Teenage Engineering OP-Z

I really wish TE would release more details. They’ve been awfully quiet about OP-Z since the early announcements last year.

Looks really great to me, like a distillation of ideas from pocket operators fleshed out and enhanced, the buttons need to have a great response being that small and not sure if the encoders look hands on enough, I hope they produce some proper knobs that can fit into them, and a slip case to protect from pocket lint.

Nice video @cuckoomusic

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Thanks! I’ve had a go at it a few times over the development phase. And it’s improving month by month. Looking forward to it like nothing else. It’s a huge undertaking in the smallest package.

I think the design is more or less locked. And the disk encoders feel like nothing else. There is almost no friction, making them spin super easy like little turn tables. I like them. I had a weird prototype while making this video, but everything has improved since that time. Buttons more responsive, LED’s bright and easy to read, disks are secured, some workflows has been greatly improved etc. It’ll be great :wink:

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That’s cool about the encoders and buttons being responsive, tft feedback @cuckoomusic , I reckon if they get the pricing right they will sell tons of these.

#beta
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bfn-MjJFobe/

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Swedish trio?

A unique quirk (anti-quirk?) of the OP-Z is that it lacks the characterful animations seen on TE’s other synth units.
It’s their most businesslike release to date.

After watching Cuckoo’s overview again recently, it’s easy to appreciate how natural it can be to go totally GUI-less (like a traditional non-electronic instrument) and navigate a creative map in your head, rather than via a screen.

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Not intentional, just happened to be into digital stuff and small boxed packing lots of features :hugs:

B.Y.O.S. :thinking:

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Also, a question: could the launch of the OP-Z mean the final production cycle of the OP-1?

They keep stressing that they are totally different products, which would imply that they will keep producing the OP-1.

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Well, one of the two is going to come to me this spring then!
No matter the specs of the Z, the 1 has the classic :musical_keyboard: layout … doubles as a midi controller which is a big + in my book.

We will see soonish what the Z has to offer.

Yeah, I’ve been pretty interested in the OP-Z as well. For me it will come down to whether it can record audio like the OP-1 or function as an audio interface when pared with an iOS device for recording. My dream would be able to use the OP-Z, PO32, and PO33 as a mobile setup with my iPhone when traveling.

The latest info I have heard doesn’t give me much hope though. I’ve heard that they removed the audio input from the specs and that the tape feature on the OP-Z is supposed to be more of an effect rather than a multitrack recorder. That could all be internet speculation though.

Yes, same same. The audio in and sampling are :old_key:

Also, not interested in video personally, don’t want to pay big for those features.

The video feature could be nice as a way to easily get tunes recorded up on YouTube, if it works that way.

Why do we need OP-Z hardware then? Why not just release OP-Z as $30 iOS app and save even more energy and resources? Everyone already hs the needed hardware in their pockets anyway…

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If I’m not mistaken, the OP-Z patterns can only go up to 16 steps?

yes, but they have scale per track (with sub-quantize) and step components which are like conditional trigs on crack!

This pic is not helping my GAS problem.

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What else is there in the hardware besides cv sequencing that you can’t do with iOS device and a $50 midi controller?