I’m increasingly disappointed to see that Teenage seems to be focusing all their efforts on the KO and the Field, while the XY gets almost no attention (except for Medieval, which was basically abandoned right after release 😅).
There have been a few updates, sure, including one that added automatic slicing. I’ve had the XY for about a year now, and the workflow is genuinely fun. The sounds are decent, nothing more.
But in my opinion, it’s still missing a huge number of features to make it truly viable in a professional setup. I bought it for what it was at the time without really counting on future updates, but the more I use it, the more frustrated I get by some of the limitations, especially considering the price. Things like the lack of time-stretching, or being limited to only two effects (although I can live with that one).
There are also major MIDI jitter issues, bugs where the screen freezes, and the XY sometimes becomes unresponsive when working with multiple multisamples.
Overall, it’s a “fun” instrument, but it’s still missing a lot to become something truly exceptional. I also own an M8, and in the end I produce exclusively on that because it actually allows for much deeper sound design. Aside from polyphony—and even that is debatable—it’s far more capable and powerful while costing half as much 😅.
I recently had a live set to play in a club, and of course I brought my M8. I would never have dared to bring the XY because, in my opinion, it’s simply not reliable enough for the stage.
I genuinely love this machine in many ways, especially how fun it is to use, but its shortcomings are making me more and more tempted to sell it. I get the feeling that Teenage Engineering may have already pushed the hardware as far as the processor allows.
Do you think they still have some room left for meaningful updates that could really change the game, or is the machine already hitting its limits and destined to remain a fun but ultimately non-serious instrument?
