it’s laborious to go to the next scene and see that all mutes/pattern changes are reverted back to the original scene, so gotta go through an build the scene each time.
Would be so much more fun to be able to duplicate a scene to continue working quickly off the song building progress that’s been made
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Surprising if this is not possible. Ko2 even has this functionality. Selfishly ,it’s one of those things that makes me feel good I didn’t pull the trigger too early. I feel like there’s a high chance TE will include this in an update tho
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Here are a couple of tunes I made on the XY which I hope you’ll enjoy
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go to scenes. then use M2 to copy and M3 to paste.
That’s copy and pasting patterns right?
I’m looking to duplicate a scene with all the pattern selections and mutes saved
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you are right.
sorry i was confused by the names.
Made a vid about chopping samples on the XY as it stands today! It’s tedious but with some firmware love it will be aaaaamazing(still got a better result than i thought i would tho)
PS I love to make silly thumbnails 
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I got a faulty - button. Can’t seem to be able to lower octave or nudge notes down. Anyone got a faulty minus too?
Are you sure it’s the button, and not just how that button is behaving within the context of a problematic menu?
For example I thought my encoders were wonky, but they are totally responsive in other menus, which leads me to believe it’s just buggy and not a hardware fault.
Did you run the hardware test?
Hey all. Here are 6 MI Rings sound packs for the OP-XY I’m giving away.
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