Teenage Engineering's free computer case(teenage.engineering) |
Teenage Engineering's free computer case(teenage.engineering) |
so they are trying to put out some cheap good value products to signal a return of the original hacker ethos
We may or may not agree about it being a brand we'd buy, of even if it's an accurate description, but there's little doubt for me that TE has an identifiably unique and profitable brand.
You'll meet some amazing musicians who have been touring for decades and are still playing on the same guitar they got for $800 15 years ago.
And you'll meet people who drop 5 figures on synth gear every year and have never put together a single track.
If you're running a business selling electronic music gear, who would you rather target?
Not to defend Teenage Engineering, but I have seen a surprising number of OP-1s in music videos/live performances of bands I respect. Does that justify its price tag? I feel somewhat certain in saying "no," but I have no expertise. Love its aesthetics though.
Everything about Teenage Engineering and related synths are toys. You can make real music with their toys but they don't do anything you couldn't do on your laptop.
The stuff TE makes are incredibly high build quality and beautiful toys though. I used to have an OP-1 for a while before I sold it. One of the coolest coffee table toys I've ever touched.
This is a nice story, but I suspect it's rarer than you make it sound. Serious working musicians like serious equipment which tends to cost a lot of money for a good reasons.
But these are also lower volume products, and I agree with your overall point that the music gear industry is kept alive by hobbyists with disposable income.
I don't think your opinion is well grounded. Their whole product line, from the inception, was luxury high-end, sometimes gimmicky, media devices.
Why do you feel justified to tag the "hacker ethos" buzzword? Because some of their products sell as PCB-only/optional custom case format?
Edit: i kinda take that back, as two people pointed out that EP-133 sampler actually has an okay feature-to-price ratio.
But $250 leather wraps to "transport" your OP-1 in tho, or $250 singing wooden dolls without obvious interfaces except bluetooth midi... i guess I'm not the target market
If you consider something like the TX-6 an overpriced status symbol, you have clearly never tried to make a 6 channel stereo mixer this small with these specs. And if you can't imagine a use for something so small and portable, then it simply isn't for you.
Or, since this is Hacker News. The Dirtywave M8 is a much much nicer device (does sampling and is a good ol' tracker) with synths, etc. Sure, it is more expensive, but you can make an M8 headless for just the price of a Teensy MCU. The UI is also much quicker and nicer than the KO-II once you get a feel for it.
tl;dr: bought a KO-II, even as a beginner I ran into its limits almost immediately. There are much better devices out there at similar price points (or much cheaper if you hook up an M8 headless to a laptop or cheap handheld game console).
I wonder if they used static-dissipative/ESD-safe plastic, as pure polypropylene is good insulator and easily builds up a static charge. There's a reason nearly all computer cases are conductive.
the psu is grounded, but the static has no way of getting to ground (via psu) if the case itself is non-conductive.
I was expected this to be a 3D print design people could grab for free.
Makes me wonder if this is starting a press cycle for something they'll release for sale in the nearish future.
hmmm now you have me thinking.
Most rPi units and similar are fine as they can be argued to be sold as parts rather than devices just like any other motherboard¹. The Pi400 presumably gets away with it, as something this is conspicuously sold as a device not a part, because that chonky heatsink² is enough to disrupt any errant EM fields outside the ranges that it should be emitting (those around 2.4GHz and 5GHz).
There are many grey areas, and indeed those where the letter of the regs is broken but not enforced. To cut a long story short wrt “Is this "legal" to run a pc open like that?”: yes running a PC in a case like that with no extra shielding is legal pretty much everywhere, though selling a complete PC with a case like that probably breaks regs and maybe even laws.
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[1] putting the responsibility with the purchaser, where it isn't enforced unless it is a problem (I chose not to shield my TV-box Pi4, not the company, and it isn't putting enough junk out to disrupt anyone else's anything else)
[2] everything else about the case is plastic
"More flipped out '25 offers will be presented during the rest of the year (Or until the world is a little more stable)."
a offer that is "flipped out" or crazy, weird, unusual, exceptional in the crazy sense. "flipped out" is someone who seemingly lost control of themselves or does something very unusual. "he flipped out because something went wrong". an attribute easily ascribed to what's happening in the US this year, the behavior of the current US president, and many other events.
OP-Z was absolutely garbage build quality. It was so disappointing to bring it out of its box after a year only to discover half of the buttons stopped working properly. Aside from the build quality I love that device,
starting to being perceived [...] brand with ridiculously overpriced products
It was pricy but still under the $1k mark - pretty standard for a piece of consumer creative gear.
The design made it extremely approachable, which means a ton of techie people who wouldn't be into music gear otherwise still wanted to grab one just to try it and who knows, maybe it'd turn them into musicians.
So yeah, fantastically designed piece of kit. Lots of respect to TE for having brought that into the world.
I think a lot of the frustration directed at TE more recently is due to the fact that that base equation around price/features/quality of the product, which was very good for the OP1, has only gotten worse for later products.
And the OP1 itself, despite being an almost 15 year old product, has gone up in price A LOT (and the 1f upgrades don't justify the bump).
It’s an amazing little piece of gear and is super fun - it’s definitely not for everyone, and requires a different approach to music making that (for me) focuses less on the functional, reproducible aspect, and more on an ephemeral journey that might end in a new track or might just be a jam, but I hardly ever fire it up and walk way not having a good time.
Currently have it wired to a Deluge and a POM-400, and mostly I send some MIDI notes to the OP1 for some added depth. But the synth engine feels so rich and powerful for such a little bugger!
10/10 would recommend and also there’s probably a lot more bang for your musical buck out there (cough couch Deluge)
While not a bad proxy, I would say it is a sufficient but not necessary condition. Especially since many pros have the money to blow on overpriced gear (but perhaps you do too).
My own anecdote: as a kid I wanted to learn electric guitar and, of course being a kid, I shopped with my eyes. My dad bought me a $1.2k guitar. It's still a respectable guitar to this day, don't get me wrong. But if he had instead taken the old electric in the garage (bought for probably $500) and spent a hundred bucks on getting it set up, I would've had a guitar just as good. I know because I dug it out recently and I actually think it is quite nice.
An example to a more extreme degree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klon_Centaur#Legacy
And yeah a musician friend of mine we have a running joke where we'll say something is "a software engineer pedal." Meaning you see them in the home studios of people who make good money doing something else, while working musicians get by with the nearest Boss equivalent.
I've never used an OP-1, wouldn't know how to use one or evaluate it. But I've been on stage with enough of them to get the sense that, if used fully, they can for some approaches to some styles of music, fill the role of several other pieces of gear that would each cost more than what it costs.
So I think this one is both. It's a software engineer's toy, and it's also a workhorse tool for professionals. Honestly an impressive achievement, not a lot of things end up being both in any discipline.
hah, in the world of photography, we talk about "cameras for dentists" (they often have a little red dot on them)