Ten years of OP-1
teenage.engineering
teenage.engineering
If you, the reader, has $1100, pick up an Octatrack. Elektron is one of the few companies that pushes the envelope of digital sequencing and hardware production, and the Octatrack is the pinnacle of their work. At $900-1000, you'll definitely get more mileage out of it than an OP-1, and you don't have to support Teenage Engineering's shitty pricing schema. Even at $600, you can buy an Elektron Digitakt/Digitone, which will probably serve you better in the long run.
Maybe I am hateful, but Teenage Engineering has definitely had a fall from grace. Even their recent modular kits left a bad taste in my mouth...
> You can slice this any way you want, but there's not really an excuse for an all-digital synth to increase in price like that
Adjusting to market bearing price seems like a good excuse to me.
You seem to be seeing something nefarious in their discontinuing the OP-1, and then re-continuing it at a higher price. Even absent the above, it makes perfect sense that they could be losing money on a product, and then re-introduce it at a higher price so they stop losing money.
Now, should they have been losing money at the lower price point? You talk a lot about CoGS, but that completely neglects things like design and development time. The OP-1 is, by all accounts, extremely well-designed and built. Economies of scale let companies like Apple pick lower margins because that R&D time is amortized over a huge number of devices manufactured. Boutique operations can't do that.
All that still ignores squishier questions like choosing to keep a price point in order to fund other projects (that may never be built) with increasing margins over time, or hell, I dunno, paying bigger bonuses to employees. Clearly people are willing to pay it, and they're under no obligation to price their goods according to any objective thing at all. Maybe the CEO is a mystic and likes the numerology of the new price better.
This is typical behavior of a certain large class of musicians, particularly electronic ones.
The message boards are full of people complaining that these companies charge "too much." They will also then complain that Behringer sucks for "stealing" ideas and pricing them affordably.
Meanwhile, it has never been cheaper to buy music equipment and software. And there are tons of high quality free software out there.
I would hesitate to enter into the business of selling music software or hardware. It seems pretty thankless.
It could even be twice the volume and be ugly AF.
I don't know why it's so difficult or unattractive to put a sequencer, a sampler and a synthesizer in one box with a keyboard on it, but the OP-1 seems to be the only successful implementation of that idea.
This is like two mobile phone companies putting their volume buttons in the same place.
This is another weird aspect of the (often amateur, electronic) music production world - making something simple and obvious seem like a mysterious and unique breakthrough.
This is a community that likes to use the terms “aleatoric” and “euclidian” instead of “random” and “evenly distributed”. Yes, I know the origins of those two terms but I don’t care - I eyeroll every time I hear them.
>This is like two mobile phone companies putting their volume buttons in the same place.
In this case I think Behringer directly copied the look and feel of the keystep because of its amazing success in the low budget controller space. I don't expect much innovation in the budget controller space, but this one seems to be a clear case of trademark/copyright infringement if "rounded corners" can be protected.
Then Arturia should be taking Behringer to court, right?
You're joking right? There are thousands of combinations of where to put things to make a clone less obvious, but obviously they didn't care to do anything of that.
Have you seen them compared side-by-side? It looks like a Mark 2 version of the Keystep, except some naming changed, here's an example: https://www.gearnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/behringe...
> There are thousands of combinations of where to put things to make a clone less obvious
Disagree. This is like saying there are thousands of combinations of where to put doors on a car or volume controls on a phone. There are really only like one or two, and I doubt any of them are like, copyrightable.
These are simple devices with simple features, not a single one which was invented by Arturia.
If I slap an arpeggiator on a midi keyboard, do I have to put the knobs on the right hand side to not infringe on the Keystep? And at that point, can no one else put an arpeggiator in a 25-key midi keyboard because all layout combinations in that form factor are "used up?"
I just don't get the outrage over this other than I think it comes from people who already hate Behringer.
Then you have your first counter-point here, because I don't have Behringer, I simply think some of their practices are shady. But no hate, and I have nothing against people who chose to buy their gear. I don't want to, because of their shady practices, but that doesn't mean I hate Behringer in total.
And no, if you have an arpeggiator on a midi keyboard, you don't have to place them in a different place than the Keystep. But if you have exactly the same features, and you put them in the same place, with a so similar design that consumer could be confused which one you have in front of you, then it starts getting into a territory that me myself, is not comfortable with.
If you remove the Arturia and and Behringer logo together with the text on the Swing, you think most people would accurately be able to separate which one is which? I think not, and that's when you're infringing on someones copyright.
Their modular is ridiculous, I can't imagine what they were thinking.
lol gotta love armchair HN
However, Teenage Engineering claiming they were jacking the price due to "supply issues" is just insulting.
"We have had to face other costs than the actual components’ costs of course. The currency conversion, inflation, sourcing of the new component, re-coding the display, re-designing the mounting, new tools etc. are just a few of the “why”. When Teenage Engineering faced the reality of the OP-1’s future, there were only 2 choices: kill or save. We decided to save it. I understand that the new price is a disappointment to many of our fans. But I do hope some are happy that we did not kill it."
https://www.gearnews.com/teenage-engineering-open-up-about-t...
So, if they bought a 1000 obsolete displays and burned through them, it may actually take an act of God to get more. And you'll probably have to redesign your circuits.
Well, there's also the level of pricing and milking it that poorer consumers will tolerate without hating the company, so there's that...
You buy an OP-1 to look cool, not to actually make music with it. It's a bit like with the iPhone, but on a whole different level.
Some buy fancy sneakers, others buy fancy pens and Moleskine, others buy an OP-1.
And you can't have a cheap status symbol.
This is also why they look so clean and minimalistic, like a MacBook, to the point of sacrificing ergonomy, since the aesthetic is what they are selling, so they can't look gnarly, black and full of ports and cables like an actual musical device.
But that's not why most people buy it.
Just like most people don't buy a Rolex Submariner because they regularly do deep dives in the ocean.
The OP-1 is an incredibly well designed product that stands on its own as an instrument. The device has taken on the life of a status symbol somewhat in 10 years, but is that due to TE or due to the quality of the product? Synthesizers have their own collector class after all, but I don't think you can accuse TE of intentionally catering to those folks when they made the OP-1. People like good design for many reasons. The OP-1 has an undeniable aesthetic quality but it's a versatile and flexible (and portable) instrument under all that.
Let people like/use/play what they want and stop judging others for their choices just because they're not YOUR choices. I, btw, don't own anything by Teenage Engineering, but it absolutely doesn't affect my world one iota if someone else does.
Am I not allowed to observe that most people who buy a Lamborghini are not interested in driving it around a track?
Cassette--because 6 bit ADC's are good enough for everybody.
If you don’t like some particular piece of music, just say so, but you’re pigeonholing a lot of people, and it makes you look like you’re saying “they’re wearing bellbottoms! This isn’t art!”
But I think not worth defending further than this. It will end up trash talks.
This is a status symbol. Usefulness is incidental.
Why does an "actual music device" have to be a certain color? I don't follow most of you argument, but especially that.
> "they look so clean...sacrificing ergonomy, since the aesthetic is what they are selling, so they can't look gnarly, black...like an actual musical device."
You're arguing that because they are a status symbol and have to look "clean and minimalist" they can't look black like an actual music device looks like. Of which I think your main point in that statement is that OP-1 != "actual music device".
Did I interpret it incorrectly?
Beautiful sounding instrument though.
It's a very rapid divergence between collectors and users.
OP-1 and Octatrack provide a different workflow but the classic stuff provides a truly special sound. While the software reproductions of vintage analog synths get you 90% of the way there, musicians want 100% of the sound. If that weren’t the case then you would see prices of classic instruments go down.
I am not a pro musician however, I just want to noodle every so often for fun.
I don't think the company has been around enough to fully pivot to actually intentionally just building a status symbol like say Apple or Nike have.
There's a lot of more technically capable stand-alone gear that can be had for less of course. My MPC Live is what my finished (not good compared to others, I'm just an amateur making video game soundtracks for kids I teach game dev to) songs ultimately come out of, and the Octatrack is something I've really enjoyed playing with. None of these are going to be something that lives in my backpack and comes out in the park on a sunny day when I've got that perfect boss battle intro sequence drop popping into my head though. Size considerations aside, I can slam down a decent prototype of a song that's actually listenable in just a couple of minutes on the OP-1 before the idea fades away, and have a blast doing it.
I think their pricing is sensible. The thing fills a niche no other piece of gear I've found can. That seems worth paying for.
On the other hand, using it as a way to add backing to my sax playing, and record my sax onto the device was fun.
But I got rid of it, and bought a used organellem and plenty of change left over (with which I might buy a proper sequencer at some point, but maybe not).
I've currently got a Novation Circuit which I bought on the same idea. Because I play a lot of acoustic music the circuit seems definitely not for me, but again it's kind of fun and has a nice shallow learning curve.
I believe George Harrison said the ukulele is the best instrument for songwriting - it's portable, self-contained, and incredibly easy to work with. The OP-1 hits a similar spot for me: It's a bicycle for songwriting.
They aren't comparable to the OP-1, which is more of a quirky, fun, expensive toy, and there's nothing else like it really. I wasn't getting anything done with it, so I sold it. But, I can definitely see how someone could have a lot of fun making songs with it.
Is it worth a thousand bucks? Nowadays you're probably better off spending half that on a Roland MC-101 or Novation Circuit Tracks.
But I always kind of wish I never got rid of my OP-1 - it was definitely the most fun I've had on a self-contained hardware device - the tape interface for recording was just awesome.
But as for the price increases, I never understood why people complain about this. They can charge whatever they want. This not a necessary item.
> Elektron is one of the few companies that pushes the envelope of digital sequencing
I think the Elektron sequencer workflow is overrated. Software is better. I understand thinking the restrictions encourage creativity (I don't personally subscribe to this idea), but the sequencer isn't "pushing the envelope" compared to what you can whip up in software.
So I guess I kind of think some of the Elektron machines are also quirky, expensive toys.
You're paying for UX that creates the pit of success for your music-making process.
You pay for the fact that you use knobs, not mouse — although you would be able to draw an infinitely detailed automation with it. You pay for the limited choices you have, and where these limitations lead you. You pay for the touch & feel. You pay for purely subjective, aesthetic factors, like look and smell — because music-making is a completely subjective, intuitive process and your psychological state is more important for it having a Turing-complete LFO system.
I like OP-1 and I like Octatrack, but there's just no way you could have any objective "measurement" for which one is better of has better value — because any value that these devices have is subjective. If you want to decide which one to buy, forget everything about specs, and just spend an hour or two playing with them, feeling them with your hands while you make music.
Don’t get me wrong, the OT is an amazing box. I just think that for the money a person can make much more interesting jams on a digitakt or midel:samples and an rc505, for instance.
As valuable as gold.
But then again, back in the day I paid out the ass for a Virus TI, which is largely the same setup. Though for virtual analog it did sound fantastic. I miss that thing...
I've now got a Digiton/Digitakt setup that's much better. Elektron's workflow just clicked with my brain.
We do a lot of computer programming using free or cheap (and billed monthly) tools on this site, so it's really easy to forget that professionals in other fields will pay a premium for something that works with minimal fiddling. Watching electrical engineering managers dump tens of thousands into single pieces of test equipment to not have to fuck around with patchwork solutions is enlightening, and I think software developers would do that a lot more if the FOSS route wasn't the only thing they knew.
I'm not sure it makes sense to price a hardware product on it's BOM. This kind of thinking is what leads to most hardware being absolutely crappy. Good product designers need to be paid, and design choices don't show up in the BOM. The same goes to hardware.
When I see an ARM chip and an OLED screen going for $$$, the calculus in my mind is I'm actually paying for engineering and design labor, not a BOM.
I gotta point out that the price increase was because the original OLED screen went out of production and they had to use a different one which required major changes to the hardware and probably software (at least that's what they say). Also the enclosure is actually a solid block of CNC machined aluminium which is quite nice and robust.
Depending on your musical tastes and tolerance for UI complexity, you may be better served by other Elektron devices as your first purchase. The Octatrack is very powerful but pretty complex to wrap your head around.
Personally I’d go for the Analog Rytm mk2, especially if you like drum-based electronic music... it sounds fantastic, is a great analog drum machine but each track can also be used as a synth or sampler track, which makes it much more than just a drum machine, you can really quickly make great sounding full tracks on it. It also has a really fun interface with far fewer button combos to remember etc. than the Octatrack.
Of course, it doesn’t matter too much because once you buy one you’ll eventually end up buying them all ;) I agree that Elektron are making some of the most fun and exciting music gear out there, I love all their stuff. Quite a strong tracker influence to their sequencer which I like too!
But I'd agree with you, as a owner of both a Rytm and Octatrack, to go for the Rytm before the Octatrack as it's simply a nicer standalone machine, the Octatrack really needs companions to be fully useful.
> I agree that Elektron are making some of the most fun and exciting music gear out there, I love all their stuff
Hear hear! My wallet likes Elektron less though.
I don't use my OT that often and whenever I pull it out it takes me a while to reorient myself with how I load a sample, why is that track muted, etc. etc. Of course out of this architecture comes great flexibility too, unmatched by anything else hardware based really, and when I listen to the patterns I've made, they do sound unlike anything I make with other gear (in a cool way). I am going to try to integrate it as a live looper for "live" performances (to an audience of one, myself, in the bedroom, but everyone has to start somewhere!).
And yeah, I'm hooked too. Got most of the boxes now, just missing Monomachine (never really grabbed me and definitely not at the second hand prices!) and Analog Heat (which I bet I'd love but it feels expensive for "just an effect"). Don't regret it all though, I love how each one is a self-contained groovebox that I can make a full track on on the sofa, but also they integrate really well for a more advanced setup. And they're just super fun!
Five years later, I find myself arguing the opposite in many cases. Most modular synth stuff is not too expensive, but has just the price you'd expect it to have given the number of units sold and the BOM.
Yet when I was starting out my comparison were e.g. guitar pedals, which is a much much bigger market. Electronics scale like that. Whether you sell a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand units really makes a difference in terms of pricing. And quite frankly, if you worked 2 years on development it is a bit bold to expect from you that you did this for free.
That doesn't mean there are overprized things in synth bussiness. The OP-1 definitly seems pricier than one would expect, but I don't know enough about it to say thia with confidence.
The OP-1 is machined aluminum, not plastic.
The crazy part about it is that they only really mention the bits that show the OP1 in a primary means, you can find every case of a modern musical team making something and find an OP-1 somewhere. Taylor Swift? Easy.
Despite the clear flaws and price, the OP-1 just does something for creativity.
Also: This is not seen in the list as they picked the cover they did instead, but you get to see the OP-1 used in force here by Chvrches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haunJARHPm4&ab_channel=NPRMu... After seeing what's going on in that you begin to hear where the OP-1 is used by them in creation of the album.
Nine Inch Nails live rig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMXEvNUjgCg
Zola Jesus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx6hFRW3Lyg
Dan Deacon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEwpOKhLT7E
(The Teenage Engineering page includes, amongst many others, Depeche Mode, Ariane Grande, Timbaland, Animal Collective, Deadmau5, Usher, Bon Iver, Childish Gambino...)
Musicians get paid to use gear. I don't know of any moderately famous musician for whom that isn't true.
My favorite examples of this are bands that have that cool Rickenbacker sound and shoot a couple of videos with them. And then suddenly once they get some traction, they're playing Telecasters in public all the time.
Fender paid them. And that's totally fine--musicians get paid garbage so any source of cash is good. I just wish the musicians were more straightforward about it.
The decision to remove the Rhodes piano sample pack from the default firmware, including for anyone who upgraded, has to be up there with one of the worst decisions in product management of all time.
Also, the disparity between models with clickable control knobs and unclickable knobs to this day makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.
May we find it in our hearts to forgive. If it weren’t for their genius we wouldn’t even have noticed these minuscule flaws. Happy Birthday :)
The best £1000 I've ever wasted, and kept the box for, just in case. It's a beautiful bit of kit (and it has the clicky controls) but I've still not become proficient enough to do anything but treat it as a toy. One day... one day... I'll make something practical using it.
Suffice to say, this is not the next Marc Rebillet speaking.
Obviously I'm missing something. I've seen some YouTube tutorials but they all seem to produce the same kind of music and honestly I don't find it super impressive.
Maybe it'll click one day
Plenty of other gear has clicked for me. I should really sell it to someone who will enjoy it.
OP-1 is a tad expensive even for professional gear, but it is also a neat little machine. Elektron gear is maybe more powerful, but it also costs more. Cheaper gear exists as well. Up to each musician to decide what is too expensive for them in the end.
Korg Mini/Monologue and Volcas, any Behringer analog stuff, Arturia Mini/Micro Brute/Freak, Roland Boutique, Yamaha Reface CS/DX, Modal Electronics Skulpt, Waldorf Rocket....
And Teenage Engineering has a more affordable OP-Z, and not to mention their Pocket Operators that are wonderful machines for $60 or so (I use PO-12 as a drum sequencer for jamming).
And that's not even going into the old/used gear market. I got a Soviet analog polysynth for under $500 off Reverb last week. However, I feel like getting started, the newer stuff is both cheaper and better. We are living in the synthesizer renaissance era.
If I were to pick just ONE synth to recommend, it would be Korg Monologue. It's a masterpiece with a lot of depth, but simple to get started on, and super hands-on. For other recommendations, see articles like [1].
[1] https://www.musicradar.com/news/the-best-cheap-synthesizers
- [1] https://www.musictech.net/news/is-this-how-behringer-respond...
I keep a PO-32 beside my desk to mess with when I get frustrated coding.
Who's the thing even for?
Of course, you can find lots of "boutique" instruments being used by a range of creators. I don't think there are a lot of them only using a OP-1 for full tracks though, although I have seen some live performances made with it together with other instruments at the same time.
Actually this submission seems to be about a few pages, one of them being "made on OP-1" where you can see just that, artists using the OP-1 in different scenarios: https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1/anniversary/made-o...
Edit: one specific example: Diplo claims the OP-1 is one of the ten "essential" items he owns, has to count for something at least :)
> not willing to do any significant part of their job on a device the size of a chocolate bar
Heh, tons of people fiddle with modular synths and I can imagine that being even worse sizes (or "smaller" rather).
Here's a picture he posted of his gear:
https://twitter.com/ebaynetflix/status/442078506655023104/ph...
In his NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, you can see an OP-1 on the near-right of his table.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heFRwLfjVXI
edit: I found a website which catalogs musicians and the equipment they use. It lists 190 users of the OP-1.
https://equipboard.com/items/teenage-engineering-op-1-portab...
My favorite online presentation of his music is the collaborative video made by Adult Swim for the song "When I was Done Dying".
It's one of Jean-Michel Jarre's favorite synths[1].
JM Jarre is one of the godfathers of electronic music. You probably heard Oxygene part IV some time in your life[2].
[1]https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2012/05/jarre-synth
EDIT: turns out I'm response number 1000 – read someone else's comment.
> it's only $400 or so
Sounds like you answered your own question :)
TE sure make some expensive gear, but they also make cheap gear, checkout the Pocket Operators. They are deceivingly good for the price (and aesthetics).
The OP-1 does have it's use case though, and it can definitely been seen in the wild, although cheaper gear can of course be even more popular.
It's a great device even if your job isn't music production. Easy to use, lots of fun, though I didn't enjoy the form factor.
Seems closer to a musical instrument than a gadget.
PlayStation and Switch and almost every other gadget imaginable will drop in value much more quickly than OP-1.
Clunkier than a device with a proper screen, but the same approach the OP-Z uses (though I think it can use bluetooth to connect instead of a cable).
I have an OP-1 and the killer features for me are _extreme_ portability, like even more than my laptop, and the best battery life of any device I have ever owned. I have it with me at almost all times, and I can bust it out and start playing basically whenever. I use it at the beach, on hikes, in cafes, wherever. There's no way I'd be lugging an MV-1 around with me in those circumstances.
I also do like that the OP-1 forces a "keep moving" workflow with it's stripped down synth engines and 4 track recorder. People criticize that, but if I wanted a device with tons of tracks and unlimited sounds I would just use my laptop.
I had a bunch of pocket operators so don't get me wrong they're neat devices and an interesting start into music and sequencing but overall I don't think it provides the same abilities
I do like my op-z although I wish it was built a little better and that the iPad app (or another function key) let you zoom in on The sequencer so you could do longer sequences in something other than live record.
Still an amazing device. I can sit down and have a sketch down in a few minutes which is something I could never say about my desktop daw
Keyboard-module (with display-glass): $45 / €45
Connector PCB (for replacing mic / broken jacks): $35 / €35
Speaker: $20 / €20
Display: $35 / €35
UI PCB: $70 / €70
DSP PCB: $120 / €120
Flex Cable: $24 / €24
Battery: $20 / €20
Encoder Knobs: $19 / €19
Volume Knob: $6 / €6
Spare key: $10 / €10
Rubber feet: $5 / €5
Paper Foam Case: $8 / €8
https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Parts/Teenage-Engineering-OP-1
But sadly still no motherboard/DSP to swap in...anybody else doing OP-1 repairs besides TE? I am going to try and sell it with full disclosure of its limitations caused by this.
Demos here:
This was like OP-1 advertisement!
Cant believe it's 10 years old already.
`ffmpeg -i 6069b7c2057597000422abc7_original.gif -c:v libx264 -crf 30 -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4`
791 KB - :)
Worked wonders. A few years later gifycat exploded and we were all kicking ourselves xD
I quite like this album completely created using it: https://professorkliq.bandcamp.com/album/28-days-with-the-op...
The choice of mini-USB, the RAZR charging port, in 2011, was a bit baffling to me. I have to buy another cable each time I want to charge and use it.
Wouldn't it be easier to just keep the one cable you bought to charge it? It's not like the cable depletes itself during the charge forcing a new cable to be purchased per charge.
I bought 20x mini-USB as my new mobile phone uses it now and I didn't want to keep not finding them when I need them.
I've stopped putting SIM cards in my smartphones entirely, but I still have one SIM I still need to receive SMS on.
I'll eventually put it into a rpi shield/hat/whatever and make an SMS to email bridge. Until then, this has amazing battery life.
I bought two for less than the AppleCare+ on my iPhone 12 cost. (One as backup, as I can't imagine these are going to be in production for much longer.)
Cables create tangled messes in a way that most things do not, and it's been great that my drawers are mostly free of cables now.
Otherwise I too would have lost them.
I typically don't keep older generation consoles around, but the original launch PS3 was a marvel for its time (despite being a relative flop compared to the Wii-360)
The original launch PS3 contained the hardware emotion engine, so it had 100% backward compatibility with PS1 and PS2 games. Later revisions removed the PS2 hardware, in favor of software emulation, and iirc, eventually backwards compatibility was removed all together.
It also supported Super Audio CD format as well, and before it was patched out, had the ability to dualboot Linux.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#Standard_connecto...
Don’t buy into their bullshit.