Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

factmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 41 posts

Re: Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

#11

Post by ohnope »

hoaw wrote: post #9
ohnope wrote: post #2

Love it. Their ongoing IKEA collaboration is definitely rubbing off. (downside: you pretty much get one shot folding the sheet metal the right way). Flat packed DIY build is great. Compatible with Eurorack, and the OP-Z is getting a CV/gate module. Now that Teenage has 2 products out there that are designed with modular expansion in mind, it will be exciting to see how they update them over the years.

What IKEA is good at is continuously decreasing the work involved, error rate, quality issues etc. I can see no practical purpose to folding the metal yourself in this case, other than to make it feel more special than it is.

I think the practical idea is "flat pack" - smaller package for shipping. Of course, TE doing flat pack without an economy of scale is less about spatial efficiency and more about allowing their customers to build something themselves in order to feel a closer connection to the object (that's perfectly ok)

Re: Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

#12

Post by woah »

hoaw wrote: post #10
zach43 wrote: post #5

I've been wanting to buy a new analog synthesizer for a few years now, but i almost always balk at the price of these things. I can afford these things, but they never feel like a sound financial choice. Personally, I blame the Raspberry Pi. Having played with a quad-core, 1GHz device with a GPU and wifi chip that retails for ~$30, i just can't see myself dropping $300 - $500 on an underpowered analog synthesizer...i…

It's all fake of course. It probably costs <$50 to produce, most likely in China. It isn't custom by any means. It is modular, but seemingly it wouldn't make a lot of sense since that isn't what you are paying for. Doesn't matter much. A lot of hobbies are a status thing. Most people aren't going to actually make something out of it. An unused computer program doesn't say much. So you want the "custom" gear to compen…

That’s stupid. Boutique musical gear is expensive because somebody spent a lot of time designing it and needs to make a living. As far as sound quality, there are a lot of fm sounds that are not possible to produce on a computer since it lacks the resolution.

Re: Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

#14

Post by hoaw »

woah wrote: post #12
hoaw wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all fake of course. It probably costs <$50 to produce, most likely in China. It isn't custom by any means. It is modular, but seemingly it wouldn't make a lot of sense since that isn't what you are paying for. Doesn't matter much. A lot of hobbies are a status thing. Most people aren't going to actually make something out of it. An unused computer program doesn't say much. So you want the "custom" gear to compen…

That’s stupid. Boutique musical gear is expensive because somebody spent a lot of time designing it and needs to make a living. As far as sound quality, there are a lot of fm sounds that are not possible to produce on a computer since it lacks the resolution.

If it is so stupid, explain this to me.

1. Who actually needs boutique gear? I am not saying it isn't fun. I am not saying that it can't be a hobby in itself nor am I saying some tiny percentage of the music industry might need it. But in pretty much all the interviews I have read with successful musician they use something horribly mundane for most of their career, because it isn't about the gear. So does the weekend warrior need boutique stuff?

2. Is teenage engineering actually boutique? I don't know that much about music gear, but I do know a fair bit about electronics and it certainly doesn't look in anyway custom to me. You might think that it is because e.g. they use bare PCBs. But that would be a faulty assumption. So what is expensive part here?

Re: Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

#15

Post by robbyt »

hoaw wrote: post #9
ohnope wrote: post #2

Love it. Their ongoing IKEA collaboration is definitely rubbing off. (downside: you pretty much get one shot folding the sheet metal the right way). Flat packed DIY build is great. Compatible with Eurorack, and the OP-Z is getting a CV/gate module. Now that Teenage has 2 products out there that are designed with modular expansion in mind, it will be exciting to see how they update them over the years.

What IKEA is good at is continuously decreasing the work involved, error rate, quality issues etc. I can see no practical purpose to folding the metal yourself in this case, other than to make it feel more special than it is.

I produce a some what similar Eurorack module. Ours is electrically more complicated, but mechanically much simpler.

The final assembly is the most labor intensive part of our process. When we get an order from one of our retailers for 10+ products, it takes us a full day just to build/test/pack, because of this.

By selling these as "Ikea style" I promise they're able to massively reduce the cost for consumers by outsourcing their assembly.

Re: Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

#16

Post by detaro »

hoaw wrote: post #10
zach43 wrote: post #5

I've been wanting to buy a new analog synthesizer for a few years now, but i almost always balk at the price of these things. I can afford these things, but they never feel like a sound financial choice. Personally, I blame the Raspberry Pi. Having played with a quad-core, 1GHz device with a GPU and wifi chip that retails for ~$30, i just can't see myself dropping $300 - $500 on an underpowered analog synthesizer...i…

It's all fake of course. It probably costs <$50 to produce, most likely in China. It isn't custom by any means. It is modular, but seemingly it wouldn't make a lot of sense since that isn't what you are paying for. Doesn't matter much. A lot of hobbies are a status thing. Most people aren't going to actually make something out of it. An unused computer program doesn't say much. So you want the "custom" gear to compen…

What do you mean by "fake" and "custom"? Nearly no gear is "custom" in the sense that it's custom made for a specific person (although some small manufacturers probably would do that, if you're willing to pay for it), and at least in electronic music gear it is not a common claim for it to be (and it's e.g. not mentioned in the article here, so I'm not sure why you are arguing against it being so?)

Similarly, what's "fake"? The product is what it says on the tin, is it not? I think you overestimate the "can be build cheaply" aspect for many small manufacturers too, given small volumes, need to pay for R&D, mechanical components/work, ...

Re: Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

#17

Post by robbyt »

hoaw wrote: post #10
zach43 wrote: post #5

I've been wanting to buy a new analog synthesizer for a few years now, but i almost always balk at the price of these things. I can afford these things, but they never feel like a sound financial choice. Personally, I blame the Raspberry Pi. Having played with a quad-core, 1GHz device with a GPU and wifi chip that retails for ~$30, i just can't see myself dropping $300 - $500 on an underpowered analog synthesizer...i…

It's all fake of course. It probably costs <$50 to produce, most likely in China. It isn't custom by any means. It is modular, but seemingly it wouldn't make a lot of sense since that isn't what you are paying for. Doesn't matter much. A lot of hobbies are a status thing. Most people aren't going to actually make something out of it. An unused computer program doesn't say much. So you want the "custom" gear to compen…

The components are very likely made in China, but I'd guess that the pick-and-place likely happens in or near their HQ in Europe.

As someone who owns a business that has designed and sells a similar product, I'd guess their raw cost is at $125-175/ea. for the $500 product.

Re: Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

#18

Post by robbyt »

hoaw wrote: post #14
woah wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s stupid. Boutique musical gear is expensive because somebody spent a lot of time designing it and needs to make a living. As far as sound quality, there are a lot of fm sounds that are not possible to produce on a computer since it lacks the resolution.

If it is so stupid, explain this to me. 1. Who actually needs boutique gear? I am not saying it isn't fun. I am not saying that it can't be a hobby in itself nor am I saying some tiny percentage of the music industry might need it. But in pretty much all the interviews I have read with successful musician they use something horribly mundane for most of their career, because it isn't about the gear. So does the weeken…

I'd guess that the design is the most expensive part of building these products. Their marketing for this product is arguably better than Apple. The design for the actual product is unparalleled. The electronics and software development, years spent on prototyping iterations, and overall refinement is expensive in terms of highly skilled labor.

Re: Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

#19

Post by robbyt »

ris wrote: post #3

Interesting that they decided to stick with the "Pocket Operator" name despite the fact that these can fit in nobody's pockets.

Yeah, agreed. When I first read about it, I thought they were going to sell an adapter to plug the existing pocket ops into a Eurorack module.

Re: Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

#20

Post by JTTR »

hoaw wrote: post #10
zach43 wrote: post #5

I've been wanting to buy a new analog synthesizer for a few years now, but i almost always balk at the price of these things. I can afford these things, but they never feel like a sound financial choice. Personally, I blame the Raspberry Pi. Having played with a quad-core, 1GHz device with a GPU and wifi chip that retails for ~$30, i just can't see myself dropping $300 - $500 on an underpowered analog synthesizer...i…

It's all fake of course. It probably costs <$50 to produce, most likely in China. It isn't custom by any means. It is modular, but seemingly it wouldn't make a lot of sense since that isn't what you are paying for. Doesn't matter much. A lot of hobbies are a status thing. Most people aren't going to actually make something out of it. An unused computer program doesn't say much. So you want the "custom" gear to compen…

While there's certainly mark-ups, the most popular modules are made by their manufacturers rather than outsourced to China. Doepfer in Germany, Make Noise in the US, Intellijel in Canada, ALM in the UK, Mutable Instruments is outsourced but only to another part of France. Long lead times on certain modules are par for the course when they're being made by one person. Of course, when it's one person making everything, the total output of stock is going to be low, and thus the economy of scale that something like a Raspberry Pi is able to take advantage of is reduced, especially with moving parts like potentiometers, which can cost more per unit than a micro-controller.

There are people making modules for dirt cheap with razor thin margins, mostly as a side job, and there's always the DIY route if you want to save a few pennies.

Post reply on HN