Just got the TX-6 and fiddled around with it for about a half hour to get some first impressions.
Build quality is definitely excellent. It has a bit of a weight to it that reminded me of the first time I held an OP-1. The screen looks nice and is readable and has a good refresh rate (I was a bit afraid it would be like the Model: Cycles but it’s not). The knobs all feel sturdy and the faders feel great to move, the buttons feel great as does twisting the larger knob. The faux leather material on the back feels pretty convincing.
I think all the effects sound pretty nice. The EQ, compressor, and track filters are all very useful effects. The reverbs are probably the best sounding reverbs TE has made so far but they do ring a bit in the high end, I wish there was some dampening option. The chorus, especially the subtle chorus, sound nice as do the bit reduction and distortion models. The tape stop comes in three flavors: short, longer, and ping pong which is really just reversing and playing back the tape stop on loop. The freeze effect is pretty cool and surprising but essentially it freezes the incoming audio sort of like a reverb freeze works. It sounds like it takes a small snippet of audio and loops it back and forth and you can then pitch it up and down, really neat effect I did not expect.
The one effect that’s kinda meh to me is the performance filter which seems to be modeled after a ladder filter as pumping the resonance makes the low end drop out. It also just doesn’t sound that good in my opinion, but maybe it’s because I have options with master filters, personally.
I wanted to test how well it could drive headphones so I tested with Audio Technica M50s (38 ohms) and Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pros (250 ohms). I was actually quite surprised how well it could drive my 1990s though it’s still quite a bit quieter than the M50s, which makes sense. But if all you had was higher ohm headphones this shouldn’t sound disappointing in my opinion. Still, for me and the idea of traveling my M50s are what I’d be using anyways, my 1990s are for my studio setup.
Last thing I wanted to test is to see if it would work with Maschine+ (And by extension, Linux) and so I plugged it in with a USB-C to USB-A cable and lo and behold, it just worked. Now for the cost of a Maschine+ I can give my Maschine+ 12 inputs! I do think the TX-6 does sound a bit better than the audio interface that’s built into the Maschine+ though. I’d imagine this would work with the MPC line as well but it kinda makes me laugh thinking of someone buying a $1200 micro mixer to expand their $800 sampler.
It’s pretty nice when plugging an input it the device asks if you want it to be a split channel, mono channel, or stereo channel, no menu diving to set it up. Everything is pretty intuitive with how it works.
One gripe I will say is the “leather” back while feeling nice to the touch does nothing as far as gripping the surface it’s laying on. My computer desk is wood and I tried other surfaces and it doesn’t grip at all. I don’t think it’s a huge deal because moving the faders move smoothly and you can definitely function without it sliding around but little rubber legs would have been better.