Interview with the founder of Teenage Engineering

https://scandinavianmind.com/feature/human-touch-interview-jesper-kouthoofd-teenage-engineering

by ingve • 3 years ago

163 178 3 years ago

scandinavianmind.com

amrb2• 3 years ago

I've wanted to get their OP-1 portable synth since the first time I saw it, that price tho..

https://teenage.engineering/store/op-1/

dddw• 3 years ago

Ask Monte Booker if you can lend one, he has two

amrb2• 3 years ago

reminds me of the meme "I Have Three PS3s" :)

marban• 3 years ago

Recently sold my OP-1 to get the Field at some point but it's not really a convincing upgrade so far.

noman-land• 3 years ago

I waited, lusted, and saved for years, watching the price nearly double, before succumbing and getting one. I do not regret it.

adwi• 3 years ago

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.

exitb• 3 years ago

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.

kzrdude5• 3 years ago

scandinavianmind.com is not responding very quickly, but it is responding.

Here's an archived copy: https://archive.is/x2oxd

niekverw• 3 years ago

What sick modular synth does he have there

sctb• 3 years ago

https://www.colossus-synth.com

alkonaut• 3 years ago

Wow that's a lot cheaper than I expected. Unlike buying a big Eurorack it's also dooming you to eternal poverty.

Tomte• 3 years ago

Welcome back, Scott!

TheOtherHobbes2• 3 years ago

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.

https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=2332

jacquesm3• 3 years ago

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!).

fassssst2• 3 years ago

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.

scotteric• 3 years ago

Your coworkers don't have a problem with you being distracted and wearing headphones during a meeting?

naavis• 3 years ago

Maybe they are referring to remote meetings where you can mute yourself.

jandeboevrie• 3 years ago

Funny last name for someone living in a cold climate, KoutHooft translates to cold head in Dutch (minus the T).

neilv• 3 years ago

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.

TheOtherHobbes2• 3 years ago

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.

dole• 3 years ago

“Shit ain’t broke unless you’re broke, that’s some real shit.” - Lil Yachty

micromacrofoot• 3 years ago

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.

smoldesu15• 3 years ago

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.

wyager4• 3 years ago

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.

hnhg• 3 years ago

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acne_Studios

spamizbad• 3 years ago

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.

BenGosub• 3 years ago

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.

ancientworldnow• 3 years ago

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.

fogforthought93• 3 years ago

This style is ubiquitous—Terry Richardson, etc.

meindnoch• 3 years ago

Let's hope this guy didn't get the rest of the Terry Richardson experience!

schrijver2• 3 years ago

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 :)

psychomugs12• 3 years ago

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.

wlonkly• 3 years ago

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.

krosaen• 3 years ago

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.

apgwoz• 3 years ago

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.

ilyt15• 3 years ago

The market is quite saturated for those. You'd have to make something pretty and doing something more than basic.

jacquesm3• 3 years ago

Note the Moog Theremin sitting around casually used as a dump for patchcables!

robocat• 3 years ago

Behind the Theremin is a kakelugn/kachelofen/masonry-heater fireplace.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry_heater

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=swedish+round+ceramic+stove

jacquesm3• 3 years ago

Those are beautiful!

malthaus• 3 years ago

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.

tomashubelbauer• 3 years ago

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.

smoldesu15• 3 years ago

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.

kubb• 3 years ago

shouldn't there be a normally priced equivalent product on the market? it's not like we're talking about cutting edge silicon here

xdfgh11127• 3 years ago

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.

avip• 3 years ago

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.

criddell• 3 years ago

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?

prpl• 3 years ago

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.

jxf• 3 years ago

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.

bookofjoe• 3 years ago

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."

duxup• 3 years ago

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?

playingalong• 3 years ago

On one hand...

On the other you have marketing which without changing the item/product itself might change its (perceived) value.

ryanSrich2• 3 years ago

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.

ilyt15• 3 years ago

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.

goldenchrome• 3 years ago

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.

ryanSrich2• 3 years ago

Right. It’s like complaining that a Rolex is $15k because you can buy a just-as-good mechanical Seiko for $75.

SideQuark3• 3 years ago

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.

mattigames2• 3 years ago

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.

conradfr• 3 years ago

Where is Behringer when you need it?

odiroot• 3 years ago

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.

sesm• 3 years ago

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.

lykahb• 3 years ago

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.

notRobot• 3 years ago

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!

Simon_O_Rourke2• 3 years ago

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/

voakbasda2• 3 years ago

Given their other marketing, they could simply be keeping it out of stock intentionally, to increase demand by creating a (false) sense of scarcity.

Simon_O_Rourke2• 3 years ago

Yes, you get that sense alright when the $500 units all seem to be in stock no problem.

voakbasda2• 3 years ago

Why is this so hard to believe? I truly don’t understand the unvoiced objections to my hypothesis.

ilyt15• 3 years ago

Same over whole synth market, it's slowly clearing out

fijiaarone• 3 years ago

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.

simonebrunozzi• 3 years ago

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?

Towaway69• 3 years ago

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!

[0]=https://supercollider.github.io/

ilyt15• 3 years ago

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

bmitc• 3 years ago

Supercollider is unfortunate because it has a very restrictive license.

chuchana2• 3 years ago

Is it the GPLv3 you're calling "very restrictive" or are we seeing different licenses?

cfr20233• 3 years ago

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.

Gracana• 3 years ago

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?

cfr20233• 3 years ago

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.

strawpeople4• 3 years ago

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

cfr20233• 3 years ago

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.

bikeformind• 3 years ago

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?

evan_• 3 years ago

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.

michelb• 3 years ago

Had it for a few months now and it’s a fun little thing.

jasonpeacock• 3 years ago

I've got mine. It's exactly what was promised, and fun to play :)

whywhywhywhy• 3 years ago

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.

KRAKRISMOTT• 3 years ago

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).

kzrdude5• 3 years ago

The photos are from his flat, not from the company.

darkwraithcov• 3 years ago

So that’s where all the profits from the OP-1 went.

barrenko• 3 years ago

Comments here are peak HN.

pengaru• 3 years ago

OT but this page is a breath of no-js-required fresh air for 2023...

sambapa• 3 years ago

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.

slater-• 3 years ago

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.

chuchana2• 3 years ago

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.

ravagat• 3 years ago

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.

agentultra• 3 years ago

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.

Interview with the founder of Teenage Engineering

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