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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.
https://dirtywave.com/
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.
Assuming you mean without using a phone, computer, or a tablet:
Yamaha Reface DX ($400) + Korg SOS Recorder ($100) + TE PO-12 Rhythm ($60), and you not only have a portable studio, but a performer's rig.
I'm powering mine from a powerbank via a USB-to-12V adapter, it lasts forever on a charge.
I can busk with Reface DX alone (it's built-in speakers are loud enough for a quiet street). Throw in a mini-amp, and it's a band.
And it comes with an optional keytar strap too, so I cann sling it around my shoulder.
And it's the best FM synthesizer ever made. Worth it for the E-Piano patch and Final Countdown-like leads alone, but the real magic comes in realtime manipulation of sound (something you couldn't do with the clunky controls of DX-7).
Yeah, I don't know if it fits your "all-in-one" defitinion, but surely OP-1 doesn't fit mine: it's missing a proper keyboard (my main rig is Yamaha MX-88, and I still say that Reface DX's keyboard is great).
And with some creative application of electrical tape, the drum machine / field recorder just become upgrades for the Reface DX, giving yout the ultimate unit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many other options available - the groovebox market is booming right now. Even if you don't consider traditional grooveboxes like the Digitakt suitable for creating an actual "song", options like the Polyend Tracker are available and the modern MPC devices are basically a DAW-in-a-box now, complete with software synths. The OP-1 is cool as hell, but realistically it's a £500 musical toy marked up to £2,000…
Nah, it is not hipsters, they are just doing what Apple is doing.
I was just about to sell my OP-1 too, there goes the resale price.
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.
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)
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.
Many other grooveboxes are quite painful to use. Here I’d include the Korg Electribe which is terrible at inputting musical notes. Or the several trackers which look more like scientific calculators than musical instruments. My MPC live can run circles around most grooveboxes, the OP-1 included, but that’s because it’s a computer: quite a bit heavier, takes time to boot, requires you to manage projects and adjust many parameters.
The Model Cycles doesn’t have a battery. Can be powered by a portable one, but that makes it just a little bit awkward. Elektron did launch a handle battery but it tended to catch fire in rare circumstances :-) Elektron boxes are in general considered difficult to use, even if the results can be impressive.
The Novation Circuit doesn’t allow full editing of the synth parameters. The synth parts are more like preset editors. Expect having to manage them from a computer.
The Deluge has a cumbersome buying process, where one has to basically buy from the manufacturer (NZ I think). I actually can’t but it from my/any local store. In reviews I’ve read that the interface is not that user-friendly/immediate.
Then there’a the multi-device set-ups consisting of Volcas, Rolands, etc. These can be nice, but it requires wiring them up every time! If I had to wire together 3 devices before I could make music, I’d rather do something else personally.
And so on and so forth. The new OP-1 is overpriced though. Maybe at 1500€ this would make some sense, but at this price point most people would rather deal with the disadvantages of other devices or device combos.
I clicked through to the store thinking "Come on TE, what pricepoint have you set this time", and it's $2,000. Two grand. I chuckled, and closed the tab.
I remember buying the first OP-1 when it came out for something around $700 and even then thought "wow, this is a stretch". Since then they _raised_ the price of the original north of $1k. Don't get me wrong, TE makes incredible stuff and the OP-1 is no exception, but the price point just doesn't make sense unless you have serious money to burn. I had the same reaction to you after seeing the price for the mk2. At le…
Meanwhile, the OP-1 was used on like 40% of all modern pop music production process.
I think the market is massively successful artists and they know they will pay.
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.
> Why has no one else figured that out? It is literally not the only piece of music gear you can bring on a airplane and write a whole song... Just a recent example, the Syntakt is very capable for writing full songs. So is other gear in the Elektron lineup, namely Digitakt. Otherwise you also have (cheaper) gear like the Novation Circuit Tracks that can also do the same. I mean, a cursory search for "portable groove…
The Tracks is nice, but the synth engines are not fully accessible in the hw interface. At least the params are labeled now, trying to change sounds on my original was quite frustrating.