101–110 of 343 posts
Once, just once, I would like to see someone say “why is this so expensive, it’s just […]” and then build one themselves, and bring it to market, for that lower cost. Go ahead, just try.
That’s how Anker got started I believe.
am I missing something, or is that a giant paddle power switch that can/will be accidentally pushed downward to off while working? edit: nope, that's exactly what that is. $1,200 for a mixer you can't use live without duct taping it, I guess. https://teenage.engineering/guides/tx-6#power-on
If you wanted to go with that design then surely down for on would make more sense, right? Odd choice.
What really pisses me off about this is the price. Yes, please dogpile me about how "specialty hardware like this doesn't exist", that totally excuses this thing's existence! Seriously though, you can buy a brand new Octatrack for this price (actual professional equipment). But if this thing isn't competing with the OT, what's it's purpose? Being a digital multitrack recorder? Feeling nice in your pocket? Just being smaller than it's competitors no matter the expense?
The more I look at this thing, the more it annoys me. Teenage Engineering has always been about shipping hipster audio products, but even their older stuff was fairly passable. As much as I despise the OP-1 (even moreso after it's price hike), it had a lot of cool ideas in it. It was an obvious labor of love. I can't make heads or tails of this TX-6. I genuinely don't know who would buy this. In my head, I'm watching bourgeoisie college students walking around San Francisco to make lo-fi hip hop from found sounds with this thing. That's it. I can't see anyone using this in a professional setting. The OP-Z is an actual joke in the pro audio community, but I've still seen people use it at shows. The Pocket Operator is little more than a cheap toy, but people have fun sketching rhythms on them and even using the later models as super lo-fi samplers. This is... nothing. I truly and honestly don't understand it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious answer: expensive synths are the new expensive guitars. For the previous generation, guitar makers began cranking out premium priced guitars for purchase by people outside their prime music making years and into their prime earning years. Said guitars frequently just hung on the wall, which was fine because they were designed to be status items anyway.
Synths were always expensive. Polyphonic, analog Stuff was clearly in the 5-digit prices. Digitalisation brought this down to 4...5000€.
Meanwhile, Teenage Engineering is selling a tiny digital synth for $1,200, which has less functionality than iPad. I find it hard to take serious as anything other than a design object but YMMV.
https://meganlavengood.com/the-yamaha-dx7-in-synthesizer-his...
https://www.amazon.com/engineering-Portable-Synthesizer-Cont...
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Whatever all this stuff is does look good, but the website doesn't do a good job of explaining what it is, IMO. I know this is because I'm not their target market, but maybe they'd bring me into that market if they did a bit of explaining somewhere on the site of why I might be interested in their gear?
That's wouldn't really be possible. You'd have to have audio equipment to be interested in an audio interface. Trying to sell outside that market doesn't really make sense. It would be like trying to convince someone without a camera to buy your camera lens.
Once, just once, I would like to see someone say “why is this so expensive, it’s just […]” and then build one themselves, and bring it to market, for that lower cost. Go ahead, just try.
In practice you'll probably skip the "and bring it to market" step though, because usually you'll start such a project because you wanted to have a specific mixer/synthesizer/sampler/…, and once you have it on your desk, the next project usually looks more interesting than spending the extra time to sell whatever you just developed.
Once, just once, I would like to see someone say “why is this so expensive, it’s just […]” and then build one themselves, and bring it to market, for that lower cost. Go ahead, just try.
No need to try as it already exists: Any Linux tablet with Reaper and a couple soft synths and a decent external sound card if needed would do a lot more for a lot less. A good portion of the cost of this device could be justified only if it really had motorized knobs and faders, which are shown in the video but not mentioned among the features; that would be a completely unnecessary gimmick (in such a device) which…
I absolutely love their design language. I'll never have a need to own any of their products but I wish I could buy the gadgets I do need/want with this kind of design/style.
I don't need to own my OP-1, but I'm glad I do. It makes me happy every time I look at it.
It's just so neat.