Earlier quoted context omitted.
The big problem here is that due to how soft the material has to be to cut, the lifespan on these is going to be somewhere in the realm of 1-10 plays.
That's like an acetate "dubplate" that promoters used give to club DJs to get new music out (mostly replaced by digital files now of course). They were good for a small number of plays and used just to gauge the crowd reaction.
PO-80 Record Factory
61–70 of 97 posts
Re: PO-80 Record Factory
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on cassette data rates using audio encoding, and a total hand-wavey ballpark of ~10kB/min using modern encoding techniques, I'd totally guesstimate about 100kB of data on there.
Well that's more than enough for anyone!
Re: PO-80 Record Factory
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can never get a handle on their pricing. Its all either absurdly low (how do they make pocket operators so cheap?!?!?), or absurdly high (why is OP-1 so absurdly high?!). But at this price, hitting buy asap. It will be a neat effect for use in my studio.
Are the pocket operators really that cheap for the functionality they provide? I was always of the opinion that Teenage Engineering was ridiculously overpriced, but so much of what they make is so cool that it makes me want to buy anyway. I'm not creative/musical/rich enough to justify buying an OP-1. If I ever was, though...
However, the cases are pure ripoff territory. I wonder if there are 3rd party ones available.
Re: PO-80 Record Factory
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
A CNC laser would be the best bet. A good one could cut this in about 5 min. Water jets and CNC plasma cutters could do it, but they would probably both have issues with that many pierces. I agree though - $195 for this is a bit much: https://images.prismic.io/teenageengineering/d379b4fd-3721-4... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGpKAIsUIpI
It looks like it has countersunk screw holes, so that would usually be done on a CNC punch: http://www.vandf.co.uk/tooling/what-is-cnc-punching/ (amazing machines) It also looks powder-coated... when you consider their likely volumes $195 is not unreasonable once you take into account development costs, setup costs and overheads.
Parts like this should ideally be manufactured via stamping, which would also produce any countersinks needed. Even better would be to have them cut and bent in a progressive die (also a super cool manufacturing process!) and would have all cuts and features done in one go. But if I were them, I'd probably aim for a buck or two for each sheet part, maybe up to five dollars if you wanted to keep it at a local shop with low volumes. But the big win of having just flat pieces is you can make a ton of components at once and they can take up very little space on a shelf. Get a few thousand produced and powdercoated, and then just keep an eye on when supply runs low.
Basically, if they aren't making 90% margin on these (all in, shipped to your door) I'd be disappointed.
Re: PO-80 Record Factory
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The photo of the record factory on that landing page weighs in at 9.84MB -- the margin probably goes towards AWS bandwidth costs!
How does a professional web designer even put up a picture that large without going through some basic compression?
Re: PO-80 Record Factory
#66Re: PO-80 Record Factory
#67> experience the warmth of lo-fi audio. I wonder if what some people think of warmth of lo-fi is connected to the effect of white/pink/brown noises discussed earlier today at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32998960
Re: PO-80 Record Factory
#68> experience the warmth of lo-fi audio. I wonder if what some people think of warmth of lo-fi is connected to the effect of white/pink/brown noises discussed earlier today at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32998960
It’s a combination of RIAA equalization, mastering suited to vinyl, some distortion, and some surface noise (mostly unobtrusive clicks and pops), according what my ears report me while listening to vinyl.
Is it because you are used to it, feeding nostalgia?
Or could it have to do with noise (distortion, clicks and pops) being soothing to the brain?
Re: PO-80 Record Factory
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
The big problem here is that due to how soft the material has to be to cut, the lifespan on these is going to be somewhere in the realm of 1-10 plays.
That's like an acetate "dubplate" that promoters used give to club DJs to get new music out (mostly replaced by digital files now of course). They were good for a small number of plays and used just to gauge the crowd reaction.
Each acetate looks like a one-sided vinyl record only bigger (it's got margin around the edge). You can take that to a club and play it, but normally you take the pair to a pressing plant. They make a metal mould of each one and use them to press the vinyl records.
When I was a teenager in 1979 my band made a single on our own indie label. We got to go to see the legendary cutting engineer Porky in London near Oxford Circus and watched him cut the pair of acetates. Like all his work he scratched "A Porky prime cut" into the run out area.
Re: PO-80 Record Factory
#70This is peak of audio hipsterism! Audio quality is crap. Better to record on cassette with some boombox. Also see this DIY project - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7osjazhLE