OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker | Hacker News Reader

OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

teenage.engineering

282 pointsevo_9216 comments

Teenage Engineering makes cute, fun things, but more often than not they feel like they're very overpriced cute fun things for their functionality, and this is honestly no exception. In a sense they're like the Apple of nerdy products.

Their Pocket Operators are the closest thing to a "cheap" product they have and even then, last time I checked, they don't even come with a protective case, which I personally find preposterous even if it goes against the aesthetic. One single drop and it'd probably be game over for a $100+ toy.

I have a couple pocket operators from about 6 years ago. You are right, they're just a circuit board with surface mounted buttons. But after years of use including letting me nieces play with them, they still work and are pretty well made (And about $40.. now actually 50-90). For me they're a good learning tool, (PO-12 rhythm being one of the cheapest hardware drum machines.) though functionality is eclipsed by the smartphone in many cases..

I will grant you the optional case was so pricy it wasn't an option I would consider (I think it was like $30).

https://teenage.engineering/products/po

pricing https://www.guitarcenter.com/Teenage-Engineering-Pocket-Oper...

Yeah my usb mini port broke on my old op1 but my pocket operators work fine with nothing but a rubber shield they do sell rubber shields for them for ~$30.

"Apple of X" categorization is very apt, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with trying to occupy that part of the market. I also consider Nespresso and Dyson to also be in that category, for example. It's obviously not everyone, and far from being the best value you can get, but I'm glad they exist.

Nespresso and Dyson? Wow. That comparison doesn't reflect positively on Apple.

Is Nespresso the Apple of coffee? You must not like coffee :)

I don't think Nespresso and Dyson are particularly bad products, it's just that nowadays, you can find equally good stuff for much cheaper, although probably less good customer service and support. But they are also fairly consistent with quality, so if you don't want to bother researching and have money to spend, it's a decent way to go.

Jura is the Apple of coffee, in my opinion. Swiss engineering, superb minimalist design, and fantastic coffee. (Nespresso not so much.)

As several have pointed out, you can get a few Teenage Engineering products at IKEA. And they are surprisingly good (and not awfully expensive).

I replaced my Sonos with a Frekvens speaker (with a subwoofer) at the cabin for three reasons:

- It works with bluetooth, and to be frank, the Sonos' firmware is terrible if you have dicky wifi - It can handle audio that has been sped up (like Audible at 1.5-1.7 times normal speed, which is the speed range I currently listen to audio books at). The Sonos can't without getting severe hickups. - The Frekvens has room for a battery so I can take it out on the deck

Actually, we brought the Sonos home to have in my wife's home office but she sto^H^H^Hborrowed my second Frekvens speaker because she is "tired of dealing with all the shit the Sonos throws up".

they collaborated with ikea on a very, very cheap hackable speaker so their stuff is not always overpriced. maybe the exception that proves the rule. https://teenage.engineering/designs/frekvens-hacks

I love everything Teenage Engineering make. My first impression is always "eh, that's too weird, who would want that... who is their target market?", and over time end up at "OK, I WANT ONE!". I own way too many of their Pocket Operators now.

Though, I REALLY think I'm not their target market here: "designed to be played outdoors, in public spaces and at high volume"... that's exactly situations I now try to avoid. Hmm, unless I have it playing "GET OFF MY LAWN" on a loop?

I understand say OP-1. But how much time on average have you spent on each of those pocket operators? And are you able to use it productively after leaving it alone for some time without checking manual?

Personally, when I was commuting for work I would spend the 90 min ride in or back working on some things, though I spent more time with the OP-Z.

Sure it takes time to reacclimate to the controls but these things are not simple machines like bicycles. The overlays with the OP-Z for example are really handy for quick reference.

I was going to mention the OP-Z - I was uncertain about it until I got one, but it turns out to be a really good example of an "expert" UI. No screen, lots of button combos to memorise, an enormous amount of functionality. Completely unapproachable without hours of studying the manual, but when you know it it's very efficient to use.

The Pocket Operators are genuinely pretty inuitive, simply because they have so many buttons, and each one has at most two functions (from memory).

The labelling is also pretty good for the first 2 series at least, I haven't tried any of the third. That said, the original official case hid the LEDs which reduces usability substantially - the only useful elements on the screen are the BPM and sync status in the corner.

My issue with them is the lack of a case makes them not very ergonomic and not very portable, for the sake of an aesthetic. All the after market cases have a major downside: doubling the volume (size), hiding elements of the interface, requiring gluing components, price, etc. Also they're pretty expensive for what they are - you really want at least two, by which time you could buy a Volca.

I've thought about desoldering all the buttons and pots to build a more durable unit with bigger mechanical Cherry style switches and bigger LEDs, but I'll never get around to it.

I got one by accident. PO-13. Very fun device. I can use it without a reference, no problem. I'm a bit hesitant to give one as a gift for a child, though. OP-1 had lots and lots of visual feedback, which facilitated learning and experimentation. I wish they got back to that philosophy of design.

The pocket operator (don't remember which one) was an impulse purchase for me and one of the very few musical instruments I've ever returned. I couldn't use it productively and honestly I didn't even really like the best youtube videos made with it.

I have 2 and used them fairly often, but I later grew tired of sequencers in general (in favor of trying to do as few quantized/beat-synced things as possible, most of the time). I really liked the little effects each button had.

I have a friend who has made an entire album with the OP-1 and as well full tracks with his Operator collection.

As always, its not the instrument - its the musician.

For what it is worth, your friend would be in addition to most modern artists. Chvrches' first album was mostly OP1, Death Cab used it heavily on their latest, The national made aggressive use, TS's Folklore is layered with it everywhere and It was used in Billy Ellish's latest works too. the OP1 is basically standard equipment for most modern bedroom to indie producers.

> the OP1 is basically standard equipment for most modern bedroom to indie producers.

That's going a little far. The thing with music gear is that if you look for people using it, you see it everywhere. But you don't see people not using it. You can't easily google "albums recorded without using an OP-1" and get useful results. So that gives you a very skewed impression about how popular any given tool is.

I'd be surprised if more than 1% of indie releases in the past few years used an OP-1. Heck, it's be surprised if more than 10% used any hardware synth, much less a quirky boutique one like the OP-1.

A friend of mine has a bunch of them and his opinion is that if you are well-versed with drum machines, synthesizers, etc., pocket operators are fairly intuitive to use.

They're kinda making fun of that with the next line:

"designed to be played outdoors, in public spaces and at high volume; carried on one shoulder with speaker elements facing the head. note: it is assumed that passers-by share the same musical taste."

I always have the opposite experience! I find the designs attractive but ultimately I find the actual sound effects kinda dull

> Hmm, unless I have it playing "GET OFF MY LAWN" on a loop?

Guess that's why they're teenage engineering?

This reads like an ad, as do many of the replies.

Please read the site guidelines my friends.

> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You created an account twelve minutes ago to nag people on minor site rules?

Let the moderators do their job.

It's great when users point out the site guidelines to each other.

The one thing I'd add (hot tip from bitter experience) is that it's best when not combined with swipes like "This reads like an ad".

They're missing a killer feature they have the hardware to implement: Ad skipping.

Within a fraction of a second they could notice that the audio feed exactly matches a fragment in memory, and mute audio till the feed diverges again from history. One would want this mode off for a "Top Forty" radio station, but on for live content.

An easy enhancement would be to press a "kill" button to immediately mute repeating content, and always automatically mute this content in the future. This feature would be useful for songs one never wants to hear again.

Many baseball fans would pay thousands of dollars to never hear the "Kars for Kids" ad again, wondering why they don't explain their charity's narrow mission, wondering if their cars are sold by an intermediary that redirects profits.

Adblock Radio does exactly that: https://github.com/adblockradio. They should get in contact with the creator!

Radio adblock that replaced it with silence would be nearly useless for me... waiting through silence isn't any better.

Something that listened to two streams and cut over to a "backup" when it detected an ad in the primary would be more interesting, if it also switched back automatically!

Just in case you're like "Why does this look familiar?"

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frekvens-portable-speaker-black...

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frekvens-speaker-with-subwoofer...

TE designed both this OB4 and the Frekvens, this seems like the Ikea line taken to a very far extreme. Very neat, lots of cash though.

I have to say, it kinda reminds me of Ikea's Eneby too, but TE did not design that: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/eneby-bluetooth-speaker-black-0...

I have the larger Eneby and it puts out a frankly ridiculous quantity of sound without distortion.

I have the Eneby, the tiny Frekvens, and twin Symfonisk speakers.

Ikea's Symfonisk Sonos speakers are Eneby taken much further... but thats it.

Like they are literally Eneby Drivers married to Sonos One SL boards. Add some porting and a case and boom, Symfonisk. But what they can do is pretty shocking, The TruePlay tech really irons the package into incredible quality by tuning out all of the downsides of the Eneby's lesser hardware. You can downright hear it outside like a house party at max volume with no discernible distortion.

Hm, the Symfonisk are much smaller than the Eneby 30.

The volume of the Eneby gives it surprising bass extension (40 Hz) but it's a bit lumpy on the way down there. I've never dared to test max volume at the risk of disturbing my neighbors…

Symfonisk is based on Eneby 20, Max volume I tested was with a twin pair (As they do stereo pairing via Sonos.) You will probably hear better quality out of a pair like I did but post TruePlay tuning, it sounded very different before and after. In the smaller room of mine, Trueplay seemed to think it was too muddy sounding and tuned out a lot of lower end EQ. The notable Eneby 20 vs Symfonisk sound to me was that the Eneby had bass that seemed...not crisp? I don't know the right word but the highs in a drum line were not there. The vocals could have sharp highs but then you couldn't hit the stick hit the drum, just the sound of the drum. Despite the exact same drivers, Symfonisk had a WAY different profile that was more crisp and had more dynamic feeling bass. I wonder if the speaker's Z-Depth helps that.

Wow, thanks for revealing that. Didn't know TE has connection with IKEA! The big yellow dial on the top makes me think it's a XXL-sized op-z.

..And

> like the Ikea line taken to a very far extreme

Looking up the specs, 1x2.2W vs. 2x38W.

Wondering how they designed the structure so that the speakers don't blow up the unit into pieces.

Ikea sells both Sonos and TE wifi/BL speakers.

You can test them side by side in the store, next to Ikeas own brand.

exposed drivers on a 'outdoor use' 600 dollar device gives me an extreme sense of anxiety.

Reminds me of Braun products; products designed to look nice, but in general usability suffers in favor of sleek metal human interfaces, nice weights, and a generally 'quality' feel.

Your words remind me Apple.

Well gee.

Jony Ive is openly inspired by Dieter Rams, the designer behind many of Braun's products.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-...

Wow, thank you.

Except Apple hardware is more usable than basically any of their competitors (these days, software is a different story).

People complain about Apple products because it’s one of the most used by people who actually care about what they use, and then fail to provide any decent alternatives.

The whole product reminds me a lot about the Braun T52.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=braun+t52&iax=images&ia=images

Did their usability suffer? I always remembered Braun as being simple and intuitive growing up. Like you almost knew how to use whatever it was immediately without inspection.

...and its already sold out.

One thing I like about this and the OP-1 is they hit that retrofuturism, Tokyo-in-1985 kind of vibe so well with their marketing, its really well thought out.

Many people here are discussing OP-1 and complaining its expensive price. There's a open source clone called OTTO[1], and it looks promising (although not finished).

[1]: https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO

Note that OTTO departed from OP-1 and doesn't attempt to clone its features.

E.g. the "tape" has been removed, source: https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO/pull/66 . Instead they plan adding: "A simple loop-station-style audio looper that can get audio from line in or synth. It has overdub and one level of Undo.", source: https://otto-project.github.io/docs/

I would be in the market for a powered/bluetooth speaker that doesn't sound like shit. For the price I'd expect (near) audiophile sound, however little in the marketing even seems to mention sound quality, it just seems very gimmicky.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a semi portable powered/bluetooth speaker that focuses on accurate sound reproduction (within the limits physics puts on a smaller enclosure)?

What about KEF LSX or LS50? Or Devialet Reactors?

I wouldn't call that semi-portable.

The LS50's are a little large, but the others I would consider semi-portable. Look at the below image, the Reactor is the size of a small toaster and you just need to plug in a power cord. You could easily move that to different rooms, plug it in on the terrace, bring it to a friend's house, etc. If that's not at least semi-portable, I don't know what is.

https://i.imgur.com/V1fEu7h.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/7dSAtEY.jpg

I've never used them, but a friend used to run engineering at Braven. He's no longer there, so I don't know what that company's current status is, but he was a serious audio guy who made sure that every product he designed or sourced was high quality once all of the marketing-mandated boost features were turned off.

Do let us know if you give them a listen, and whether they are as good as I expect.

My old Braven, the one that looks like an OG cheesegrater Mac Pro, was the best sound per cubic centimeter I've owned.

Not really in the market for a portable speaker anymore, but if that changes, I'd most likely just get another of the same unit.

So yeah. Next time you see your buddy, tell him some rando on the Internet thinks he did a good job.

I've had good experience with the JBL lineup... I'm on the largest (boombox), and I find the quality acceptable (I don't find the quality of most audio products acceptable). The convenience OTOH is phenomenal -- it comes with me biking, kayaking, (it's submergible) and camping to charge devices and play music, and the charge can last >week. I can only remember it dying on me 2 times in the months I've owned it, and I rarely charge it. One consideration is that it's much too large for backpacking or hiking.

I wouldn't necessarily classify myself as an audiophile, though I do care more about accuracy of reproduction than most I meet.

I own an JBL charge 2. These are probably aimed for people who prefer high bass over a balanced sound (balanced they are not). Worst- the bluetooth connection is unstable even in direct sight, within 5-20 cm, with android/mac/raspberry. I realize everyone has different tastes but I would not recommend JBL.

Interesting you had issues with bluetooth -- I use it as my car stereo (car is too old to have bluetooth), and often leave it running with the car shut and I can walk all the way from my garage to the house and still hear the music chugging along just fine.

As for the bass, I agree its a bit boomy, I use EQ at the source to compensate.

I have an xtreme 2 and it's a very convenient and enjoyable device.

My pet-peeve is that when I bought it, its sound-signature was very close to my JBL studio monitors. I was astounded by the quality. It could give you goose-bumps.

Unfortunately people started complaining that it does not have enough bass and with every firmware update since then, JBL increases the bass response and destroys everything else.

There is no way to downgrade the firmware. It's still a good speaker but nowhere near what it can do when tuned for fidelity instead of bass. :(

Interesting. Since Sony, whose Bluetooth speakers I'd been using for most of a decade, discontinued most of their higher-end stuff, I tried out the JBL Charge 4 earlier this year and was astounded at how bad the sound quality was. There was a very ugly rumble in the low mids that was grating. I'd wondered if I'd gotten a defective unit since the sound quality was so bad, but was disenchanted enough to look elsewhere. From what you're saying, it sounds like they may have been another victim of the bass wars. I ended up going for the Anker SoundCore Boost, which I genuinely thought sounded better and is a third the cost.

This comes to mind: https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/speakers/filter/bluetooth

I have the A1 (1.gen.), which have mostly received good reviews.

Also this: https://www.dynaudio.com/home-audio/music/music-3

+1 on the A1. I also own a 1st Gen, and the sound that it produces still surprises me.

When it comes to anything Bluetooth and speakers I tend to look at Oluv's Gadgets on YouTube first, since that guy actually posts frequency response measurements of a wide variety of speakers. Seems like there is a wide variety of products featured but it is biased towards lower cost options.

I bought an Ikea Eneby 20 about three years ago (there's a dual speaker version available). It's my travel companion. Still in use. Almost daily. Indoor. Outdoor. Techno, Rock, Spotify...it just sounds good (bass a little prominent but can be fixed trough EQing or a piece of cloth)

It looks good (not like a plastic toy) and sounds absolutely great. Paid $40 back then. (last time I checked it was 50€+ in EU right now).

You absolutely can pay >400 and it might be accurate hifi, but what you really want from a speaker is joy :)

minirigs are surprisingly good for their size.

they are modular speakers and speakers subwoofers that you can use individually or link together.

a 2.1 setup will bring way more bass that you would expect from looking at it.

plenty of reviews on youtube comparing the sound profile to competitors.

https://minirigs.co.uk/

Maybe something from Bang & Olufsen's Beoplay line, possibly a Beolit 17?

Bluetooth isn't really compatible with accurate sound reproduction. The bandwidth is limited so the audio spec mandates lossy compression. An update to the original allows different options for the compression, so if you're starting with a compressed source you might be able to avoid double losses, but I doubt that any software does it that way because you'd lose the ability to do e.g. volume control.

Minirig

It's the best. End of story. A little expensive. Absurd low end for such a small device. Two different gain level wired inputs plus BT. Can be paired, and even extended to the sub.

Just a customer, along with everyone in my family.

I've really enjoyed my UE Boom. It's totally waterproof and shockproof, great sound, battery life is good - it's been just about perfect for me.

I totally bought into the hype and paid $1k (CAD) for an OP-1 that's unfortunately collecting dust. It's a marvel of design and engineering, but I suck at making music.

For anyone not familiar, these guys are kind of like a cheeky Apple of musical hardware design.

Want to sell it?

That would be an admission that my musical ability is non-existent. But it's definitely something that crossed my mind.

I have not heard this speaker, but like many portable speakers, the design is distinctly suboptimal even by portable standards. In a portable device, stereo is actually not desirable. Two reasons.

One, you will certainly not experience the intended effect of stereo (the illusion of spatial separation) when the drivers are so close together.

Two, the drivers will actually interfere with each other. Not only are you not getting the effect of stereo, it's making things worse. The phenomenon is comb filtering:

https://audiouniversityonline.com/comb-filtering-explained/

https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-what-exactly-com...

You can visualize the effect by imagining two stones, dropped into a swimming pool, a short distance apart. As the ripples spread outward, they will cancel each other at some points and reinforce each other at other points. These areas of reinforcement and cancellation alternate, and that is essentially what happens (in three dimensions) with the sound emanating from two drivers playing the same sounds in close proximity.

(The actual detriment will depend on how the recording is mixed. If the recording has no stereo separation for a particular sound or instrument, the effect will be worst. If a particular sound is hard-panned 100% left or 100% right, there will be no detrimental effect)

If anybody is interested, for the price of this device ($999) you can get a heck of a home stereo. Wirecutter has excellent recommendations for affordable bookshelf speakers, receivers, etc.

Thank you for the perspective here. A wish there was a way to bookmark comments on HN..

You can use favorites for this feature.

To expand a little on what grzm said:

If you click on the "X time-unit(s) ago" part of the comment heading in a new window/tab, it will open that comment as its own item where you can then favorite it.

It's a little hidden, I have often wished the same thing as you without remembering that favoriting comments is possible, even though I've evidently done it before since when I favorited the parent I found other favorited comments in my favorites list.

Thank you kindly!

If you ever decide to dip your toes into the hi-fi world, there are a lot of objectivist, engineering-minded audiophiles out there. I would say they outnumber the "magical thinking" audiophiles by a significant degree online. It's been a really fun hobby for me!

(Off-topic warning)

I'm hijacking your most recent comment since I'm past the time limit to be able to respond to your reply[1] from before - sorry! Here's[2] some[3] links[4] on the subject of learning to see in stereo after using VR (and those posts/threads contain links to even more articles/studies on the matter)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24504473

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Strabismus/comments/ert2dh/wow_i_ha...

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4kkhnp/i_was_stereo...

[4] https://old.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/39x4sx/as_many_as_1...

Thank you. I'll read those!

you know this is a minimalist company because they don't use capital letters.

i understand

Wow you aren’t kidding, other than the OB-4 part, I can’t find any capitalization on the site. An interesting choice.

The radio mixing feature seems similar to what this guy "Radio Wonderland" does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr2wK3jvUhc

I've seen his performances at HOPE conferences and it's pretty cool. See a full set here: https://archive.org/details/hopeconf2020/20200730_0000_RADIO...

Kudos to his original and inventive work. Thanks for the link.

"ambient mode - zone out to a drone generated by snippets of a radio broadcast"

This sounds really cool. Is there anything like it available in software?

+1 Anyone?

The example on the webpage sounds like a radio station passed through a granulator with a lot of reverb, something like Clouds from Mutable Instruments. It's an open-source granular effect eurorack module, there is a software port in VCV-Rack. This is another famous granulator: https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/granulator-ii/

I'd love to see how teenage engineering implemented this one

Similar in concept: http://youarelistening.to/ but just overlaying not melding the two.

Their line of synths is great, but a radio which doesn't support DAB? How am I going to listen to 6music?

The US digital radio effort has been complicated and slow to ramp up. Many digital streams are commercial free in an attempt to drive receiver adoption.

Many cars still ship with no digital capability.

Ordinary FM makes reasonable sense here.

It’s not an american product though.

Do they believe they will sell in the US?

Do you believe it wont? teenage engineering has a very consistent following among audio geeks around the globe, as other comments are enthusiastically alluding to, I'd have already bought one if they weren't already sold out

Oh I think it will. And analog FM works in many places around the globe, including the US.

They should do well with that thing.

What is HD Radio, then?

https://hdradio.com/get-a-radio/new-cars/

HD Radio is a digital radio standard in the US, Canada, and Mexico. Many new cars are sold with HD Radio. Many new cars are sold without HD Radio. Go look at some new car listings, you'll find tons without HD Radio. Many will only say AM/FM. Sometimes they'll also mention Radio Data System (RDS), the thing that shows a snippet of text with song titles and station names. Some will mention HD Radio Ready, as in you can buy an additional module to upgrade the OEM stereo with an HD Radio decoder, this is also common with satellite radio. Sometimes a car will have HD Radio.

It was a rhetorical response to the statement "The US digital radio effort has been complicated and slow to ramp up".

The answer was "it exists and has been ramped up for a while". And I'm not even talking about SDARS.

Compared to analog FM, in the US, adoption has been slow.

When they run ADS on the HD streams, we will know it is much closer.

Some regions are almost there. Many are not.

It has existed for a while and has been ramping up more and more over the last decade. I'm probably one of a small handful of people I know who listen to/care about HD Radio in their cars or their home stereos. Even decently technical people I know are still often surprised to find out about digital subchannels available on the radios they already have, whenever they actually have an HD Radio.

Its been nearly two decades since HD Radio was chosen as the standard in the US, and yet in 2018 still nearly half of the new cars sold had only regular analog radios. Nearly 20 years and HD Radio was only on less than a fifth of all cars on the road. http://www.insideradio.com/more-than-half-of-new-cars-now-eq...

It is that thing we are seeing a slow adoption of in the US :D

USA drew a short stick in the digital radio battle, by deciding on using a proprietary standard.

The rest of the world has the DMB vs. DAB competition driving the adoption, and technical improvements, while USA still had the same HD Radio of 10 years ago, and near no mobile receivers.

I agree, BTW.

We could have had a much quicker, cheaper system.

Then there is the whole artificial highs above about 8khz thing...

My very basic understanding is that most regular DAB (not DAB+) is inferior in audio quality compared to FM?

Also, and I don't know how much it has decided their design decisions, but Teenage Engineering is Swedish based, and here DAB hasn't really become a thing.

It's been, more or less, in a "trial" state since 1995, not covering the whole country and steps to upgrade to DAB+ and replacing FM canceled a few years ago.

My very basic understanding is that most regular DAB (not DAB+) is inferior in audio quality compared to FM?

Broadcasters can divide the ~1,000 kbit/s into many channels, usually 9-12. It's rare for a single channel to get more than 128 kbit/s, so a strong FM signal might sound better.

Techmoan did a great video covering why DAB is surprisingly crappy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27w3quNTP84

At least in the Netherlands, DAB sounds a lot better than FM, there is a massive difference in quality and sound stage.

Yeah I think it was a combination of a technical decision to keep the CPU power requirements down and a political decision to not give people high enough quality for piracy. "Home taping is killing music" and all that.

Yeah... DAB can be good, if the station chooses to transmit at a higher bit rate (which can range from 64kbit mono to 192kbit stereo at least), and signal strength is unfortunately a significant factor.

In the UK, the BBC stations tend to be pretty solid, the commercial stations can be somewhat bad, although a lot of the commercial music stations seem to have shifted to DAB+ (predominantly 40 kbit/s DAB+ Stereo HE-AAC v2 apparently - presumably to fit more stations in, ~10 on the BBC ensemble vs ~20 on the commercial "National 1" ensemble).[1]

[1 - http://www.wohnort.org/dab/uknat.html]

Does this kind of marketing actually work for many people? Without trying to sound too unkind, I genuinely hope there are not that many people out there who want to use this thing by "carry(ing) on one shoulder with speaker elements facing the head".

This thing seems like a very expensive toy.

TE's products are mostly "expensive toys". It's not really an insult; lots of people spend lots of money on "toys".

Considering they're sold out now, I'd say yes, this kind of marketing works.

One of my dream projects is a high quality open source, syncable, low latency bluetooth/wireless speaker system, like the JBL speakers except that you can bring your own amp and drivers and software and stuff.

Culturally, this kind of thing could be revolutionary. Outdoor music events with dispersed speaker arrays would be much less noisy than ones with giant central arrays, but everyone would be able to hear the music much better and with much less damage to the ears. You could probably get away with having pretty large gatherings without any noise permits.

One of the things I noticed about clubs in Berlin vs. clubs where I'm from is that the sound systems are distributed more evenly throughout the spaces. So you don't need earplugs as badly as you do in my city where the venues all use these massive mono speaker arrays and if you're in the front row you're gonna get tinnitus.

The JBL setup is designed really well, but it's proprietary and different generations aren't backward compatible.

I wanna see an open source hardware alternative. Where do I sign up!

Like the rest of teenage engineering's products, I'm not sure what this thing is about, but I probably will be buying it.

I was sceptical to their OP1 until I saw youtubers recording Stranger Things theme on a op1.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lu5XB1Y2rHk

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hKupFmiMvbw

Exposed, non-protected woofers looks cool - but I can imagine a butter-side-down Murphy's law event happening to me within a week of getting that thing...

Also, 4-inch woofers? That's pretty small to be attempting to produce any serious amount of bass.

(Source: I made myself a bass amp for my bass guitar when I was a teenager. It had a 12-inch woofer, and needed it. I don't think speakers have broken the laws of physics quite that well in the intervening years.)

You’d be surprised what modern neodymium drivers in a well designed enclosure can accomplish bass-wise. Though you are right in that the laws of physics have not changed, and something has to give, usually what has “given” is the increase in power output of small amplifier boards, thus allowing DIYers (like myself) and manufacturers alike to throw more power into lower efficiency, but higher mass (and thus more bass in a smaller enclosure) drivers.

With Hoffman’s iron law where you can have two of efficient, low, or small, it seems like efficiency is what has gone down to get more bass extension while keeping enclosures small-ish.

I’d be happy to provide photos+construction details of one of the portable speakers I made, and frequency response measurements if you’d like, to illustrate this.

Reminds me of the venerable Radio Shack Minimus 7 -- this was truly a revolutionary product at the time at set the bar for "bookshelf" speakers for years.

I you're on the button with the efficiency thing. My speaker only had a 50W amplifier, but it was quite capable of being loud in a large (capacity 600 seated) school hall.

I believed the same thing, right up until I picked up a HomePod, which quickly cured me of it.

Does it shake your chest? Not quite. Can it literally shake the windows? I mean, make actual windows produce an audible buzzing noise?

Yes, it emphatically can. I would still choose a larger cone for a bass guitar, though; it's right there in the name.

I've been looking for a high-end pair of bluetooth speakers, so this really peaks my interest.

I've been wanting the B&O Beolit, but they used to come with built-in charger, so you could just plug in directly into the wall.

But now they switched to USB-C charging, which means that you need to use an external charger unit. Not every USB charger will deliver enough power, so that's just a step back in user experience. The older models had a room for the cable, so what was the point of changing it?

Nothing was added in place of the internal charger and the price didn't drop. They just took away a feature and wrote "Now with USB-C!" on the box, as if they added something.

So this one having "universal built-in power supply" and a power cable in the box, is a really big plus for me!

FYI, piques.

FYI: "piques my interest" is the idiom.

FWIW, Bluetooth is the wrong tech if you want high end. You are much better off with something Wifi connected and the quality is much much better. Obviously doesn't work for everyone, but I imagine this is not much better at reproduction than even mid-range Sonos Speakers.

Side note, you sound like the perfect customer for the SONOS Move.

I could find no frequency response nor distortion measurements.

I don't get how this ad made it into the front page.

If it wasn't for the price I would buy it just for this "ambient. zone out to a drone generated by snippets of a radio broadcast" feature as it sounds precisely like my fav type of music.

> snippets of a radio broadcast

Although his work is more house music, and less ambient, there's a producer named Akufen who has done some really interesting music with this exact sound palette.

Yes, he has done some amazing tracks

their stuff is awesome, but so expensive! I've wanted an OP-1 for a long time, just can't fork out that kind of cash for a "toy"

The OP-1 is kind of a weird thing. I remember a few years ago I was almost convinced that I should have one, except for the price tag which was way over my league. And back then it was still being sold for about $900 in stores I think and now it’s like $1500.

On the bright side though I picked up a decent Korg Triton Le 88 waveform keyboard with weighted hammer action keys a couple of years ago second hand, and for that one I paid $300 which I think was a pretty good price. Online websites seem to indicate that these often sell for $550 to $600 second-hand, or at least that people are listing them asking for that amount.

But the greatest thing for my music making happened a year later when I was able to pick up an Akai MPC X second hand in excellent condition for $1000. The guy that sold it to me had barely even used it. The retail price for those things are $2000, and I love my MPC X to bits.

The MPC X combined with the aforementioned keyboard make for a wonderful time when I work on music.

I have always preferred working with my music without using a computer for it when I play, and with the MPC X you get something that is still very tactile while at the same time also having quite a few of the features of a DAW. My keyboard is connected to the MIDI in and MIDI out of the MPC X, and I play on the keyboard, record MIDI notes, make changes to them and do all kinds of stuff.

Now you may be wondering why I am bringing this up. Like, an 88-keys keyboard and a piece of other hardware sitting on top of it, all on a keyboard stand, it’s not portable so it’s not an apples to apples kind of deal quite.

But the point is that I paid $1300 for this music gear and even though I don’t have the portability that an OP-1 would give you it just gives me so infinitely much personal joy to be making music with.

The OP-1 meanwhile, I think even if you picked it up second hand you’d be unlikely to find it for less than $1000 anytime soon. And I think for me personally, yeah the OP-1 looks neat I suppose, but I am lucky that I could not afford it because this setup that I have instead I think is giving me much much more than the OP-1 ever would for me.

When in the distant future I can afford to buy anything more for my music making, I don’t think I would actually ever buy the OP-1 at this point tbh. Because whereas I used to be intrigued by it and inspired by some of the videos I was seeing and the music people make with it, I think for me the truth is that it would not really help me musically.

Not saying the OP-1 isn’t good or anything. Like I said, some people make cool music with it. Just think that for me I have found a different path to music for myself than what the OP-1 is for. And I feel like with my MPC X and my keyboard I can do all of what I would have been able to do with an OP-1 but not only that but so much more.

100%

It's tempting to think of Teenage Engineering as a frustrating synthesizer manufacturer, but they're really a design studio. They're much more interested in exploring new ways to integrate sound, life and technology than excelling at a particular product segment.

It's pretty much the opposite of what Behringer is doing. That company is totally focused on scale, reducing consumer prices, and bringing synths to the mass market. (with all the ethical corner cutting that brings with it)

Indeed Teenage Engineering is a design studio which just happens to have some synthesizer products.

One of the TE founders, Jesper Kouthoofd, used to work with Elektron, a Swedish synthesizer firm. While there he designed the Machinedrum product's UI.

https://www.elektronauts.com/t/elektron-and-teenage-engineer...

EDIT: clarify what JK designed and added link.

Yeah it’s a weird situation where I feel like a lot of the people who the OP-1 is aimed at either can’t afford it, period or aren’t going to pay $1300 on a “toy”. Because of its market positioning it ends up being this unattainable luxury item that only professional/ established musicians use, instead of a MPC-esque everyman’s tool. The “toy” design positioning and huge price tag work in tandem to keep it unattainable- it’s not that people can’t afford it (although a lot of people can’t afford it) but at the high price tag, people start seriously min-maxing what they’re getting for their money. People are really reticent to spend an entire paycheck on something that’s even somewhat limited, and possibly the best “feature” (the high level of polish in design and UX) is sort of invisible and not looked at as a utilitarian “feature”.

I'm not going to try to defend this expensive radio thing, but regarding the OP-1 I don't think $1300 is an "unattainable luxury item", I'd reserve that label for something like a proper Leica camera.

There are plenty of ways to spend a lot more on a musical instrument - buy a decent saxophone, or a Moog One! I just found a ukulele online for $1500. The OP-1 seems overpriced because it's very small, but that's also the whole point of it.

It's worth noting that the price of an OP-1 was much lower when it initially launched. I bought mine directly from TE for $850 + shipping + import duties. A re-launch of the product bumped the price to where it is currently.

I also agree that the current price, while high, is not leagues above what other music gear is priced at. Take a single synthesizer, a sampler, add a keyboard, a sequencer, effects pedals, and a mixer and you can easily exceed $1000. The OP-1 has multiple synthesis engines, multiple sequencers, multiple effects, and sampling capabilities (you can even sample from FM radio, sound familiar?)

While the OP-1 may not win awards for any one of those features, it does unify all of them into a portable package. The OP-1 has also served as a gateway drug for me. I've since purchased even pricier synth gear :)

What's an "unattainable luxury item" and what isn't is a function of product + price tag, not price tag alone.

$1300 is a nosebleed luxury price tag for shoes, but it's a junker car.

But for a synth? Yeah, wouldn't blink. Musical instruments in general have personality, and they cost what they cost.

I think it boils down to whether your primary orientation is live/jam or home-studio/finished-songwriting.

Teenage Engineering's stuff makes me imagine visceral live shows with lots of space for free form, improvised content-- up to & including a whole new growing subculture of kids being able to instantly make piping fresh, context appropriate art anywhere from the living room to the campfire.

Tweaking instruments and song parts iteratively over days & weeks to get an ideal finished product is really a whole different thing. The more big gear you can bring to that effort the better. I also second your advice on second-hand music equipment, most of my stuff over the years was acquired that way and it definitely gave me more opportunities than problems.

First time I saw one it was in a music video and I was convinced that it was a fake gadget. Didn't realize it was a real thing until a year or two later. Which sort of makes sense, since I think the OP-1 didn't come out until a year after this Swedish House Mafia video came out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkQ5rEJaTmk

I still want one, even though I have absolutely no use for such a device.

I've had one since the dawn of OP-1. I love it. My 3 year old loves it. It can be a toy, but it certainly is more than a toy.

Is there an actual magnetic tape inside or are they claiming a "recording" under the name "tape"? Left me kind of confused.

i believe it's 100% digital. There was a similar system on the OP-1 which emulated a tape

This might be the first Bluetooth Low Energy Audio product on the market.

I like the handle, reminds me of 80s portable radios. Though from 80s and 90s experience 2 speakers that close aren't great for stereo separation.

"disk mode" seems interesting, though this is a little overkill for metronome.. Of the other two modes "ambient" seems like a sound machine.

The remote I don't care for, excepting repurposing as a tempest controller used with MAMe.

Can you turn of the recording feature to save battery?

I have a Beoplay A2 speaker (Bang and Ofson) which it flat and slides into a backpack. I love that thing, but the battery is starting to go, and being discontinued I wonder how long I'll be able to keep it going. I always worry about these new things, and wish there was a standard battery packs for these things.

Honest question: So, I get the radio rewind feature, and I really dig the interface, but it kind of feels like it's a feature from some two decades ago? Are there really still that many people regularly listening to FM radio for whom this is a killer feature?

Honest answer: I carry portable FM radios around with me all the time and enjoy my local stations immensely and wish I could rewind to hear a title or composer's name, or some melody or similar, almost daily. I realize I could build something like this myself if I put enough time into it, but I'm pretty sure the pricetag would be excusable for me.

Honest question: Do you have any suggestions for how I can duplicate all of the above (portable, FM, good sound, rolling digital audio cache) for cheaper, and without spending weeks soldering and coding?

Plug a cheap fm radio into a rpi and record and stream it to the Internet and then play it on your phone. Maybe a weekends work?

You're not wrong, but this has big "DropBox? just use rsync" energy.

Except this was an answer to a specific question, not a dismissal of the product. If that famous comment had been a reply to "wow Dropbox is cool and I signed up for the beta, but hey, how would you implement something like this yourself?", no one would remember it.

"incredible sounding stereo". With speakers within inches of each other, and you standing many feet away, and moving around? I don't think so.

I would love it if every product in this category to be able to stream from the same source and be selectable as stereo (if two speakers), mono-center, mono-left-only and mono-right only -- this way I can by more than one and place them as I like. I'm not sure Bluetooth is up to it, which means that one would need to act as master and broadcast to slaves. (And the master would probably have to delay a bit to phase-match w/the remote.)

I don't get why this product gets so many upvotes. The only thing that I find refreshing about it is the use of an active DSP instead of a passive crossover network. Maybe the aesthetics.

For the rest, way too expensive; says the guy who spent more days and money than he likes to admit building his speakers (4" FAST, 5 liter each, active DSP@250Hz, plays down to <40Hz).

Their PO modulars (https://teenage.engineering/products/po/modular) are so great looking I have almost bought one on impulse several times. Then I get to the checkout page and I realize I don't want it that badly.

Does it support Apt-X?

AAC is mentioned in spec sheet so I would assume its possible to get acceptable sound quality from iPhone, when using the Music app with AAC files, or even MP3 files.

Anyone knows when using Spotify on iPhone and selecting bluetooth as output, will it use AAC then? or will it re-encode the sound from Spotify, either into AAC or, god forbid SBC?

Why no DAB radio?

First guess is the FM is more of a toy experimental feature combined with DAB probably requiring license fees. Also there's no DAB in the US or regular service outside of Europe.

Teenage Engineering is Swedish.

http://public-service.net/docu/DABFactsSweden.pdf

I know, but Europe is the only place that uses DAB basically and not universally so if they sell out side of there which they do having DAB is just a cost and no benefit unless they build different SKUs.

I used to hang out with one of their engineers, he was a great guy and I tell you what, he took his job serious, lived and breathed the company and his work. Teenage Engineering is a small team and from what I know this tech was 5 years in the making. I think it is a great accomplishment from them.

There is nothing here but marketing, I don't know why people would be engrossed in an advertisement for something basic. Anyone can put together speakers and a battery with parts from amazon or aliexpress.

They have a really weird list of counties (bottom left corner). About 100 of them, and I can't understand why they were chosen. A lot of small countries in there, and big ones missing.

£599. Nope.

Quality engineering. But for the average user, it's expensive for a radio.

TE's quality is hit and miss if you talk to people who have used their devices a lot.

You're mostly just paying for the unique features, smaller production runs and look of the device.

I own an OP-Z and luckily haven't had any issues but the forums are full of people who's units are bent or have the dials pop out.

Yeah I'm with you but I can totally understand people that do.

Unlike £250 bluetooth ear buds. That I'll never understand

I was about to say, at that price it's taking the piss a little bit. No matter how good and clever the engineering is, it's just too expensive.

"JBL Boombox 2" is going for about 400 euros right now and as far as I can tell JBL bluetooth speakers are hugely popular to the point of almost becoming a genericized word for bluetooth speakers. This is just 1.5x the price for something that at least looks much better. I'm not getting either but it doesn't seem outrageous.

At least it's made in Europe, unlike the OP-1 which they quietly moved to Chinese production after increasing the price...

Build first locally, and then transition to China is a pretty natural pattern, especially for a smallish design firm... you can get the design and production process tightly controlled in a situation where you can easily visit the manufacturing facility, then move it to somewhere that can handle your scale economically.

There's a dual marketing benefit too, as when the initial reviews are coming out you get into peoples' heads as "made in EU" and then that brainworm never resets when you move production, and you also get to gauge your demand without the time+money input of ramping up production on another continent.

The portable bluetooth speaker market is incredibly crowded already, with offerings from some names like JBL, Bose, Sony and whatnot.

Pity it's not DAB, this looks great.

Is this actually a radio (as in receives terrestrial broadcasts), or just a BT speaker?

Yeah it's an FM radio. It's all over the page. They even have an ambient drone that's sounds like it's time stretched samples from the FM radio.

> have you ever wished you could instantly rewind when listening to the radio, to hear the title of the song just played?

> 72 hrs listening how about normal radio listening for a week without charging?

> if you skip the traditional inputs like line in, bluetooth and FM radio

I missed that flipping through on my phone somehow. Probably because FM radio was just another bullet-point under "wireless" along with 2 bluetooth modes. The lack of any visible tuning controls also threw me.

Also FM radio.

Website says, "line input, bluetooth, FM radio and disk"

If they add the ability to dump the cache to a local or network drive, I'm sold.

Teenage over engineering

This is thought out and useful criticism. Thank you for contributing.

Or just buy a soundboks for $200 more and have portability

might be a fun guitar amp with interesting loop effects

Love the brand.

No DAB+ tho, sad :)

Return of the "boom box".

guys, maybe someone is able to recognise wall clock from promo video?

portable speakers are one of the worst things invented in this century.

I almost cannot take a walk or take a subway train without some youngsters blasting crappy music very loud at everyone.

Fortunately this century also invented noise isolating earphones.

cool, so now it's my duty to spend to not hear other people's bad manners.

If you prefer to suffer in dignity, more power to you!

Is HN being subjected to some astroturf marketing techniques here?

Seems rather suspicious to see so many commenters enthusiastically salivating over an advert for a very expensive radio.

And also for said advert to hit the #1 spot on this site, despite not fitting into the usual categories for a compelling post.

It's ok that you are not privy to the hype around Teenage Engineering in general.

Musicians like their devices because the UX design is interesting and relatively smooth, and the devices have a lot of flexibility for making interesting music.

The musician love for TE is on the wane as the company pivots from doing innovative industrial design for creative people to becoming another pointless luxury brand. They sell a $170 blank sweatshirt now.

HN is fundamentally a community built around products and commodities (and especially tech startups). What discussion happens here about programming is a very market-centric view of the field. This post seems par for the course to me.

I'm with you. This is a product for rich narcissists.

rich narcissists??? on HN?! the shock!! the surprise!!!1!

HN is always subject to astroturfing, it's just generally managed by YC directly. Ensuring positive opinion and adoption of their investments while keeping the competition soundly off the radar.

No, that's not the case. We do have Launch HNs for YC startups that get special treatment (one of three formal things that HN gives back to YC, the other two being job ads and displaying alumni usernames in orange). This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. But those formal things aren't really the main value that HN has for YC. I've written about this lots of times: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... If you look at those explanations, you'll understand why we don't manipulate HN in the way you suggest. The good faith of the community is worth far more than anything we'd get by squeezing the lemon that way. Besides which, it would be wrong.

There are also lots of explanations about how we moderate threads involving YC or YC startups: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

TE made one really stand-out product, the OP-1, and one kinda-pretty-good product, the OP-Z. They have a few other products of mixed reception and a bunch of typical high-end boutique junk if you really want their logo on your t-shirt or whatever. They're coasting on their reputation of the OP-1, which is deserved, but they haven't really come up with anything worthy of their reputation since.

I think the Pocket Operator PO-33 KO stands out too.

Yes you caught me! After accumulating nearly 48k in Karma I finally sprung my marketing trap on the unsuspecting HN crowd with this post of mine!

Actually just a huge fan and having owned 2 OP-1's, I'm just a big fan of Teenage Engineering.

a) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

b) It's an expensive tech gadget, these are discussed here all the time?

Teenage Engineering is the Apple of music gear. People who like their stuff, REALLY like their stuff.

I was thinking the same thing. How does this overpriced niche speaker make it to the top of hn so quickly?

people upvote it because they think it's cool. That's how the system works.

That's how the system should work. But it isn't always the case real people are upvoting.

there's literally no evidence that such a thing is happening.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

The real explanation might actually be that a lot of people on hacker news are easily taken in by marketing. A new look for something that was popular when people were kids at a 1000% markup should be easy to see through, but stuff like this happens all the time.

I'm a little peeved that a site named "teenage.engineering" is not an educational one. I realize this is not entirely rational, but I would have expected (and welcomed) a build-a-kit, not yet another generic consumer product.

This isn't even waterproof. What teenagers do you know?

> endless looping tape*

> *ROLLING 2 HOUR RECORDING

Then maybe not call it "endless" if it's not even practically endless?

Well, a tape loop doesn't have any ends ;)

It's endless like an Ouroboros.

It's endlessly looping at least. BTW whole 2 hours is unheard of even for specialized music looping equipment, most I've seen is about 30 mins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_tape_cartridge

I wonder which teenagers they target :-)

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