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...