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OP-1 field

teenage.engineering

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Re: OP-1 field

#151

Post by idea55 »

bravura wrote: post #35

The people complaining about the price tag: I get it. But the OP-1 is literally the only piece of music gear you can bring on an airplane and write a whole song. Why has no one else figured that out? With all these groove boxes etc, why has no other music gear taken the step of being portable and all-in-one. Show me another way to write a song in an airplane, and you can have my money.

Proper first world drama here; not only must one be able to make music on a plane, one must do it with a $2,000 toy!

Why, anything else just can’t be done! It’s uncivilized!

Re: OP-1 field

#152

Post by spoonjim »

krnlpnc wrote: post #139

I was so excited to see the announcement! Finally some new OP-1 stock will drive the prices back down to the original ~$700 mark. Nope! On what planet is this actually worth $2000? I'm really disappointed to see TE become this lifestyle company and continue jacking up their prices.

TE is following the Apple playbook to a T: fanatical obsession with appearance/image/brand positioning PLUS absolutely excellent engineering PLUS extreme price markups. The result is a product that has a bananas price tag but also has no real substitutes.

Re: OP-1 field

#153

Post by dbeley »

alin23 wrote: post #133
fbanon wrote: post #131

I know a number of electronic musicians, and none of them has an OP-1, or anything from TE. The only person I know with an OP-1 is a designer at a startup I worked for, and he "didn't get around using it much yet ". So yeah, the $2000 price point will work great for them, given their customer demographics :)

Well there’s this guy on YouTube who demos all kinds of synths and got a huge following from his OP-1 videos: https://youtu.be/7z4hoazra_g The video shows me that OP-1 is a pretty cool all-in-one package, but it probably needs honing a special skill to work with it as smoothly as that guy does.

Yeah what he doesn't show is the difficulty of learning all the quirks and features of the OP-1.

Professional musicians or even hobbyists prefer to buy several specialized devices that do one thing very well instead of having a very expensive device that can do a little bit of everything but with some limitations.

Re: OP-1 field

#154

Post by tmountain »

I owned and sold an OP-1. It is a beautiful piece of hardware and its analog controls and mashable buttons provide a more tactile experience than an iPad does.

That said, the sounds it ships with really leave something to be desired. My subjective opinion is that anyone who's played with a best in class software synth (i.e., equator2) is going to find themselves feeling pretty limited by the blippy tones that you get out of the box.

Sure, you can load up the sampler with tons of cool tones and op1.fun is a wonderful resource, but it's a lot of work to go curate a bunch of sounds to compensate for a lackluster palette.

I can already hear people saying that I'm missing the point and that the constraints are designed to inspire creativity, etc. I respect that point of view, but at the end of the day, my creative time is at a premium, and I'd like to use that time to create stuff that I'm proud to show friends and family.

Most of the stuff I produced with the OP-1 sounded like video game music or music for a kid's cartoon (i.e., Adventure Time). If that's your thing, then awesome! If not, I'd consider the core tonal possibilities before you make a big investment.

Re: OP-1 field

#155

Post by amazing_stories »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #33

The problem with TE is that they are building top quality toys, not tools. Maybe those toys can be used as tools in some niche context, but as a non-musician I wouldn't know. I'd love to see them selling a more general purpose pocket computer, with the same high quality design and even the hefty price tag. A pocket computer made for hackers (the tinkering kind)

As someone who has written a lot of music using Pocket Operators I disagree. They have been part of my songwriting tool chain for years and have pretty much worked their way into every recording I've made since I bought them. They are the perfect accompaniment when sitting down with a guitar to write music either acting as a metronome, a groove to jam over, or a complete drum/bass/synth backup with an arrangement (16 patterns and 128 measures is enough to write a good song). Also, Pocket Operators are cheap as hell, most under $100.

Re: OP-1 field

#156

Post by tarentel »

tmountain wrote: post #154

I owned and sold an OP-1. It is a beautiful piece of hardware and its analog controls and mashable buttons provide a more tactile experience than an iPad does. That said, the sounds it ships with really leave something to be desired. My subjective opinion is that anyone who's played with a best in class software synth (i.e., equator2) is going to find themselves feeling pretty limited by the blippy tones that you get…

As someone who produces electronic music I kind of dig the limitations of the op-1. At a 2k price point though with those limitations in mind I can't justify the price. Even at ~1300 or whatever the old model is going for I can't justify the price. For cheaper you can get both a digitakt and a digitone, which I own the latter, and they sound 1000 times better than the op-1 although each respectively do quite a lot less. I was actually pretty excited to see this until I saw the price. I have spent a lot of money on electronic music gear, way more than 2000, and I'm a bit baffled about who this is for exactly.

Re: OP-1 field

#157

Post by yunwal »

323 wrote: post #148
krnlpnc wrote: post #139

I was so excited to see the announcement! Finally some new OP-1 stock will drive the prices back down to the original ~$700 mark. Nope! On what planet is this actually worth $2000? I'm really disappointed to see TE become this lifestyle company and continue jacking up their prices.

> see TE become this lifestyle company TE always was a lifestyle company. All their products, including their gaming device, are about looking cool. Which is why device thinness is extremely important and the first thing they talk about. Just like Apple. You don't buy a TE device to actually make music, you buy it to impress people about how creative you are, how you are not a pleb consumerist.

I feel like looking cool is definitely a factor, but the OP-1 is also about being portable and fitting into your lifestyle. Photographers will tell you that "the best camera is the one you have with you", and the OP-1 is like the phone camera of music. It's like a step up from singing into a voice memo. You can use it to capture ideas reasonably accurately whenever you feel inspired, and refine them later at an actual workstation.

Obviously not everyone will think this is worth $2000, and there's definitely an element of status symbol there, but I've genuinely enjoyed owning one.

Re: OP-1 field

#158

Post by gaws »

323 wrote: post #148
krnlpnc wrote: post #139

I was so excited to see the announcement! Finally some new OP-1 stock will drive the prices back down to the original ~$700 mark. Nope! On what planet is this actually worth $2000? I'm really disappointed to see TE become this lifestyle company and continue jacking up their prices.

> see TE become this lifestyle company TE always was a lifestyle company. All their products, including their gaming device, are about looking cool. Which is why device thinness is extremely important and the first thing they talk about. Just like Apple. You don't buy a TE device to actually make music, you buy it to impress people about how creative you are, how you are not a pleb consumerist.

No post body was provided.

Re: OP-1 field

#159

Post by cxcorp »

krnlpnc wrote: post #139

I was so excited to see the announcement! Finally some new OP-1 stock will drive the prices back down to the original ~$700 mark. Nope! On what planet is this actually worth $2000? I'm really disappointed to see TE become this lifestyle company and continue jacking up their prices.

The hi-fi audiophile world is certainly an expensive one.

Re: OP-1 field

#160

Post by sneak »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #102
sneak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called the Playdate. https://play.date/dev/

General purpose pocket computer, he said.

The demand was "more general purpose", though. The Playdate has an SDK and apps. The OP1 does not. I think it applies. :)
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