Competition for the Teenage Engineering OP-1

Off-Topic
1

The basic question:
​

What devices are there out there which compete with the OP-1?

The longer train of thought:

Sometimes I find myself on a plane, train or bus for an extended period. Sometimes I find myself under a tree, waiting for nightfall for an extended period. Sometimes I’m having trouble falling asleep, and music runs through my mind. In any case, I often would like to be able to get down musical ideas on a level from idle noodling up to sophisticated treatments.

If I have a laptop with me, that’s great. Renoise, sound libraries and all the possibilities of the world are at my fingertips. Other times, I have portable device on which I can run sunvox, and that is deeply cool.

What I really want is a dedicated, single purpose, music making machine which is rugged enough to toss in a backpack or shooting bag, has enough battery and storage to keep me supplied for a day, enough processing power to handle deep arrangements and layers of effects, and an interface well enough designed that it’s not too cramped. Charging and up/downloading through USB is nice too.

A laptop is bulky, fragile, and has limited battery life.
A tablet is less bulky, but more fragile, and is in the same battery life range as a modern laptop with less power.
A smartphone is usually not too bulky or fragile, and the battery is OK, but the interface gets cramped.

The OP-1 is well built, has great battery life, small but carefully designed interface and plenty of music making power. It’s just expensive. Too darned expensive. Seriously, for the price of an OP-1 I can buy a new laptop, a set of monitors, and re-up my Renoise licence.

Surely Korg, Yamaha, Roland, or somebody out there has also tackled this space?

The daydream

The bulkiest item is the keyboard. We can save space on that without having huge and stupid touchscreens, by using a buttonboard like a chromatic button accordion. More octaves in the same space, or less bulk. Either way it’s a win.

The OP-1 shows the way with a small, clear screen. Less power consumption, and beautifully clear.

A tracker interface is easily managed in a fairly small screen with some ingenuity of design, especially if some kind of recording/noodling system allows for the capture of cool effects.

Hell, if there’s a cunning entrepreneur out there listening, let’s contribute some design ideas to make it better. You know you want it.

2

First time I discovered the op-1, I was like, oh cool! I would like one of those. Then I saw the price. Fuck that. I’m not saying it’s not worth it, but that’s 3 months rent for me.

For portable idea jotting I just use Sunvox on my phone.

3

Amen.

Actually, I really like Pixitracker too. The problem is that phones aren’t really noodle-friendly. Now, I could carry an accordion everywhere, but that might scare off the varmints I’m trying to wipe out. And on a bus, it might get me lynched.

If I could get a credible competitor, even if not as feature-rich, to the OP-1 at, say, $400. Well, that would be a hell of an option. Right now, the closest I have to that is a smartphone and sunvox.

4

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/11/01/kdj-one-portable-music-studio-official-walkthrough/
Something fresh :wink:

5

iPad + Korg Gadget

6

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/11/01/kdj-one-portable-music-studio-official-walkthrough/
Something fresh :wink:

Fabulous.

Now, returning to the real world …

Actually, I don’t want to be too down on the concept. They obviously have something worth thinking about, but for what they’re projecting as a price, the OP-1 looks just as good. And it really exists. Now. Like, I can open another browser window and order one.

7

The new KORG electribe looks interesting, but i’m not sure if it fits your needs?

Not quite. It’s a cool piece of tech, by the looks of it, but it seems to be heavily geared to the club scene.

Instead, I tend to do very different things. Here’s one of the pieces of music I most admire:

8

I almost bought the OP-1 in October, but it was a hundred euros more than I could have comfortably spent without diving into the food budget. Since I just canceled my preorder for the Nexus 9 (not enough for an OP-1 right away, bought some other crap as I always do), I could get one in three weeks, but yeah, I find it hard to justify. Build quality seems to be absolutely fantastic, though, and as you said, it is a complete system. The non-replaceable battery is something that I think is suboptimal.

I don’t think there are comparable alternatives to it. It’s just somehow 300 euros too much for what it is. Who knows, I may give in eventually. If I wait long enough, there might be a new model.

9

The OP-1’s claim to fame is really its emulation of a 4-track recording system. That is cool, of course. However, a good designer could do better. Let’s pretend for a while that the Renoise user base has its own industrial designer, and say what we want.

I would like a Renoise version (or a tracker, anyway) on an embedded, single-purpose device.

It would need:

  • A tracker/DAW in software.

Renoise is good. Other candidates would include a modified Sunvox, or even a derivative of something like OpenMPT.

  • A compact keyboard for easy note entry.

I stand by my recommendation of a button accordion layout as being space efficient, regular and well documented. Add octave buttons and maybe a jog wheel for scrolling values (not just pitchbend).

  • Transport controls.

Because this is a music device.

  • A touchpad, trackball or other similar device for manipulating the interface.
  • A good battery.

I think that 24 hours of continuous playback should be an adequate baseline. The battery must be replaceable. Charging should be by USB, speaking of which …

  • Upload and download through USB.

Because it’s a de facto standard.

  • USB host mode so as to use USB MIDI devices.

Because of course. USB storage too.

  • USB for MIDI out.

This will also allow it to be programmed in the field, and then control other systems when back in the studio. Yes, it would be nice if it had conventional MIDI throughput and CV and everything, but if you had to pick one interface and stick with it in a limited form factor, that would be USB.

  • Lots of CPU cores.

Running lots of effects? Many software synths? You want them. They don’t even have to be too fast or fancy, just numerous. There are a few architectural options, like some modern ARM designs.

  • A modest screen.

The OP-1 proves you don’t need a huge screen, but at least 640x480 would be nice. 800x600 is luxury. Unfortunately, screens eat batteries, so there’s probably a compromise to be found there.

  • Stereo audio out, at minimum.

Surround would be nice, but more important is that it be well isolated. It has to be really high quality electrically, low noise signal to monitors.

  • SD card removable storage.

Because over 100GB on a microSD is awesome.

  • Splashproof

Or maybe waterproof. Because while I am a staid, conservative individual with a very unimaginative way of life, some people like to compose music while engaging in watersports. Or crying in the rain. Or both. At the same time. Add a lanyard to make it yachting friendly.

  • Under $500.

Sorry, if it costs much more than a high end smartphone, or a new entry level laptop, it fails.

Anyone else have better ideas?

10

There’s the Elektron Monomachine, but it’s only comparable insofar that it covers a lot of ground for a single device. It’s not overly portable, and it’s of course not cheap. I’ve been lusting over “something” from Elektron for quite a while, but all of their stuff is costly and “annoyingly” modular. Ah, too much cool gear, not enough cash. :slight_smile:

What you listed would be great, but it also sounds like something that would be bound to cost well over €1000, probably in part because it’s somewhat of a niche market. The era of grooveboxes seems pretty much over now that laptops and tablets/phones are so powerful.

11

What you listed would be great, but it also sounds like something that would be bound to cost well over €1000, probably in part because it’s somewhat of a niche market. The era of grooveboxes seems pretty much over now that laptops and tablets/phones are so powerful.

I’m not sure that it should cost that much. The software could be open source, so minimal licensing costs.
The buttons, both the keyboard and the transport and other controls, should be very cheap as should the trackpad or equivalent pointing device.

Granted, the battery will cost money, but it shouldn’t be terrible, especially since what I described should take less power than most laptops.
Small size screens are very cheap in bulk these days, which is why we can have $300 phablets.
The USB interface is part hardware, part software, but again, it’s something we have on $300 phablets, so it can’t be that expensive.

SD card? Stereo audio? Again, hundreds of phone designs have that, even really cheap ones.

The most expensive parts are a multicore CPU of serious power, and newer ARM designs should be fine for that, and finally the fact that one wouldn’t have the same economies of scale as a phone.

But I don’t see a thousand bucks, usa or euro, as being the price.

12

I had an op-1 , returned it back to the shop after 2 weeks .

The included synthengines sound like shit …

13

The KDJ One portable audio workstation seems to come close, it is 399 USD in the current kickstarter, expected delivery summer 2015

14

At this stage I’ve taken a weird side route.

I was given a 3DS XL, so I got the KORG software by Detune. One is a MIDI sequencer based on stored samples, the other is an emulation of multiple monophonic synths, with sequencing capabilities.

So for less than $300 brand new in the box, a very portable and substantial musical sketchpad. It could be worse.

That said, I should check out the KDJ.

15

That ting seems quite handy, but no way i’m going to spend that much money on it. Let’s hope there’ll be a chinese version of it for 10x less soon…

When Renoise comes out as a small portable box i’ll definately buy that, for now i guess i’ll have to stick with nitrotracker, rytmik and korg ds10 on my Nintendo DSi

16

That ting seems quite handy, but no way i’m going to spend that much money on it. Let’s hope there’ll be a chinese version of it for 10x less soon…

When Renoise comes out as a small portable box i’ll definately buy that, for now i guess i’ll have to stick with nitrotracker, rytmik and korg ds10 on my Nintendo DSi

I highly recommend going the “put renoise an a linux netbook” route. Limited power for sure but it’s still cool, it’s just you and your samples.

17

The funny thing is that of all the portable, handheld gaming devices, the 3DS isn’t even the most powerful.
The Vita is, in terms of raw hardware, vastly more powerful with more, faster cores and much more RAM.
And yet we’re seeing the software from serious people like Detune and Korg on the 3DS.

Maybe I’m missing a hidden, secret Vita-based synthesis library of cosmic power, but surely it’s not all
that hard to find?