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Ten years of OP-1

teenage.engineering

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Re: Ten years of OP-1

#51

Post by daniel_reetz »

scottious wrote: post #23

I'm a musician but I honestly don't really understand this thing. I even tried playing around with one for a while. It just didn't click at all. You could have convinced me that it was a children's toy and I probably would have believed you. Obviously I'm missing something. I've seen some YouTube tutorials but they all seem to produce the same kind of music and honestly I don't find it super impressive. Maybe it'll c…

I have one and feel exactly the same way. It was a kind of playful gamification of music, but that felt like a layer between me and the music, instead of a source of inspiration.

Plenty of other gear has clicked for me. I should really sell it to someone who will enjoy it.

Re: Ten years of OP-1

#52

Post by dylan604 »

sneak wrote: post #50
avhon1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wondering, what phone do you have that still uses mini-usb?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00XAF4J04 I've stopped putting SIM cards in my smartphones entirely, but I still have one SIM I still need to receive SMS on. I'll eventually put it into a rpi shield/hat/whatever and make an SMS to email bridge. Until then, this has amazing battery life.

I feel kind of like I'm being trolled with this one, but it is kind of awesomely bad that I sort of want one.

Re: Ten years of OP-1

#53

Post by honkycat »

diimdeep wrote: post #46

5.54 MB, 1920 × 1080, .gif - :( `ffmpeg -i 6069b7c2057597000422abc7_original.gif -c:v libx264 -crf 30 -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4` 791 KB - :)

I once wrote a social media website and one optimization we had is we would take gifs, mark them for processing, have a celery task queue run this command, and replace the gif with a mp4.

Worked wonders. A few years later gifycat exploded and we were all kicking ourselves xD

Re: Ten years of OP-1

#54

Post by colanderman »

tomtheelder wrote: post #45
sneak wrote: post #6

I would pay another thousand to retrofit USB-C or even microUSB onto my OP-1. The choice of mini-USB, the RAZR charging port, in 2011, was a bit baffling to me. I have to buy another cable each time I want to charge and use it.

I would love USB-C (not micro though!), but the mini USB port is still really common in music gear for whatever reason. My audio interface, DAC for my other PC, midi keyboard, etc all use mini USB. It's really weird.

Strange, I've never seen mini USB on any audio gear. (Nor on anything else I've owned since my T-Mobile G1 ten years ago.) I've found "standard" connectors [1] to be much more common (and welcome, due to their better sturdiness over micro).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#Standard_connecto...

Re: Ten years of OP-1

#55

Post by gnulinux »

Toutouxc wrote: post #17
capableweb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, usually hobbyists don't buy professional gear since they are not professionals. Same goes for many other industries too (TV production cameras too expensive for hobbyists and so on). OP-1 is a tad expensive even for professional gear, but it is also a neat little machine. Elektron gear is maybe more powerful, but it also costs more. Cheaper gear exists as well. Up to each musician to decide what is too expens…

Do professionals use the OP-1? I can imagine a person doing music production for a living not willing to do any significant part of their job on a device the size of a chocolate bar. Who's the thing even for?

Of course! There are many synth artists out there. E.g. Andrew Huang

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YHz6lsMcjDY

Re: Ten years of OP-1

#56

Post by smoldesu »

Teenage Engineering is a frustrating company. On the one hand, they set out to create some of the most fun music equipment you can own: their Pocket Operator line is awesome for beginners of the hardware world, and they've consistently innovated with their grooveboxes. The problem? They have absolutely no respect for their pricing model. The OP-1 used to cost $800, which was already a big ask for a microprocessor, OLED screen and plastic enclosure. A great machine, but a hard to swallow price to be sure. Once YouTubers started picking up on them, they chose to increase the price (blaming it on a supply shortage, since we all know how hard it is to find ARM cores and OLEDs /s), leaving the OP-1 at a bewildering $1100 total.

If you, the reader, has $1100, pick up an Octatrack. Elektron is one of the few companies that pushes the envelope of digital sequencing and hardware production, and the Octatrack is the pinnacle of their work. At $900-1000, you'll definitely get more mileage out of it than an OP-1, and you don't have to support Teenage Engineering's shitty pricing schema. Even at $600, you can buy an Elektron Digitakt/Digitone, which will probably serve you better in the long run.

Re: Ten years of OP-1

#57

Post by smoldesu »

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #2

I randomly came across the OP-1 on Youtube a few months ago and was blown away. Keep in mind that I know next to nothing about music, so I don't know how the OP-1 compares against other tools of its kind. But still, it seemed like an incredibly cool gadget and made me want to experiment with making digital music.

Teenage Engineering also makes a little device called the PO-33, which gives you the sampling capability of the OP-1 in a much smaller (and much cheaper) form factor. Check it out if this stuff interests you.

Re: Ten years of OP-1

#58

Post by smoldesu »

post_break wrote: post #18

I want an OP1 so bad. I just can't afford it. I watch videos of people making music with them on youtube for hours and get so hooked. I was really worried this post was about its discontinuation which will make them spike even more in price.

Buy a different groovebox then. The Novation Circuit is a wonderfully capable and easy to use device, and it retails secondhand for less than $200. For $50 you can have a PO-33 sampler, or for $700 you could have a Digitakt. Lots of options for cheap grooveboxes out there!

Re: Ten years of OP-1

#59

Post by [deleted] »

dylan604 wrote: post #52
sneak wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00XAF4J04 I've stopped putting SIM cards in my smartphones entirely, but I still have one SIM I still need to receive SMS on. I'll eventually put it into a rpi shield/hat/whatever and make an SMS to email bridge. Until then, this has amazing battery life.

I feel kind of like I'm being trolled with this one, but it is kind of awesomely bad that I sort of want one.

[deleted]

Re: Ten years of OP-1

#60

Post by capableweb »

gnulinux wrote: post #55
Toutouxc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do professionals use the OP-1? I can imagine a person doing music production for a living not willing to do any significant part of their job on a device the size of a chocolate bar. Who's the thing even for?

Of course! There are many synth artists out there. E.g. Andrew Huang https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YHz6lsMcjDY

Andrew Huang is probably the worst example of a OP-1 user when it comes to music production and not music production teaching. AFAIK, Huang is more of a Youtube-educator than musician.
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