they have a branding problem - they are starting to being perceived like a snobby brand with ridiculously overpriced products sold as a status symbol - a Balanciaga of creative tech basically
so they are trying to put out some cheap good value products to signal a return of the original hacker ethos
Being called "...a Balanciaga of creative tech" isn't a "branding problem," if it is, in fact, the brand.
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.
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.
The OP1 is a genius piece of design tbh. It is very flexible and powerful for its small size, and devices in its category were very rare when it first came out (it helped define the modern incarnation of that category).
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).
I fell in love with the OP1 when I first saw it many many years ago. A few years back I took some of my bonus and finally got one, despite the price being a little higher than launch (I want to say maybe $1500?).
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)
It's not particularly expensive for professional music gear, which enough professional musicians use it as that I think I have to consider it that as well. Whatever else teenage engineering sells I don't really have an opinion about but that thing gets serious use by serious professionals so I feel obligated to take it seriously. Compared to a nord piano or a cello or a rhodes or a stage mixer or whatever it's not among the most expensive pieces of gear you will routinely see on a stage.
> ... enough professional musicians use it as that I think I have to consider it that as well.
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.
Well the entirety of my music gear is a 1994 p-bass and a mediocre amp I've been running it through since around the same time so I get it.
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.
Because you realistically don't need any physical hardware to make digital music. A laptop and some software is everything you really need. Perhaps a microphone for vocals and a cheap keyboard controller for input.
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.
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,
> 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.
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 never saw them in any other way. High end brands with conspicuous design have existed in tech for at least 100 years. Fancy cars, televisions and audio equipment for instance. Before that, there were ornate luxury tools.
> they have a branding problem - they are starting to being perceived like a snobby brand with ridiculously overpriced products sold as a status symbol - a Balanciaga of creative tech basically
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?
Browsing through their store I see only the "overpriced balenciaga-tier bullshit" category though...
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
This is a naive take, borderlining on bait. They are not 'trying', they have by and large succeeded. Both the PO and KO series devices are fantastic value for their respective prices.
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.
While the POs are fun devices for their price, the KO-II is a very limited, frustrating device. I fell into the hype and got one and after only two weeks after a complete beginner I realized I bought an over-expensive toy. An SP-404 MKII only costs a bit more and completely blows it away - actually usable display, almost unlimited sample storage, nicer step editing, far better and useful FX, etc. TE hypers will say it is much more complex and thus less fun and 'immediate' (they love to use that word), but for me the learning curve was about equal (for using the same functionality, the MK-II has much more functionality).
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.
That had never occurred to me but is a great question. I suppose between the poor conductivity of the fabric and the paint inside the dryer, the system is very well insulated. Maybe a dryer with bare walls could be antistatic without the use of dryer sheets. But maybe that would be a fire hazard.
As the clothes get dryer they become less conductive. Even if there was a perfect path to ground, the charge wouldn't be able to get there across the material itself.
That can't be the whole story though. You can feel the static charge from the clothes on your hand when you reach into the dryer a good 6-12" before you even make contact with the clothes.
Looking at the build PDF, you'd need a pretty large printer to do a single piece like that. Would need to split it into a few panels and have some sort of joinery or fasteners to make it fit on most consumer printers.
At the bottom of the page, it looks like this is a giveaway for August, and that there were OP-1 giveaways in June and July. The OP-1 is their flagship synthesizer.
Makes me wonder if this is starting a press cycle for something they'll release for sale in the nearish future.
Not giveaways, but it was instead a "name your own price" discount that allowed you to pay as little as $1399 and as much as $9999 (your choice) for an OP-1. What's bizarre is throughout the month of July, the OP-1 Field was completely SOLD OUT. And it felt pretty galling to their customers they would have this "name your price" promotion continue into July with the same device as the previous month - most people expected them to switch up which item would get the discount. No one was able to purchase an OP-1 from July 1 - July 31 at any price on their site.
It varies, but in many places you couldn't sell a device without proper shielding, but unless you are causing disruption to a public service or safety equipment there is nothing that stops a person owning and running one. Just think of the world full of rPi units, other SBCs, and other PCs, running completely caseless or in cases without much/any thought towards EMC shielding - it obviously isn't a problem, or it would be a big problem.
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.
----
[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)
That completely flew over my head. I can’t parse the sentence to understand if they’re making a statement or what they mean. What is a “flipped out ‘25 offer”?
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.
I was focusing more on the "Or until the world is a little more stable" part. I am guessing they have a lot of customers in USA, so they are hit by tariffs.
they have a branding problem - they are starting to being perceived like a snobby brand with ridiculously overpriced products sold as a status symbol - a Balanciaga of creative tech basically
so they are trying to put out some cheap good value products to signal a return of the original hacker ethos
Being called "...a Balanciaga of creative tech" isn't a "branding problem," if it is, in fact, the brand.
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.
The world of music hardware is an interesting one.
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?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_(guitar)
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.
The OP1 is a genius piece of design tbh. It is very flexible and powerful for its small size, and devices in its category were very rare when it first came out (it helped define the modern incarnation of that category).
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).
I fell in love with the OP1 when I first saw it many many years ago. A few years back I took some of my bonus and finally got one, despite the price being a little higher than launch (I want to say maybe $1500?).
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)
It's not particularly expensive for professional music gear, which enough professional musicians use it as that I think I have to consider it that as well. Whatever else teenage engineering sells I don't really have an opinion about but that thing gets serious use by serious professionals so I feel obligated to take it seriously. Compared to a nord piano or a cello or a rhodes or a stage mixer or whatever it's not among the most expensive pieces of gear you will routinely see on a stage.
> ... enough professional musicians use it as that I think I have to consider it that as well.
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
Well the entirety of my music gear is a 1994 p-bass and a mediocre amp I've been running it through since around the same time so I get it.
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.
> "a software engineer pedal."
hah, in the world of photography, we talk about "cameras for dentists" (they often have a little red dot on them)
Because you realistically don't need any physical hardware to make digital music. A laptop and some software is everything you really need. Perhaps a microphone for vocals and a cheap keyboard controller for input.
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.
> incredibly high build quality
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,
Personally? I'd target the musicians. But I personally find more value in working with creatives than people with money to throw away.
Then you move zero product.
> 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.
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 never saw them in any other way. High end brands with conspicuous design have existed in tech for at least 100 years. Fancy cars, televisions and audio equipment for instance. Before that, there were ornate luxury tools.
> they have a branding problem - they are starting to being perceived like a snobby brand with ridiculously overpriced products sold as a status symbol - a Balanciaga of creative tech basically
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?
They’ve always had those two tiers of pricing/products. That’s a read from a decade ago
Browsing through their store I see only the "overpriced balenciaga-tier bullshit" category though...
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
The pocket operators and the EP-133 sampler are fairly priced.
Yeah, the pocket operators are fine.
I am confused, I thought they always were perceived as such a brand. Perhaps not snobby, but great stuff, which is also expensive.They also have a free Android instrument, and their modular line is very cheap relatively
The field system is probably what you're seeing, products like the EP-133 are reasonably priced: https://teenage.engineering/store/ep-133
When PO debuted they were $49
This is a naive take, borderlining on bait. They are not 'trying', they have by and large succeeded. Both the PO and KO series devices are fantastic value for their respective prices.
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.
While the POs are fun devices for their price, the KO-II is a very limited, frustrating device. I fell into the hype and got one and after only two weeks after a complete beginner I realized I bought an over-expensive toy. An SP-404 MKII only costs a bit more and completely blows it away - actually usable display, almost unlimited sample storage, nicer step editing, far better and useful FX, etc. TE hypers will say it is much more complex and thus less fun and 'immediate' (they love to use that word), but for me the learning curve was about equal (for using the same functionality, the MK-II has much more functionality).
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).
FYI, you can also connect that Teensy to one of those portable gameboy style handhelds to get an experience closer to the actual M8.
Yep, I mentioned that at the end :). Got a real M8 second-hand, love it! So compact for travel etc.
Free as in speech or beer...?
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.
Wouldn't the power supply ground all static?
this case is conductive, precisely so the excess charge can be grounded by the power supply by being in touch/contact with the psu metallic casing.
the psu is grounded, but the static has no way of getting to ground (via psu) if the case itself is non-conductive.
Probably not guaranteed, I've often wondered why my clothes out of the dryer have a static charge when the dryer is plugged into a grounded outlet.
That had never occurred to me but is a great question. I suppose between the poor conductivity of the fabric and the paint inside the dryer, the system is very well insulated. Maybe a dryer with bare walls could be antistatic without the use of dryer sheets. But maybe that would be a fire hazard.
As the clothes get dryer they become less conductive. Even if there was a perfect path to ground, the charge wouldn't be able to get there across the material itself.
That can't be the whole story though. You can feel the static charge from the clothes on your hand when you reach into the dryer a good 6-12" before you even make contact with the clothes.
We have the ability to sense these electric fields way before they reach breakdown potentials.
Sold Out.
I was expected this to be a 3D print design people could grab for free.
Looking at the build PDF, you'd need a pretty large printer to do a single piece like that. Would need to split it into a few panels and have some sort of joinery or fasteners to make it fit on most consumer printers.
This (breaking it up and adding the "jointery") is handled right in the slicer now, easy peesie.
What do you mean by this? I’ve only used bambu’s slicer and never seen anything to indicate it can automatically add “jointery”?
You're going to love it!
https://youtu.be/zTZOH6XkUPU?si=MoOx8Hqy6xvMKvn6
Huzzah! Thanks for that!
At the bottom of the page, it looks like this is a giveaway for August, and that there were OP-1 giveaways in June and July. The OP-1 is their flagship synthesizer.
Makes me wonder if this is starting a press cycle for something they'll release for sale in the nearish future.
Not giveaways, but it was instead a "name your own price" discount that allowed you to pay as little as $1399 and as much as $9999 (your choice) for an OP-1. What's bizarre is throughout the month of July, the OP-1 Field was completely SOLD OUT. And it felt pretty galling to their customers they would have this "name your price" promotion continue into July with the same device as the previous month - most people expected them to switch up which item would get the discount. No one was able to purchase an OP-1 from July 1 - July 31 at any price on their site.
It's not for printing, it's for cutting out of a thick sheet of plastic, as much as I understand.
i mean... this should be a thing.
hmmm now you have me thinking.
It is a thing. ;) Here's a meta-search on different 3D model sharing platforms for "ATX case": https://thangs.com/search/atx%20case?scope=all
yeah after that i did some reading and realized it was a bad idea :-D
I'm genuinely torn on this. On one hand, I love the DIY vibe. On the other, isn't paying $195 for a flat-pack metal box the most anti-DIY thing ever?
Curious question, this case is pure PP. What about shilding EMV emissions? Is this "legal" to run a pc open like that?
It varies, but in many places you couldn't sell a device without proper shielding, but unless you are causing disruption to a public service or safety equipment there is nothing that stops a person owning and running one. Just think of the world full of rPi units, other SBCs, and other PCs, running completely caseless or in cases without much/any thought towards EMC shielding - it obviously isn't a problem, or it would be a big problem.
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.
----
[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
Yes because this is just a case, if you build a product in it and sell it then you need to meet EMC regulations (EC marking in europe).
Giving things away for free is one way to round tariffs I guess.
"More flipped out '25 offers will be presented during the rest of the year (Or until the world is a little more stable)."
https://teenage.engineering/25-the-flipped-out-year
That completely flew over my head. I can’t parse the sentence to understand if they’re making a statement or what they mean. What is a “flipped out ‘25 offer”?
What is a “flipped out ‘25 offer”?
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.
I was focusing more on the "Or until the world is a little more stable" part. I am guessing they have a lot of customers in USA, so they are hit by tariffs.
Has anyone tried using this with a Framework mainboard?
They're both Mini-ITX.