Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

https://www.factmag.com/2019/01/18/teenage-engineering-pocket-operator-modular-announced/

by neom • 8 years ago

61 38 8 years ago

ohnope3• 8 years ago

Love it. Their ongoing IKEA collaboration is definitely rubbing off. (downside: you pretty much get one shot folding the sheet metal the right way). Flat packed DIY build is great. Compatible with Eurorack, and the OP-Z is getting a CV/gate module.

Now that Teenage has 2 products out there that are designed with modular expansion in mind, it will be exciting to see how they update them over the years.

hoaw11• 8 years ago

What IKEA is good at is continuously decreasing the work involved, error rate, quality issues etc. I can see no practical purpose to folding the metal yourself in this case, other than to make it feel more special than it is.

ohnope3• 8 years ago

I think the practical idea is "flat pack" - smaller package for shipping. Of course, TE doing flat pack without an economy of scale is less about spatial efficiency and more about allowing their customers to build something themselves in order to feel a closer connection to the object (that's perfectly ok)

robbyt4• 8 years ago

I produce a some what similar Eurorack module. Ours is electrically more complicated, but mechanically much simpler.

The final assembly is the most labor intensive part of our process. When we get an order from one of our retailers for 10+ products, it takes us a full day just to build/test/pack, because of this.

By selling these as "Ikea style" I promise they're able to massively reduce the cost for consumers by outsourcing their assembly.

coldtea2• 8 years ago

It's also more fun. If someone wants an already assembled modular there are 2000 other options.

ris2• 8 years ago

Interesting that they decided to stick with the "Pocket Operator" name despite the fact that these can fit in nobody's pockets.

svantana• 8 years ago

The individual modules (the "operators") are about the same size as the PO line products.

ris2• 8 years ago

I guess, but they're not exactly useful when carried around individually in a pocket.

robbyt4• 8 years ago

Yeah, agreed. When I first read about it, I thought they were going to sell an adapter to plug the existing pocket ops into a Eurorack module.

coldtea2• 8 years ago

Depends on the pockets. Parkas and khaki pants can fit them for sure -- in the full assembly photo they look tiny too.

jacobush• 8 years ago

Must be a play on Kraftwerk's line "I'm the Operator, with my Pocket Calculator"?

louismerlin• 8 years ago

I highly recommend to anyone interested in synths and music to go to a local shop and try out any modular system they have on display.

It really brings a lot of creativity and playfulness to playing music.

Me playing around on my modular system: http://youtu.be/jD-2xqTkGUc

disconcision• 8 years ago

Love it, thanks for sharing. Also curious as to what I could search to find more music similar to this.

zach432• 8 years ago

I've been wanting to buy a new analog synthesizer for a few years now, but i almost always balk at the price of these things. I can afford these things, but they never feel like a sound financial choice.

Personally, I blame the Raspberry Pi. Having played with a quad-core, 1GHz device with a GPU and wifi chip that retails for ~$30, i just can't see myself dropping $300 - $500 on an underpowered analog synthesizer...i've mostly just moved to digital synthesis now, which is quite enriching and fun. if anyone's in the same boat as me, I'd highly recommend nanoloop, which is quite fun to make music with on your phone: https://nanoloop.com/

I get that the analog synthesizers have a great musical feel and history to them, but i just don't think they provide that much more utility or flexibility than 10-100x cheaper digital instruments.

hoaw11• 8 years ago

It's all fake of course. It probably costs <$50 to produce, most likely in China. It isn't custom by any means. It is modular, but seemingly it wouldn't make a lot of sense since that isn't what you are paying for. Doesn't matter much. A lot of hobbies are a status thing. Most people aren't going to actually make something out of it. An unused computer program doesn't say much. So you want the "custom" gear to compensate. I guess there is nothing wrong with that as such. It is still fake though.

woah2• 8 years ago

That’s stupid. Boutique musical gear is expensive because somebody spent a lot of time designing it and needs to make a living. As far as sound quality, there are a lot of fm sounds that are not possible to produce on a computer since it lacks the resolution.

detaro• 8 years ago

What do you mean by "fake" and "custom"? Nearly no gear is "custom" in the sense that it's custom made for a specific person (although some small manufacturers probably would do that, if you're willing to pay for it), and at least in electronic music gear it is not a common claim for it to be (and it's e.g. not mentioned in the article here, so I'm not sure why you are arguing against it being so?)

Similarly, what's "fake"? The product is what it says on the tin, is it not? I think you overestimate the "can be build cheaply" aspect for many small manufacturers too, given small volumes, need to pay for R&D, mechanical components/work, ...

robbyt4• 8 years ago

The components are very likely made in China, but I'd guess that the pick-and-place likely happens in or near their HQ in Europe.

As someone who owns a business that has designed and sells a similar product, I'd guess their raw cost is at $125-175/ea. for the $500 product.

JTTR• 8 years ago

While there's certainly mark-ups, the most popular modules are made by their manufacturers rather than outsourced to China. Doepfer in Germany, Make Noise in the US, Intellijel in Canada, ALM in the UK, Mutable Instruments is outsourced but only to another part of France. Long lead times on certain modules are par for the course when they're being made by one person. Of course, when it's one person making everything, the total output of stock is going to be low, and thus the economy of scale that something like a Raspberry Pi is able to take advantage of is reduced, especially with moving parts like potentiometers, which can cost more per unit than a micro-controller.

There are people making modules for dirt cheap with razor thin margins, mostly as a side job, and there's always the DIY route if you want to save a few pennies.

andrepd• 8 years ago

For anyone into this, you can undoubtedly enjoy playing around with https://vcvrack.com/ ;)

zach432• 8 years ago

Thanks for suggesting this, I just downloaded VCV rack and its really cool!

rcarmo2• 8 years ago

The (by now ancient) Caustic synth app also has a modular approach, and free desktop versions:

http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/caustic

rcarmo2• 8 years ago

I love their stuff, and wish they’d issue another batch of OP-1 synths:

https://www.teenageengineering.com/products/op-1

That thing is seriously amazing, and (for me at least) more appealing than the OP-Z or the pocket operators - but I am intrigued by this modular approach, since I’ve long wanted to play with something like it.

Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series goes modular

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