This is beyond brilliant. How on earth, man. How - on - earth.
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Thank you so much mate! The day of the album release also became the day my father passed away after struggling with dementia for a long time so ātwice the releaseā¦ā for me this album will always have a loaded atmosphereā¦ 
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Iām so sorry to hear that. I understand what you mean. I lost both my parents after theyād suffered from cancer, and while I felt grief in a way Iād never done before, the time had come - and it felt right, if tough.
Itās our scars which make us strong and beautiful, my friend.
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Speaking of scars -
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Hey everyone,
I put together a guide called Ambience as Ritualāa deep dive into ambient sound design, performance, and composition, originally built around the OPā1 Field and OPāXY. That said, the techniques and approaches inside can be used with pretty much any gear, including Elektron machines.
This started out as something I made for myselfājust a way to organize thoughts, patches, and creative ideas around making ambient music. But after a while, it felt like something others in the ambient and experimental scene might find useful too. So I cleaned it up, expanded it, and turned it into a proper PDF.
If youāre into sculpting textures, layering evolving drones, or just exploring new workflows for ambient and electronic music, you might get something out of it. Happy to share it with this community.
Cheers!
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Can anyone who owns both a Field model and an XY (or perhaps someone else who already asked this question elsewhere) confirm whether or not they both share the same āimprovedā speaker system? Iām having a difficult time finding anything which confirms or denies this.
Just curious, thanks.
Iām not sure if the speaker is 100% the same, but they both sound equal to my ear. It can get really loud for such a small speaker and is actually able to produce some bass frequencies when the unit is placed on a table. Imho, itās greatly improved in comparison to the og op-1 and op-z, which both sound really tinny.
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To my ear, the speaker on the OP1F is MUCH louder than the one on the XY
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i agree with this statement, for whatever its worth
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Just check to see that your defaults on the xy are cranked up all the way? To my ear both speakers are exactly the sameā¦
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99% sure theyāre the same speaker module.
Source: Iāve had my hands on a disassembled OP-1F and donāt see why they would use a different speaker module for it.
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Thanks for sharing. As far as i have seen this is the first disassembled OP-1 field apart from some low res FCC pictures. Do you have more pictures to share? @baris
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Ooh, that would be great if they are. That was a little thing that kind of bummed me out about the XY, although I typically use headphones or monitors.
Maybe it has something to do with default mixer settings. I believe XY tracks are set to 75 by default, whereas OP-1 tracks are set to 99. Iāll have to play around and see what I can find out.
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to my terrible ears, OP-1F is louder than OP-XY by default. But yeah, I just chalked it up to different defaults more than different parts. More tracks on OP-XY to use up the headroom with. They both have plenty of volume IMO, but the 1F is kinda ā¦ surprisingly loud
also of note is that the presets on the machine have voume set to 50-75 on the ADSR page, so there is some headroom for volume outside of using the main volume knobā¦
Personally i just slam the master compressor and gain that wayā¦ i love that compressed sound, makes the drums feel more lively.
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Yeah, after playing around some more, Iām convinced they have the same speaker and that any difference in perceived loudness just comes down to different gain staging considerations between the two devices. In terms of hardware they may be super similar but their inner architectures are super different. Makes sense.
Iām aware!
I wanted to do a post about the story of this ādefectā OP-1f but didnāt had the time. I bought it from a fellow Elektronaut at the end of 2024, for dirt cheap, considering I ended up getting it fixed. He bought it from the TE Garage Sale event. The unit had no:
- IO board
- Knobs
- Screw connecting the body to the keyboard board
- 3 intact keys
I reached out to TE Support explaining my quest to resurrect this OP-1f and they were really supportive! I ended up ordering new knobs and a new IO board (190ā¬ in total). And they threw in some screws and keycaps (shoutout to Ash from TE support).
The new IO board:
After connecting the IO board to the DSP board, it unfortunately didnāt turn on. But to my surprise, a localized part on the back got SUPER hot when I plugged it in to charge. I suspected an issue on the other side of the DSP boardā¦ I disassembled, flipped it overā¦ and found a busted cap!
Tracing the connections, it was obvious this cap was associated with the charging. So, I had a friend of mine look into it and solder a new cap on. And ta-da, the OP-1f came back to life.
If I had to guess, someone working at TE had this unit broken and they stripped the knobs and the IO board to use as spare parts and sold this at the Garage Sale event without diagnosing the issue. (fair guess? @te-david )
Anyway, hereās some OP-1f gore pics:
Area next to the volume pot
The underside of the OP-1f contains the screws that hold the keyboard board in place. In the original OP-1 you reach these screws right under the keycaps. Theyāve changed the design here, making it a bit harder to reach as you need to scrap the adhesive after taking off the plastic cap on the underside.
IO connector on the DSP board
Backside of the DSP board with the busted cap on the left
The DSP board and the newly connected IO board
Details - DSP board
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Amazing! Iām saving this post.
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Fantastic. Many thanks.
Iāve got no idea if thatās a common practice for products like the op-1f, but I think it looks just so clean and neat that the cables connecting the different boards have their own snug little valleys cut in the aluminium casing.