Well, that's because people have a hard time judging the TR-8 as an instrument of it's own. Instead they compare it to it's older brother, the Legendary TR-808. The TR-808 has that "magic feeling" that analog gear provides. If you line up two 808s, you'll notice after a while that they sound different from each other. That's because the 808 is analogue driven, all the sounds are generated by transistors, so while the core sounds are always the same, there are little nuances you can spot here and there every once in a while. That's where that piece of gear got it's name from, TR actually stands for Transistor Rhythm. That's why some of the "samples" we all know sound "synthetic". Feeling this, Roland actually started sampling sounds in their 909 model. The Hi-hats weren't generated by hardware on the 909 model, instead they were sampled and stored into the internal ROM. Digital sampling evolved, and it's now closer to achieving this effect, through clever techniques like soft modulation/noise insertion (infinite method) and stuff like "Round Robin" sampling (finite method) where you feed one slot with "X" number of slightly different samples from the same sound and every time it plays one random sample from that "X" sample pool. Now, the TR-8 is a great instrument, but if you throw the TR-808 into the equation, which makes sense since the TR-8 is a digital emulation of the 808, I understand why people diss the TR-8, and, this is my personal opinion here, I think they are right. While the TR-8 has more options and a more up to date context, sound wise, for people who know how the 808 well, the TR-8 it's "close but no cigar" Like Telekom Elektronic Beats said, you listen with your ears. Still, the TR-8 is the best way to get a TR-808 if you CAN'T get a TR-808. This is only my opinion on the subject, I'm curious to listen to what Richie would have said about this subject if he was asked to.?