That’s true, but it’s also a lot more expensive than an Electribe 2 Sampler, for example.
I think a lot of the appeal in this is the novelty, the form factor, the design, the workflow, the expansion possibilities, etc. From first impressions it doesn’t seem to have the magic of the OP-1 for me, though. I don’t find it as interesting a synthesizer. The OP-1 is a great sound design machine. Just MHO. Infinite respect to TE though.
Am I the only one who thinks that their marketing failed super hard on this device?
For me its still hard to grasp what this device can do, yet its up for preorder. And there is literally zero information on their homepage afaik.
There’s quite a lot of information on the preview page, https://www.google.de/search?q=op-z
TE’s marketing has been “organic” style, through YouTubers and info-leaks, which I think has been pretty effective at getting it nice and hyped. There is more than one in-depth walkthrough of the thing on YT if you want to see it before ordering it.
2 year stand by battery life but no mention of in use batter life?! Odd.
Thumbs up for USB C though - wish more would take that plunge.
Yes the portability is a big deal here, fortunately it seems that quite a few manufacturers are making fairly portable ‘compose anywhere’ gear now, currently TE and Synthstrom are leading the field here, offering fairly complete ‘workstations’ that are small enough AND have decent battery life AND can be integrated into a studio/larger setup when needed.
I know a lot of people hate small gear (I’m sure Freud would have something to say about this 
) but plenty of people seem to like it, and there are more than enough full size, power hungry, behemoth synths out there for those who need them, so it is nice to see modern, small, great sounding and powerful instruments becoming more common IMHO.
https://teenage.engineering/products/op-z/pre-order
Already sold out. With this funny yellow bag … 
This was fast. Received the mail yesterday, read it today. By mid-october we will see what the machine can do for the ordinary producer 
Still super vague information about how it works. Since the concept is kind of esoteric for a groovebox, I think a video would make so much more sense than words 
But I guess this is jsut a small first preorder batch for early adopters/voluntary beta testers who buy their stuff blindly anyway
Guess I’ll just wait…
I think that page is confusing and leaves lots of questions:
To paraphrase Williams from Enter the Dragon
“When it comes, I won’t even notice, I’ll be too busy having fun”
At 2.30 on that tutorial video he mentions the yellow outputs are not part of the standard device .
Intriguing?
Does he mean missing from firmware ( as he’s working on beta ) , paid firmware upgrade , another more costly version of hardware ?
And I’m sure I saw a tech page on TE webpage with details on 2x mono inputs , 2 mono outputs ( 3.5mm headphone out I guess ) , usb host etc , but i cant find it anymore.
I’m sorry you find it confusing! I find it exciting
Some of these are great questions! I’m also interested in the answers. If I find any out, I’ll post here! Plz do the same when you find the answers.
You might need to be patient though; it won’t be shipping for another few weeks.
As they are already selling it, they should surely be able to provide answers to prospective buyers too…
Maybe you could ask them? https://www.teenageengineering.com/contact
(BTW keep in mind it’s in PRE-order phase, with all the risks entailed…)
I believe that is the CV module he has inside his unit. I’m guessing that is the one that’s coming later this year.
Using “vr” in marketing is usually a good way to get interest by the normal public person.
I’d guess if you make animations in unity and want to trigger them from opz, pc , phone , it’s up to you , I’m sure some might use it but it’s a modern multimedia gimmick to sell the device.
It’s just spitting a few parameters to a polygon playback engine . It could be used as a game controller if you write a game and use the sdk for this instead if a joystick .
And if you want to sell it requiring he opz in some way , you are narrowing your market substantially
Im not familiar with dmz lighting , but presumably it’s a specific data protocol that many other devices can use , but how many users will ever go to a gig with their own lights / lasers and perform an opz gig .
Personally
Unity playback / animation trigger would never get used,
Lighting control would never get used.
P.O./volca sync might be used , but not much .
Sampling in , used a little but I’d prefer to transfer from Mac/pc/iOS
I’d probably use iOS screen to display parameters / work with the sequencers But that’s no different to using any othe librarian / editor
But , I think it will be a fun device to use and you’ll see a pop star using it at some point , and they’ll get some extra publicity from it due to its uniqueness.
I will certainly be playing with Unity integration! My partner is a developer who’s done lots of VR things with Unity, and knows Takahashi’s truly excellent work from much earlier than the OP-Z came onto the scene, so there’s a lot for us to be excited about XD
Collaboration is wonderful.
respect++
but lol I do 
At least for op-z. I trust TE’s engineering, like I trust Elektron’s.
i’m quite cyncial with vr , I’ve was involved in one big title release a little over 1 year ago ,I’ve done games for 30 years (mostly artwork , last 10 years art/mostly production) … a good vr game can be very good , a bad one will make many people sick . theres always unreal4 , the amazon one , whatever other engines are still going but unity is free and scalable , ive installed it , but the projects ive worked on in the last 10 years or more have been unreal 3 / unreal 4 , both heavily modified .
a vr experience can vary from a few cubes and cows floating around a green floor to some very well produced pieces of work.
i had a quick look at a vimeo thing from takahashi , fairly strightforward (animating bones , adding noise transform to vertices , video processing , changing rgb value on the main shader)… and more clever things that are probably harder to do in unity than loading up an 3d modelling package like max/maya/softimage etc … … but as you can see its easily done via midi , given the right lead it could be triggered by octatrack/dx7/any midi device with midi cc out / midi note on/off / velocity.
I’m not trying to dismiss the opz - i guess i’m just not easily impressed by some of the claims as i’ve been developing games for far too long … but many people will see this and think its all very interesting and buy one , if theyre happy , thats the main thing . I’d be happy with one , but i’d focus on the audio/sequencing side which does look like it has some interesing ideas in terms of sequence probabilities / options.
teenage engineering have worked closely with keijiro takahashi and the unity tokyo studio to fully integrate OP-Z with the unity game engine. as keijiro-san is both a full time software evangelist at unity and a renowned VJ at night, we have had access to a selection of keijiro-san’s personally developed tools and shaders which deliver stunning 3D graphics that run at full speed on iphone or ipad. keijiro-san’s tool-set and real life experience in performances with motion graphics have been invaluable in making OP-Z an inspiring live tool for moving images in sync with music.
the weakest point of VJ-ing has always been the creation of content. by exposing the inner control data of the OP-Z and linking it to unity, users can create anything within unity, build the project and just drop the build to a dropbox folder. customizing every single polygon in a performance.
sounds cool, but im interested in just how much time and energy is saved in terms of the prep work and “content creation”… because like the previous poster said, its possible to do these things already with conventional, already existing devices
but if they have already set up systems and compatibility that obviates much of the setup and busywork and allows you to just jump in and start playing and creating, then it might be quite nice to have one
I can sort of answer this by saying OP-1 aif patch files can be loaded. Drum patches on tracks 1-4 and synth sampler patches on tracks 4-8.
EDIT: 4-8, not 1-8
