Interview with the founder of Teenage Engineering
scandinavianmind.com
scandinavianmind.com
* Warm vintage color cast on the '70s-looking gear wood panel.
* On-camera-flash-like directional lighting, with harsh shadow (maybe to separate person from gear background, but both in focus?).
* Contrast and saturation jacked up.
* Bluish cast on shot composed like a point&shoot snapshot.
* Shooting through houseplants, like nature explorer discreetly observing engineer in their native habitat. Maybe the plants are part of the character of the space.
I'm kind of irritated by this. TA are legendary for super-expensive toy-like products that must have insanely high margins. So somehow the "I was never into money (but now I collect antique synthesizers with four or five figure price tags)" line doesn't ring entirely true.
Just goes to show that you can take pretty much anything, market it to relatively affluent and bored tech workers and make a killing.
No other gear company has tackled the all-in-one synth-sequencer-4trackrecorder-groovebox that is the OP-1 in the decade since its release. TE not capitalizing on this would be financially naive.
> No other gear company has tackled the all-in-one synth-sequencer-4trackrecorder-groovebox
Seriously?
Plenty of other companies have. If you're old enough to remember, Elektron had an 8 track sequencer/recorder/groovebox that cost roughly the same price as the OP-1. Their mono model was actually cheaper than the OP-1 (and arguably nicer).
...which is of course to ignore the hundreds of other sub-$1000 grooveboxes that do 90% of what the OP-1 does. Hell, that's to ignore DAWs that cost 1/3rd of the price with 300% more features. If you buy an OP-1 as your introduction to electronic music, you are wasting your money.
To each their own, the only real winner here is the one selling their product.
Then again, considering how little progress there is to be made with music technology and how much of the industry is buoyed by marketing and brand, it makes sense that people defend their choice of consumption so fervently.
Like I said above, it's my mistake for criticizing consumerism on a website that lives, eats and dies on how much people buy into arbitrary things like marketing and brand.
Nothing about your comments in this thread convey enjoyment of music making. Instead you just seem to be expressing contempt for the op-1, it’s makers, and the people who do enjoy the product.
Your goal seems to be to condemn people who enjoy making music with the op-1, as well as a group of people who enjoy making instruments.
Does this enhance your enjoyment of making music?
I think it is because "just making same thing" is frowned upon and also industry cares to not eat itself.
For example take Digitakt and Digitone. It could easily be combined into one device "it is just code" and CPUs got faster since release of those but they don't, because they know having those "blind spots" in each of their devices (that other of their devices fit) is good for sales. Got a Digitone ? Want Drum machine to it ? Well, Digitakt got same interface you already know. Even their newest device Syntakt omits a lot of FM stuff to not step on Digitone niche.
Also there is plenty all-in-ones with more capability, all the way to monsters like MASCHINE+, MPC X or Force. People buy OP-1 coz they want to work within the limits and think that will make better music, not because it can do something unique anything else can't.
Which is understandable, given myriad options it's easy to get lost in tinkering with them instead of focusing on creation.
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
All I'll say is that you should reserve your judgement until you've tried some competing products. The Playmobil laptop looks like a great way to do your Word documents until you try a Dell or Apple machine.
Edit: it's worth noting that both of these systems are sequencers, not tape recorders. I consider that a benefit (much longer record times) but if you want a multitrack recorder then you should look elsewhere (maybe a 4iXo DAC?)
Sure it's cheap if you compare it to Stradivarius, but if you use instruments in same type ("a CPU feeding ADC/DAC with some knobs and buttons") it is one of most expensive one in category.
OP-1 field (the only version they sell) is 2000 EUR. That's top end of synth world and you usually get more knobs and keys with that. That's the price of Korg/Roland/Yamaha workstation-level keyboards.
Do NOT try to compare it on price with anything, it will always look like a bad joke. Subjective, might be worth to you etc.
Surely it’s suited to someone who is price insensitive but has too little time to take music seriously. Why shouldn’t there be a product aimed at such people?
> Just goes to show that you can take pretty much anything, market it to relatively affluent and bored tech workers and make a killing.
This makes no sense. The op-1 is a very unusual product. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be discussing it.
You can’t sustain a business any other way. Consumer electronics are cheap because they can sell millions worldwide. Stuff like the OP1 sells in the 10s of thousands so they’re not getting any special deals from their vendors either.
> Stuff like the OP1 sells in the 10s of thousands so they’re not getting any special deals from their vendors either.
10s of thousands is enough to get the economies of scale to start working. Even for stuff like custom LCDs for pocket operators.
Yes niche costs few times to make than truly mass market as you still need to pay yourself a salary and not just "earn good profit on unit", but on the other side the only reason OP-1 is niche it is because say OP-1 is just that expensive that most people look at it and go "okay, I could get this and this and that and still have some money left over". They know hipsters will buy it and have no real reason to try to sell more units for less money, as that devalues the eliteness of it.
I'll agree that it's a zero-sum game either way, but it ends with the high-margin vendors getting undercut. Something we could have avoided if they worked to make their product cheaper instead of working to make it more expensive.
By making knock offs without needing to do the R&D and product-market fit work for themselves.
Why isn’t there a knock-off of the op-1?
You see it a lot in art, some people collect only as an investment vehicle - others buy what they like without regard for future returns. Ones mostly about the money.
Even ignoring the keyboard, the creativity and fun of the OP-1s tape and synthesis modes, things like the gyro and FM radio, are fairly unique. There is a reason it is so successful.
MASCHINE+, MPC X, Force, dozen other 440 style grooveboxes. Arguably Dirtywave M8
I mean it is neat device and I'm kinda surprised nobody cloned the minimalistic format (I guess Volcas are kind of that, although more "one thing" rather than versatility, but the asking price is truly ridiculous
Yes, because it managed to capture a self-sustaining hype cycle powered by customers who for the most part don't really know what they're buying. It's more of a status item than an actually fun or useful musical instrument, IMO. This thread reminds me, I need to sell mine.
GarageBand on iPad is perfectly fine for the type of screwing around you can do on an OP1, it's much more powerful overall, and it even supports stuff like MIDI inputs and MIDI clock master.
I also think that as much as it is a cliche "never being into money" it's an important aspect of success, because you can either be driven by profit at one end of the spectrum and a genuine passion for a great product on the other.
If you do succeed and become wealthy, then it doesn't matter if a synth is $500 or $50'000, you can have it.
I think Richardson has a very similar technique, although he tends to shoot with white backgrounds. These specific pictures seem closer still to the photography in magazines like Apartamento, or in this case https://record-magazine.com/issues
I always wonder when this retro frontal flash approach will go out of style. It’s handy while it lasts, because it’s very easy to make interior shots this way. No need to bother with lighting setups, just a single big flash mounted with your camera. Quite the accessible style! Yet it does help to differentiate from phone cameras, which seems to be a driving force for photographic trends… Just like shallow depth of field has been fashionable for a while (and might go out of fashion now phones can fake it), big flashes are not typically found on phones.
The style also works, I think, because it channels event photography rather than art photography, which gives it its immediacy and nonchalance. It’s very similar to the look of photojournalism in the eighties when certain press photographers started working with colour films to document openings etc., they used the big Metz flashes on a bracket and the diffusers were less sophisticated so you get this very direct, often blown out light. And amateur photographs of parties at the time were much the same (albeit with smaller flashes).
So stylized (because retro) yet nonchalant. And it’s really easy to do, just have your flash fire a bit harder than it suggests on it own :)
I’ve seen some breakdowns of the PCBs in the OP-1 and it doesn’t look like they’re skimping on parts/design to me. I’m not huge into hardware nor an EE so maybe I’m wrong here.
However I would think that given the volumes they sell and the component cost with all of the custom bits that go into an OP-1 Field, it’s probably fairly reasonable.
Most businesses want to make products they can sell. I’m only suggesting that maybe the engineering that goes on at TE isn’t pure marketing fuzz and that they’re not selling underwhelming products at inflated prices to suckers who love a brand more than decent gear.
Having read the article I think it’s interesting how they’re running the business. It seems that they value creativity and skill rather than time to market or feature lists.
It’s pretty easy to make a pure software synth with high-end DACs that is basically a laptop trapped in a custom box with an opaque interface of some sort. Almost everyone does it in some way. Features! Deep menus, tonnes of buttons, endless tweaking. Probably easier to do on a laptop.
It’s a neat feat of engineering to put limits on where you allow yourself to go. Different things happen when you have to get creative to avoid the limits. The Pocket Operator series is dope as hell. What a neat idea that almost effortlessly pulls in the Game & Watch aesthetic. Few places are doing stuff like that.
I’m curious what other oddball stuff they will work on next. It’s not necessarily my cup of tea but I really think they do good work.
It’d be interesting to get a deep dive into specific products in their line. He talks about influences in general. I wonder how that ends up playing out.
Value has no objective correlate: it is a construct agreed upon by the seller and buyer.
"Overpriced," "rip-off," and their ilk seem to me ad hominem attacks by people who don't meet at "sold."
But their customers know exactly what they are getting so it is not that.
Isn’t what you’re describing more of a “market price” or something like that?
On the other you have marketing which without changing the item/product itself might change its (perceived) value.
But, people pay for it. They want the whittled down, inspiring experience without any of the effort or trouble. I sympathize with those people, but Teenage Engineering's products are like the Disney Star Wars hotel of audio equipment. It's a one-of-a-kind, pretty-looking, dumbed-down, expensive scam. Some people will defend it, and particularly affluent guests might even say it's worth the money. Undeniably though, much like every Disney park, TE's product line is built to fleece the customer.
I've got half a mind to chew Moog out for the same thing, but they have legitimate excuses for why their instruments can't be mass-produced. Teenage Engineering doesn't.
The same applies to the Star Wars hotel. It's not for you, nobody is holding a gun to your head making you stay there. For the people paying, it's worth it to them.
If your employer offered you a raise, would you turn it down because you don't want to fleece the customer?
There’s not a ton of rationality in music gear, people like what they like.
The point people are making here is that everything the OP-1 does can be achieved or surpassed with a couple of $10 apps and a low-end general purpose computing device.
Nice guitar (aside brand tax) has actual cost to make it, plastic toy like OP-1 is very cheap in comparison.
Hell, it's probably cheaper to make than random ass $500 behringer synth, even at unit count
I don't know if this is the right analogy. Some people want to pay for features _not_ to be included in stuff because they enjoy the simplicity.
There are phones that don't have a browser or let you download apps, for example. That's not a "scam", that's just marketing to people who want simplicity.
I could name a dozen grooveboxes that can be had for under $300 today, but it's all sorta besides the point. People want the OP-1 because it's what they see on YouTube, not because it makes music. Considering how long the product has stagnated, I see no reason that it should cost as much as it does today.
That's the rub. I have no interest in the TE stuff (or, for that matter, most other manufacturer's stuff), but what we can do on our hosts, these days, is amazing.
I remember using a Tascam recorder for our sessions, where you keep remixing tracks, until the hiss becomes your "signature sound."
Nowadays, you can have a 24-track, digital system on your handheld, for peanuts.
They've "productized" an instrument that shouldn't cost more than $200 to manufacture at their scale. I'm mostly mad at how consistently stupid their target audience is, not the fact that they exist.
Show it, then. (and btw "half as much" is significantly more than "under 300 dollars")
>but people will balk at it complaining that it doesn't have a cow animation like the OP-1 does.
Probably I will complain that it lacks synthesis, a multitrack recorder capable of making long tracks, an input for sampling, or something. (I agree the animations in TE stuff are silly though).
I posted some examples of cheap, shitty grooveboxes I would prefer to the OP-1 in another comment below. Understandably not all of them will be to everyone's liking, but all of them are cheaper than the OP-1 and easier for me to recommend to learning musicians.
- Novation Circuit
- Roland MC-101
- Korg Electribe
- Used Digitakt
- (God forbid) Teenage Engineering OP-Z
The list goes on but those are the big names. Again, I'm mostly fascinated that such a nothingburger company like TE can capture the hearts of rich people everywhere. Maybe it just goes to show that the most successful businesses aren't the ones with the best products, but with the most effective marketing and highest sex appeal.
I wouldn't say any of them would be an alternative.
I think OP-1 is overpriced because there is nothing like it. I mean a secondhand laptop with a 69$ daw such as Reaper can do more, an MPC is more complete. But people who see the appeal of the OP-1 probably already have a computer and a DAW so this is not what they are looking for. They want a toy to make music.
I am not in the market for such a thing but I guess it is not that overpriced if some people are willing to buy it at this price.
This goes without saying.
Also, having owned/used over half of those on the list, none of them emulate the tape functionality, which is arguably the OP-1's killer feature in the same way that the sequencer is the OP-Z's.
Close enough.
> And it lacks knobs and piano keys
Well you can get like a dozen of various sized synths for that price but you'd then complain it has too many knobs and keys
Or maybe it is, in which case the entire modern economy is a scam. Ok I see where this thread is going from here.
In the modern audio landscape I'd rather pick Sonos as an example of a rip-off. High price, closed ecosystem, and data collection through the cloud services.
Yet people buy their products in large quantities, for well over a decade... They are used by top tier artists and consumer alike, and are used on many hit songs.
If you think they're so overpriced, there should be a massive opportunity to undercut them and sell such quality for less. But no one has... Again, for well over a decade...
Maybe they understand products better than people that don't make products.
People buy what they want, not what you think they should.
Just like buying a smartphone is a more rational choice than buying a rotary dial phone (assuming you have no phone beforehand), is not that subjective and is incredibly dishonest to even pretend that is so, and also you evaded the main premise that it was being discussed, meaning that you can just undercut a product by creating a cheaper/better one, because with a lot of products the line of thinking is a lot more complicated than that, sometimes predictable but irrational, in the case of Goop is due being the first one to came up with the idea and to be related to a female celebrity (and with it all the celebrity worship attached in culture)
Sorry, human utility functions, which drive pricing, are subjective [1]. This is basic economics. Different actors have different values - if there were some mystical "rational" rule to drive prices, it would be the same for all people. That some people value different things differently would imply that what is rational for one person (thus they choose one ordering) must be irrational for another (since they choose a different ordering).
Some people buy Goop because it makes them happy. That is all that is needed. That you do not does not make their purchase irrational. That is a misguided way to judge them and their preferences.
>and its one of the reasons its prices tend to be more stable
No, it's the other way around - people ten to buy more of the foods that are priced stably since they can plan. Many foods are wildly unstably priced, and as such cannot be planned around, so are more niche.
And this happens not just in food, but pretty much every type of good.
>certainly the most basic ones (e.g. potatos).
Potatoes are historically more volatile in pricing compared to other food stuffs [2] (you can use the site to check lots of goods, put each in Excel, compute volatility). So your claims are contradicted by evidence.
> predictable but irrational
Define a rational purchase. Be sure to address individual utility functions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility
[2] https://www.in2013dollars.com/Potatoes/price-inflation#:~:te....
Did this ever ship? looks like it’s been in pre-order for the last three years?
It says pre-order because they’re shipping in batches so if you order now you’ll get it in a few months rather than right away.
Most inspiring instrument I’ve ever played. Reconnected me back to making music.
https://www.modernsounds.co/pluto
amazing work and so cool that that sort of thing is possible from a solopreneur these days.
Any other meeting need to have a precise agenda for me to attend it, especially if it means 1h of an engineer time might be wasted. If you are invited to a meeting and there is nothing in the agenda that concern you, you should mention it to the person sending the invite. A meeting has to be prepared to be effective anyway, you should know prior to the meeting what kind of input you are expected to bring. If all they give you is a vague title you should refuse until the scope is more precisely expressed otherwise people are wasting your company's precious money.
As such I do not enjoy hearing what their founder thinks about anything, or puff pieces about him, like this one. I'm open to being convinced otherwise but all of the new information I receive fits in with the prior assessment - they want your money for a cool looking music toy.
Once upon a time I worked a full time stressful job at a startup and was well paid.
I didn’t have a lot of time for hobbies, but an op-1 would have been a great way to play around with music. I’d have been a perfect customer and very happy with it.
Edit: Looks like this commenter is exactly the way I imagine myself back in the day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34665229
Teenage Engineering goes belly up and your unit breaks, the pathway to creative activity you spent time training is lost, more than if you'd initially bought say, a harmonica, or spent the same $$$ on a conventional instrument, a conventional sampler or computer software.
People looking for music tools that will serve them over time, or even a lifetime, will be better served investing their time into tools and practices that are not bound to the fate of a single company.
All of this stuff can be fun to play with, but they market these things as serious tools for creators, when they are better equipped for store window demonstrations.
There is nothing that a TE box can do that a DAW can't do out of the box except for be a silly dedicated box with cryptic controls.
This also (at least for me) is the joy of esoteric and weird programming languages!
It's been months now that they've been out of stock on their website - https://teenage.engineering/store/po-20/
Somehow I have a better connection to making music since it was my own virtual Synthesizer and it does just what I need it to do!
Modular synth emulator, all the plugging wires manually without the desk space and $$$ cost of modular synth
Having dedicated controls can make a huge difference, having limited possibilities, too.
If you know what you want and how to get it, both those points are probably much less important than when you are getting started.
Of course you could also design your ideal environment including controls, but that's still one more thing to do before you get started.
but also it makes me look quirky and artsy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMS_Synthi_100
Which was part of the world's first private computer music studio. In 1969.
Colossus AS200 slim: £23500
Colossus DOUBLE: £50000
Limited Edition BLACK Colossus classic: £27500K
wow...
Here's an archived copy: https://archive.is/x2oxd