OP-1 field

Getting these two to play nice finally:

Feeding the OP-1f into AUM effects rack:

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To answer my own question and for people considering to hook the Roland e-4 up with the op-1f: I got myself an e-4 and it works like a charm with only one USB cable. Midi clock and notes go from op-1f to the e-4, audio from the e-4 goes to the op-1f. In addition, the op-1f charges the e-4s battery. Pretty sweet combo.
The only thing left for me to figure out is a way to route the audio from the op-1f through the e-4s fx. I will test this today, but I’m pretty sure it’s not possible.

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Anyone else is planning to try to replicate the behaviour of this new effect pedal with the radio transmit feature of the OP-1f and an old radio receiver ?
I am not familiar with this OP-1f feature, but I assume it might work, right?

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I do it all the time. Transmit from op-1f to Polyend Tracker or stick an fm transmitter on the output of guitar (or anything really) and use op-1 field to receive and record onto its tape tracks.

Edit: what I’m most excited about is I just figured out I can lazy chop on the op-1f like on old mpc’s. Granted this is on a tape track but as a track is playing you can hit the scissors button while it’s playing and chop it any way you want. To me this is very old school and exciting. Now I have to figure out the easiest way to drop these slices into the drum sampler.

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I think you just have lift the slice from the tape, go to the drum sampler, hold the key you want to drop the slice into and push the drop button.

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Yeah I know that, but I wish there was a way to do all of them at once and have the slices I made in the tape track transfer over. Thats all.

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I usually hit DROP and that’s it. Haven’t tried holding a desired key THEN hit DROP.
This would be useful for building up kits. Gonna try when I get home

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Tried it and NOPE it\s not working.
If you have a drum loop or a long sample loaded in the Drum Sampler, and you paste some audio using DROP it will paste it at the beginning of the loaded sample, no matter what key you press.

So the only way to build a kit on the OP directly is to record each hit to the tape, splice them, move them aroung and lift all and paste into the DruM Sampler.

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Sorry about the misinformation. I was sure it was working like I described it.

No problem. It would’ve been very cool to work

I have requested this feature (key + DROP to put audio into a sampler slice) through TE support a while ago. Please do re-request it, that will increase the chances of them implementing it in a later version.

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Funny thing is, I remember this worked on the PO33 :smiley:

Agreed, even if it overwrote the waveform to the right, so you had to assign keys left to right in turn, that’d be fine for me. As it is you have to chop up the tape, shift+blue to slide tape pieces around to line them up to get them all in under 20 seconds, shift+cut to join the pieces, then lift, drop, and drop into sampler.

All Elektrons have undo, by Func yes/Func no combo, or if you delete your sequence by pressing Func Play, then you can press it again to undo.

I have recently become more interested in smaller, portable devices. Now I’m starting to GAS a bit on the OP1F and am thankful for honest opinions. I have some other gear that I’m thinking about selling off as I rarely use it for its size/complexity/overlap (Rev2 and A4), which could fund it. I will first finish some stuff I originally composed with DN on my lap before buying/selling any gear. So basically I am asking a bit for you to confirm my worries that it’s an expensive hassle for me ;).

It seems to me that people here are mostly using OP1 (field) as a sampler. I am more interested in using it as a synth. It is surprisingly hard to find basic informations on what the synth engines are even capable of. There seem to be at least two machines that are more like classical analog synths. But I’m not sure how many osc/env/lfo there are and to what depth you can tweak them. I prefer sweet-spotty synths that don’t have to be crazy on modulation power these days, but some options in waveforms, two envelopes and a good sounding filter are welcome. Something that sounds good with not too much effort but has some depth if you want it. And maybe some models that you don’t have to understand in-depth but get nice results by tweaking presets nonetheless (like DN). Does the OP1 field deliver on that front?

What’s tempting about it to me is the versatility in a small, portable form factor. However, the impression I get is that it’s only useful if you use it mainly as a stand-alone device for committing to tape and then maybe later dropping stuff into a DAW. Implementing it into a setup with other synths with standard MIDI and audio ports and using external keyboards or sequencers to play it seems like a nightmare. Is that a fair assessment? Or is it easy to sequence it with an Elektron box?

Another selling point for me is to use it as a field recorder as I am planning to get more into that. I gather the internal mic is pretty good and can also be used for recording vocals or sounds coming from a speaker. Is that correct?

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Not really the same thing as what people are talking about as you’re manually saving a state and recalling that save state which in the OP-1 case is equivalent to lifting and dropping a section of tape down. People want an automatic undo buffer.

I’d say all the engines are very digital. There’s nothing I’d really compare to an analog engine on the OP-1. You can finesse similar tones but don’t think of any as being analoguey. **Edit: I did forget about the Dimension synth, it’s still a very new engine to me coming from the OP-1 for 10 years lol. That is the closest analogueish synth. **

No offense but you should definitely read the manual before buying if you haven’t figured out how many envelopes and LFOs there are. Every synth instance has 1 amp envelope and 1 LFO (that can be one of a variety of modulation types be it from the Gyroscope, the Amp Envelope, MIDI, the overall loudness of the synth itself, and more). There’s one Oscillator per engine but some of the engines are comprised of multiple oscillators. Each engine has 4 parameters, some of them have built in filters, others are chorus or just things that manipulate the engine. There’s only one FX slot so if you want to use the Filters (either Nitro or Punch) you gotta use the FX slot on the engine (though there is the master FX slot as well).

It’s not a ā€œnightmareā€ to work with other gear you just need some sort of USB midi hub. Most people just record directly into the OP-1 though. It’s why the sample engine gets so much talk as people record one note into the sample engine and then they have polyphonic playback they can use. The OP-1F is also very great in conjunction with iPads and iPhones as you just need a single USB cable to connect it and it’ll play the synth apps audio through the OP-1F. Really cool with the Minimoog Model D app and pretty much any downsides from the synth engines can be easily made up by plugging a phone into it. It also works very will with all the DAW apps or even standard DAWs on computers.

overall it’s it’s own thing. Traditionally many people eyed the original OP-1 and wanted one and they often bought and sold it either because it was their first piece of hardware and they didn’t want to learn it or they were disappointed with the drawbacks. OP-1F fixes many of those drawbacks but definitely do some research before committing.

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@SonWu has some excellent YouTube videos that showcase some of the synth engines on the OP-1 Field. I found them very helpful as I was learning my way around each of them, as the OP-1 isn’t always intuitive as to what knob does what, and the UI varies considerably between engines.

For what it’s worth, I sold my A4 and Rev2 not very long ago and purchased an OP-1 Field, which I use primarily for its synth engines, particularly Dimension (I use my OT/Rytm for sampling). I’m very happy with my decision, and find the OP-1F very inspiring.

Certainly, I miss the firepower of a Rev2 and the sequencing possibilities of A4, but when I run my OP-1 Field through an Analog Heat some patches can sound - almost - analog.

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Trying to get in to the swing of things this Jamuary:

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Iā€˜ve skimmed the manual and found it a bit confusing at times, which is why I decided to ask here. Also always helps to get experience based feedback from Elektronauts so you don’t have to go down the rabbit hole if learning to much about an instrument until you definitely want it.

That being said, your response was very helpful and is much appreciated, thank you!

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