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PO-80 Record Factory

teenage.engineering

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Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#71

Post by bayindirh »

dorfsmay wrote: post #68
bayindirh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you find it "warm"? 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?

No, I really find it "warm".

I'm listening to the same Hi-Fi system since I'm six. I have both vinyl and CD versions of some albums (I only buy vinyls of albums which I like a lot, and listen it with a coffee or tea), and they really sound different.

I don't think it's because it's feeding the nostalgia, because I can feel the same things regardless of the medium and system I listen to these albums/songs.

I don't think soothing the brain angle is valid either. I get the same enjoyment and relaxation from both mediums.

For me, CD brings the enjoyment of a well brewed coffee, but vinyl brings the same feeling when you (sometime accidentally) brew that elusive perfect coffee for you. It needs some time and intention to appreciate.

I'm an ex-orchestra player though, so my experience may not reflect the views of bigger audiophile crowd.

Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#72

Post by sli »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #19
tibbon wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

this pricing is still quite high, it’s just a lower priced category. it’s priced at twice the japanese market version.

Closer to 3x, if we're not including stuff like shipping. The Japanese version is $55, TE's is $150.

Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#73

Post by tomcam »

autoexec wrote: post #56
JosephRedfern wrote: post #28

Earlier 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!

For comparison: War and Peace is only 3.2 MB, or 3.9 MB with the overhead of HTML source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600

Yeah but the manga version is 6.6GB

Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#74

Post by mmastrac »

diydsp wrote: post #66

Listening to the distortion, it sounds like it could possibly be reduced/minimized by experimenting with pre-emphasis curves! I wonder if the existing community around this product's predecessor has worked on that...

"to get the optimum sound quality for your recordings, use our vinyl mastering tool to pre-process your audio before cutting. created for use with the PO-80 record factory, it applies the desired equalizer curve to your music and makes it easier to achieve good lo-fi sound quality on your custom 5" cuts."

Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#75

Post by dn3500 »

rkachowski wrote: post #3

The most surprising thing about this is how low the price is for a teenage engineering product. I don't know anything about LP manufacturing but 150 for an LP reader / writer seems pretty cool.

It's not an LP recorder, the disks are only five inch.

Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#76

Post by sdenton4 »

cole-k wrote: post #49
tibbon wrote: post #11

Earlier 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...

The pocket operators are, on the whole, amazing. Rhythm, Tonic, and Arcade are my faves. The pack a shocking amount of flexibility into a tiny package, and really aren't overpriced at all.

Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#77

Post by autoexec »

tomcam wrote: post #73
autoexec wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison: War and Peace is only 3.2 MB, or 3.9 MB with the overhead of HTML source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600

Yeah but the manga version is 6.6GB

Okay, now I'm curious, link to the manga version?

Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#78

Post by LegitShady »

alangibson wrote: post #37
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #31

Aside from the fact that this is a rebrand effort and probably not TE's manufacturing, their mainline products have particularly high quality design. I've been watching a lot of AvE[1] lately, and his BOLTR series features him breaking down hardware and talking about the manufacturing. While Teenage Engineering wank is definitely not his category of analysis, it's probably not far off, considering he highlighted how…

It's a shame he doesn't do many BOLTRs anymore. His output slowly petered out during COVID.

I think he got enough patreon types that he basically moved all his effort over there. He bought a CNC machine for the channel and then focused on the people who gave him the money for it.

Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#79

Post by TylerE »

w0mbat wrote: post #69
SoftTalker wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you make an actual record you cut an acetate of each side on a record cutting lathe, which this product is a toy miniature version of. 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 t…

A normal master is cut in metal, not acetate.

That metal positive is then plated and turned into a negative, and then the stampers are made from the negative.

Re: PO-80 Record Factory

#80

Post by earthboundkid »

nerdponx wrote: post #58
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a professional web designer even put up a picture that large without going through some basic compression?

I've personally experienced this at work before. A non-technical person uploaded the image to the CMS, assuming it will be scaled down at some point after uploading. A web developer used the image from the CMS, assuming it was scaled down at some point before being exposed for the frontend to access it. In reality the image never got scaled down anywhere, and ended up on the frontend in its full 9 MB glory. This ende…

I am a one man shop running a news site and put my site through webpagetest every Monday morning. I find it crazy that big companies apparently don’t do this.
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