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The photography of this is interesting. I'm not sure I'd know how to approach this assignment (I might start with rapport and portraiture in the space), but some things I noticed on different photos:
* 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.
All of which says "stylised and arty" and is a look much used in The Wire and similar publications.
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.
And people fall for it. It's crazy how many people blindly buy into TE's "homestyle" marketing like they're some hibrow synth company. The OP-1 tickles every American's "Product Cortex" in their brain though, immediately associating brutalist design and Corinthian leather with quality engineering. It doesn't matter if we're not the target audience, we just want to spend money on pretty things that make us feel good. The OP-1 is like the rich man's fidget spinner, I see it on someone's desk and assume that they have too much time and money on their hands.
Just goes to show that you can take pretty much anything, market it to relatively affluent and bored tech workers and make a killing.
So... you judge character based on appearances?
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.
My opinion is based off the weekend I spent with a rented model. I very quickly realized that the OP-1 is like an iPhone app that someone turned into pricy hardware.
> 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.
That last 10% is precisely the point. Nothing AFAIK has the audio-oriented tape-style workflow with a keyboard and groovebox functionality in as small a footprint as the OP-1. The reality is that the OP-1 has been successful enough to warrant a successor and that are not negatively affecting other manufacturers doing whatever they want to do with their offerings, and this affects you personally... how?
I just find it utterly fascinating how rich, clueless tech workers throw money at cool-looking companies they see on YouTube. It's so unfathomably stupid to me that I feel the need to share it on HN, but I realize in retrospect this community might not share my opinion.
It's unfathomably stupid to me that one would care so much about what others spend their money on, as if it were something actively harmful.
To each their own, the only real winner here is the one selling their product.
Sometimes I forget this is a business website first, tech website second. Touché, the abject waste of money is so easy to ignore when you contextualize it on a website of moonshot founders and Apple enthusiasts.
I have a fair share of dislikes of what people spend their money on, e.g. conspicuous consumption on fads, Teslas in particular, because they have or will directly impact my being as an individual through policy and regulation. The instrument someone enjoys making music on is so insignificant that it shouldn't warrant my concern.
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.
If you don't care about it, nobody is egging you into further conversation. I talk about this stuff because I enjoy making music, and there is intellectually gratifying criticism to be made on the gear being produced today. If you don't care about that, then admittedly I could see how this is pedantic and pointless.
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.
> I talk about this stuff because I enjoy making music
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?
It's not "care", it's morbid curiosity about how psyche of humans work.
There is a marked difference between curiosity and kvetching.
"Who in right mind buys this overpriced gadget? Why ?" is both.
Shh don't tell Uli Behringer about it /s
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.
I am pretty sure real professionals use carefully configured personal computers with keyboards plugged in.
The same as how professional photographers use expensive 'real' capital-C Cameras with interchangeable capital-L Lenses but still carry pocketable point-and-shoots for 'fun,' e.g. Ricoh GR, Fuji X100. Tools should be enjoyable to use, which these gadgets offer in spades.
But in this case, the just-for-fun pocket device is more often expensive than the capital-K Keyboard.
Both of the cameras I listed are more expensive than many perfectly capable interchangeable-lens cameras (Ricoh GR ~$1000, Fuji X100 ~$1300 [currently prone to scalping for even more]), but still rightfully warrant the demand because of their usability.
Which is fine. If professionals collect them for novelty, nothing is lost. If a beginner were to spend all their money on a novelty camera instead of an interchangeable lens model, then it does become a bit of a waste. Almost like they bought into the hype because of the end-product or social sex-appeal, a phenomenon that ties neatly into TE's marketing.
They aren't novelties any more than using a prime non-zoom lens on an antique film camera is a novelty. That would be tantamount to claiming that playing on a large unwieldy needs-to-be-tuned acoustic piano is a novelty compared to a digital keybed with plugins.
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
Smaller devices are still used as notepad for ideas.
Synthstrom Deluge does everything the OP-1 does (and much more), and was $400 cheaper until recently.
No UI, no keyboard requiring a different mental interface if you are coming from a traditional i.e. piano-based instrument, at least twice the size.
It's also much bigger and heavier though.
Yep, if you really think about it people not overcharging for their products are the real suckers.
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The OP-1 is an instrument though, it seems like a pretty amazing instrument for creativity for those that can use it. And most instruments are more expensive than it..
I've tried a lot of grooveboxes in my time, and the OP-1 is one of the only instruments I've ever seen that has worse value-per-dollar than the DSI Tempest. Very few instruments are expensive and useless enough to justify this; the OP-1 is solidly among them though.
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.
Which one would you recommend? For an easy to use low end starting point.
I'd probably recommend the Model: Samples if you're interested in sampling, or the Novation Circuit if you want to focus on synthesis. The Model: Samples in particular is great - it's an adaptation of Elektron's more expensive Digitakt that puts the core featureset in a more focused box. It would probably be my sub-$400 desert-island groovebox choice.
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?)
OP-1 owner eh ?
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.
> I see it on someone's desk and assume that they have too much time and money on their hands.
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.
They’re the Sharper Image of audio.
Unfortunately, All low volume boutique electronic musical instruments have “insanely high margins”. The less boutique normal stuff made by Yamaha and Roland is likely priced at 4x the BOM - and they are able to get better deals from distributors than TE can.
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.
If you compare them with other competitors in the space the likes of Elektron or Polyend give you more hardware for less. They make Elektron look outright cheap in comparison in fact.
> 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.
It's worth drawing a line between handmade instruments and mass-produced machines though. Yes, Roland and Yamaha also have high margins, but they also face steep competition from low-margin companies like Behringer who are effectively wrecking their business model. Companies like Moog were safe because their demand will always be the same, but boutique vendors everywhere are closing up shop.
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.
> Behringer who are effectively wrecking their business model
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?
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I get it though, there are lots of expensive things I’d like to collect, but it’s about the object and not what it’s worth. If they were cheap I’d still want to collect them.
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.
It makes sense, because he is also a co-founder of Acne Studios[1], and they are about pretty high margins on unspectacular but nice clothing.
Seriously, comparing my OP-1 ($1400, made in china, buggy, bad QC, small and simple hardware) with my Analog Rytm mkII ($1700, made in sweden, reliable, impeccable QC, larger and much more complex hardware) - the margins on these TE gizmos must be insane.
There was nothing like the OP-1 at release and still nothing like it now. It is overpriced, but they arguably deserve it. They have the Apple business model.
By what criteria is there "nothing like" it? Of course you can define "like" in a way to make this true, but I'm curious what you think are the salient differentiators.
Portable all in one groovebox with a keyboard.
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.
You are of course free to have fun with the OP-1, but I found it to block my creativity when I constantly have to work around the omnipresent petty limitations like 4 tracks, 1 effect per voice, almost useless sequencers etc.
I agree and enjoyed the OP-Z more for that reason. They are supposed to be limited but that doesn't work for everyone.
> Portable all in one groovebox with a keyboard.
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
None of those have a keyboard.
They have, just not piano one. Which hinders more than helps creativity if anything...
If you can play keyboard, there really is no comparison between keys and a set of buttons.
> There is a reason it is so successful.
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.
I was curious to hear about other products that are similar, but superior to OP-1, that previous reply alluded to.
If someone said "I have a $1400 (or $2000, now that they've raised the price) budget for a lightweight portable jambox/production setup, what would you recommend?" I would tell them to get an iPad Pro, an external audio interface, and a MIDI USB peripheral of their choice.
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.
The OP1 has midi input over USB.
I'm not an expert but I suspect an iPad with some interesting groovebox apps would provide just as much fun and be more powerful.
As a beginner I think ipad + audiokit synths + impc pro is a killer setup
I guess they know their market because the follow up OP-1 Field is even more expensive
You definitely got a point. I would say that they deserve the money because people love their products and are happy to pay the premium.
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.
“Shit ain’t broke unless you’re broke, that’s some real shit.” - Lil Yachty
The bad-flash point-and-shoot aesthetic is in now. NY street photographers championing the Bruce Gilden-esque technique are growing into their own in publications like NYT and defining the wave.
All of that is just the current photography fad. Sinna Nisseri is the poster boy of the look at the moment though he gets better performances out of his subjects.
This style is ubiquitous—Terry Richardson, etc.
And has been for two decades now… remarkably long lived.
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 :)
Let's hope this guy didn't get the rest of the Terry Richardson experience!
It reminds me of Terry Richardson's sort of "amateur point-and-shoot portraiture" style, which also had a very 1970s-basement vibe to it which I think matches both the ideas and the gear here.
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For all the folks who immediately react to any mention of TE with, “it’s expensive garbage only idiots would buy!” Have you seen a full tear down and did a component cost analysis to get a rough idea of the unit cost?
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.
I too would live in a pinterest-ready castle filled with toys but i dont have the stomach to rip off customers as shamelessly as TE is. The B&O of our generation.
I dunno, I have always believed that something is worth exactly what someone else will pay for it.
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."
I agree something being overpriced doesn’t exist. However, rip off or scam is different. That’s intentionally selling one thing as something else. Mostly in the form of not holding up some end of a bargain.
Well, it is overpriced rip-off if you target consumers that don't know any better and could get better for less.
But their customers know exactly what they are getting so it is not that.
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Most people comparing products have a good understanding of what they mean by “value”.
Isn’t what you’re describing more of a “market price” or something like that?
If the value is lower than the market price, how does the company continue existing? Unless there was a monopoly or some other kind of market failure wouldn't people just avoid the products of TE?
On one hand...
On the other you have marketing which without changing the item/product itself might change its (perceived) value.
Yep. Ostensibly there's nothing wrong with making pricy hipster audio equipment, but the rampant success of their marketing just makes me facepalm. People out there genuinely think the OP-1 is a $1000 product in 2023, which should inspire riots in the street. The OP-1 Field raising the price instead of lowering it is the last nail in the coffin for me. $800 is a pricy toy - $1500+ puts you in brand-new Octatrack territory. Hell, that puts you in brand-new-Macbook-and-DAW territory.
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.
Most people are happy with it even though it's overpriced. Suggesting it's a scam insults peoples' intelligence.
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.
What you call fleecing the customer, I call charging the market rate.
If your employer offered you a raise, would you turn it down because you don't want to fleece the customer?
A nice guitar costs just as much, despite being functionally equivalent to one 1/3 its price.
There’s not a ton of rationality in music gear, people like what they like.
With respect, that comparison fails, because a $1,500 guitar will be noticeably more playable and have a substantially better sound than a $500 guitar. (Source: have played guitar for 35 years.)
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.
Why you are comparing guitar to a synth ?
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
> But, people pay for it. They want the whittled down, inspiring experience without any of the effort or trouble.
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.
Leica charges hundreds more for monochrome-only and screenless models of their cameras. The fact that there have been several generations of their suggests it's working and helps keep them afloat.
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shouldn't there be a normally priced equivalent product on the market? it's not like we're talking about cutting edge silicon here
There are. Much like the Disney analogy, there are other cheaper theme parks on the market. The OP-1 is "unique" though, in the sense that (thankfully) nobody else is making a 4-track digital tape recorder anymore. There are hundreds of products like it, but much like the Star Wars hotel, nobody is dumb/rich enough to build a replica of Disney's attraction.
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.
What are the options with similar portability, sampling, synthesis, fx, and multitrack recording, that you can buy new, and is not just an ipad or something, for under 300 dollars?
> and is not just an ipad or something
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.
Right, these products don’t work for me because their interfaces reproduce what was bad about 1980ies technology: small screens, shift buttons to enable multiple functions, lots of conventions you have to learn by heart. DAW’s are so much easier to use! That’s not to say I don’t like physical hardware—it makes so much sense for analog synths, mixing desks, guitar pedals etc. or whatever instrument where you have a nice chunky button for each function.
You've sorta missed my analogy. You can get a Novation Circuit, Electribe or even a brand-new Model: Samples for less than $300, but none of them are the "Star Wars Hotel" that the OP-1 is. I could show you a product that is exactly the same and cost's half as much, but people will balk at it complaining that it doesn't have a cow animation like the OP-1 does.
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.
>I could show you a product that is exactly the same and cost's half as much
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).
The OP-1's synthesis engine is so stiff that I'd argue it doesn't have one either. It's subtractive synth may as well be sample-based, the FM model is fine but incredibly simple, the Karpluss-Strong engine is fun but one-note and the sampler doesn't really fill in the rest of the cracks. It's a fine machine, but arguing that it's both a synth and a multitrack recorder ignores the fact that both of those features are pretty compromised.
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.
I am also interested in the $300-500 all-in-one groovebox rivaling the OP-1 (without cow animation)
Same, show me what’s out there.
- Elektron Model: Samples
- Novation Circuit
- Roland MC-101
- Korg Electribe
- Used Digitakt
- (God forbid) Teenage Engineering OP-Z
The list goes on but those are the big names. Again, I'm mostly fascinated that such a nothingburger company like TE can capture the hearts of rich people everywhere. Maybe it just goes to show that the most successful businesses aren't the ones with the best products, but with the most effective marketing and highest sex appeal.
I am not an OP-1 user nor am I a TE fanboy but I owned a Model:Samples and the simple fact that you cannot even sample on it and it doesn't have any synth capabilities cannot make it a candidate. The digitakt is not a synth either. Same with original Novation circuit and with Novation you'd have to buy both the circuit track and the circuit rhythm if my memory is correct to be able to both record/sample and use a synth. MC-101 seems completely different in term of ergonomics.
I wouldn't say any of them would be an alternative.
I think OP-1 is overpriced because there is nothing like it. I mean a secondhand laptop with a 69$ 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.
>the most successful businesses aren't the ones with the best products, but with the most effective marketing and highest sex appeal.
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.
That's a $600 product. Perhaps less expensive but not not-expensive. And it lacks knobs and piano keys.
The new OP-1 is 2000 euro. So $600 is less than half
> 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
No cow animation, either... completely unusable.
I'm speaking from a place of ignorance. If the objects are so alike, care explaining how? To an outsider like me they look 100% different.
But it is successful because it is totally not an OP-1.
It's not $300, but the SP404 MK2 is sweet
Agreed, and the MPC One is an amazing value for all it can do.
I really want a Pioneer Toraiz SP-16 but can't justify it to myself because I really don't need it
It's not normally called "scam" when you just take a simple product, wrap it with lots of marketing and branding, and overprice it.
Or maybe it is, in which case the entire modern economy is a scam. Ok I see where this thread is going from here.
I am not saying I wouldn't love to be able to buy an OP-1 or an OP-1 Field for a lower price, I would absolutely love that. But no-one held a gun to my head and made me buy one for a retail price. It is a luxury synth, not a basic good like bread or water people's lives depends on. Everyone who buys a thing from TE and feels like they were ripped off should realize they volunteered to get ripped off.
Luxury products cannot always be called a rip-off. They just target a certain audience with different values and less sensitivity to price. Also, the people who create music would be more enthusiastic about the equipment than people who buy purely consumer electronics. So, I'd expect they'd know the options and simply prefer the deal Teenage Engineering offers.
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.
> i dont have the stomach to rip off customers as shamelessly as TE is
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.
The candles that "smell like my vagina" for $75 by Goop company owned by Gwyneth Paltrow also sold out at launch, doesn't mean that that there's an opportunity to undercut them with better and cheaper crotch candles, not in the slightest; to put it succinctly there is a huge amount of people that make irrational purchases and there is no need to pretend otherwise.
Your definition of irrational is not everyone's. I suspect you buy things other people would consider irrational, yet you buy anyways. Does that make you irrational? Or do different people have different utility functions?
People buy what they want, not what you think they should.
Nope, its not that subjective, and not about what I think or don't think I should, food is a product category that is fully rational to buy from and its one of the reasons its prices tend to be more stable and is strongly corelated to the hardships of the production chain, not all foods but certainly a lot, certainly the most basic ones (e.g. potatos).
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)
>Nope, its not that subjective, and not about what I think or don't think I should
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....
Where is Behringer when you need it?
They clone things people did actual known music on and not devices being known for being expensive toy.
It’s a luxury product! I’m guessing you just don’t enjoy luxury products. I don’t either, but then at least I can identify them. Some people like luxury.
Right. It’s like complaining that a Rolex is $15k because you can buy a just-as-good mechanical Seiko for $75.
I don't think it's a rip-off. TE is working in 'expensive toy for rich hobbyists' market, not in 'professional music equipment' market.
It would be half bad if it wasn't for "synthfluencers" who peddle TE's stuff. The company would probably have been long gone under.
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What do you expect from a fifty something marketing executive from an ancient banking family who names his company “teenage engineering” — something with shag carpet and wood paneling right out of the 1970s — when he was a teenager.
Didn't notice this detail in the interview - do you mean that he comes from a very wealthy family, and that was a factor in his founding of the company?
Remember this thing? https://play.date/ (Gameboy with a crank) Made it to the front page on here a couple times, if I’m not mistaken.
Did this ever ship? looks like it’s been in pre-order for the last three years?
Yes it has shipped.
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.
I've got mine. It's exactly what was promised, and fun to play :)
Had it for a few months now and it’s a fun little thing.
They shipped the first batch but didn’t secure enough processors so are having to re-engineer for a different chipset/platform last I heard.
I've wanted to get their OP-1 portable synth since the first time I saw it, that price tho..
Echoing sibling: waited years, found good used deal, told myself I’d just sell it for the same price if I didn’t love it.
Most inspiring instrument I’ve ever played. Reconnected me back to making music.
I waited, lusted, and saved for years, watching the price nearly double, before succumbing and getting one. I do not regret it.
I bought mine 9 years ago and it costed 790 EUR. It was regarded as a capable, but possibly overpriced synth. It’s quite shocking and disappointing to see that it’s so much more expensive now.
Recently sold my OP-1 to get the Field at some point but it's not really a convincing upgrade so far.
Ask Monte Booker if you can lend one, he has two
reminds me of the meme "I Have Three PS3s" :)
Reminds me about my neighbor who designed and then sold a batch of portable modular synths:
https://www.modernsounds.co/pluto
amazing work and so cool that that sort of thing is possible from a solopreneur these days.
I’m not knowledgeable about synths and such (I wish I had more time to learn music, though), but I always look at this stuff because the devices are aesthetically beautiful — pluto as well. It’s probably almost a shoo-in that if you focused on aesthetics you could sell out a small batch of modular synths with the most basic beep / boop making capabilities.
The market is quite saturated for those. You'd have to make something pretty and doing something more than basic.
I play my OP-1 during meetings and while waiting for things to compile. It’s one of my favorite objects, I often get lost with it.
Your coworkers don't have a problem with you being distracted and wearing headphones during a meeting?
Maybe they are referring to remote meetings where you can mute yourself.
Yea I mindlessly plunk around on it while muted.
why don't you just leave the meeting if you aren't paying attention anyway?
In most companies that's not an option. You sound lucky to not have to go through this, but waiting through hour-long meetings while waiting for an interesting topic or hearing your name is part of daily work for many office workers.
Well I dutifully take part to a 30min daily meeting and a one 30min weekly one, from which I still sometimes excuse myself due to other obligations knowing that I will be contacted directly afterwards if a specific topic requires me, but these are short enough for me to fodus on them.
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.
I think the work of this company is fragile and shortsighted, encouraging creators to put their energy into a cascade of non-standard paradigms, but without creating any valuable new conventions.
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.
What’s so wrong with a cool looking 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
In my view, "cool toy" in this case is a guise for a proprietary platform and a proprietary method of working on music, which can (alternatively) be the most open and free thing in the world.
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.
I don’t see the problem, though I am also not sure what you mean. What is standard? What should people be doing instead? Do TE’s products differ from other grooveboxes?
Standard = generic. The difference between telling someone to play guitar and telling someone to play a Black Les Paul Custom with Block Inlays through a Mesa Mark I head into a tall Marshall 4x12 cabinet. Both have their places, but telling someone just "play guitar" is an inherently more useful thing.
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.
> With any kind of creative work you start disabling as much as possible and narrow it down only to the necessary tools you need, and from there start making the work. That’s what I believe makes you super creative.
This also (at least for me) is the joy of esoteric and weird programming languages!
Would like to know when they'll start selling their pocket operator synthesizer and sequencer again. Rumors that a chip shortage has negatively impacted on their production, but who knows!
It's been months now that they've been out of stock on their website - https://teenage.engineering/store/po-20/
Same over whole synth market, it's slowly clearing out
Given their other marketing, they could simply be keeping it out of stock intentionally, to increase demand by creating a (false) sense of scarcity.
Yes, you get that sense alright when the $500 units all seem to be in stock no problem.
I mean, if my $500 product has better margins I’m going to take my limited supply of materials and put it into my best money makers.
Why is this so hard to believe? I truly don’t understand the unvoiced objections to my hypothesis.
Perhaps slightly OT but I found building my own synthesizer using a cheap midi controller with a few dials and supercollider[0] to be very enjoyable experience.
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!
If you have not already see in https://vcvrack.com/
Modular synth emulator, all the plugging wires manually without the desk space and $$$ cost of modular synth
Supercollider is unfortunate because it has a very restrictive license.
Is it the GPLv3 you're calling "very restrictive" or are we seeing different licenses?
It seems to me that hardware synths are like vinyls - people buy them because of connotations, a certain image. In almost all terms software is unquestionably better. And if you want to be a "quirky artsy synthesizer person", don't buy into this hardware shit, just download SunVox or Pure Data.
Depends on your definition of "better".
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.
some people do, for sure. but i've gotten so much mileage out my Moog because of its knob twiddling interface. i hate using software, it doesn't inspire me to play in the same way. i appreciate the tactile sense and also the limitations of a piece of physical gear.
but also it makes me look quirky and artsy.
These photos are carefully curated, real electronic labs are rarely that neat (unless he is only doing the high level design on EDA and letting his employees do the actual hardware and board work).
The photos are from his flat, not from the company.
Comments here are peak HN.
What sick modular synth does he have there
Which is a remake, kind of, of the EMS Synthi 100.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMS_Synthi_100
Which was part of the world's first private computer music studio. In 1969.
Hey there, that's been a while! Nice to see you here again. And thanks for the link, awesome piece of kit (a bit out of the budget though!).
Wow that's a lot cheaper than I expected. Unlike buying a big Eurorack it's also dooming you to eternal poverty.
Colossus AS100 classic: £26500K
Colossus AS200 slim: £23500
Colossus DOUBLE: £50000
Limited Edition BLACK Colossus classic: £27500K
wow...
Welcome back, Scott!
Funny last name for someone living in a cold climate, KoutHooft translates to cold head in Dutch (minus the T).
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Note the Moog Theremin sitting around casually used as a dump for patchcables!
Behind the Theremin is a kakelugn/kachelofen/masonry-heater fireplace.
Those are beautiful!
Thanks for sharing, I've heard of TE on and off and tried their OP-1, good interview to read about the founder behind TE. Very interesting to read the comments from HN readers.
scandinavianmind.com is not responding very quickly, but it is responding.
Here's an archived copy: https://archive.is/x2oxd
OT but this page is a breath of no-js-required fresh air for 2023...
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So that’s where all the profits from the OP-1 went.
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> I sell overpriced aluminum audio equipment
And yet everything they make sells out. Almost like it's worth the price.
It’s weird that so many people anchor “value” to some absolute number, centered around their own valuation.
This is a premium product. If you don’t like the price, it’s not for you. But it’s clearly worth it to a lot of other people.
Kind of ironic to read so many complaints about the prices on a website where “charge more” was the mantra in every comment section here for many years.
I have to say though that the music industry as a whole, whether pro creator or consumer, is a great example of a market where cost and value can become disconnected based on myth and hearsay.
Having said that, I think part of the allure of Teenage Engineering is musicians believing in the holistic package, not just the physical product.
>And yet everything they make sells out. Almost like it's worth the price.
I dont think, A implies B.
With great marketing and lower volume production, you could probably make most overpriced, average quality widgets sell out.
Doesn't mean that because they're sold out therefore they were priced "right". (as subjective as pricing is)
If you are stripping out all context then no A doesn't imply B but we aren't talking in a vacuum. We are talking about a specific company.
> average quality widgets
Everyone I personally know who has bought anything from teenage engineering has nothing but good things to say about the quality.
They've made a couple of thing worth the money. The OP-1. That's about it.
I would consider their Pocket Operators to be more than novelties if they would have provide god damn MIDI support
Define "worth"
"Status symbol few have" like luxury car is also "worth" to people, even tho objectively might not be that off normal well-specced car.
Needlessly bitter and jealous take.
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> and possibly reevaluate your participation in
Don't ever talk to me or anyone else on HN this way. We have enough backhanded civility here, and you're not improving discourse by commenting like this.
It's a parody comment of the "I'm Rich, You're Poor" segment.
https://www.google.com/search?q=on+today%27s+episode+of+i%27...
It's a joke. Take a joke.
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