Teenage Engineering OP-Z

The connectivity will be shown at a later date, closer to release.

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mechanical buttons, runs independently, 20 hours of batterie life …

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is there a small built in speaker? there are 8 holes on the upper left

The buttons and knobs don’t look that great to me. I would understand if it had some sort of velocity sensitivity or actual keys, but as it is now, I don’t see much benefit on it over ipad.

And yeah, it runs independently, but based on what I’ve seen so far, you really need to use it with ios device to get the most out of it.

20 hours of battery life is nice, but I get 10 already from my ipad pro which is plenty.

That said, if OP-Z is priced competitively, it might be interesting as a midi controller / sequencer (assuming it supports midi properly). Unfortunately I have a feeling it’s going to be expensive.

Mate you must eat apple pie every night.

Thanks, that was a very good argument. Seems TE is eating some too, as they only support Apple devices with OP-Z…

So it is an argument you are looking for?

No, I am trying to understand what’s the point of OP-Z.

Can’t really put my finger on it. All I can say is that I find the OP1 very inspiring. OP-Z looks like it has a more flexible sequencer and more synth options. Even though iOS soft synths rock, I usually prefer a tactile interface.

Whereby it’s point has to be of value to you.

OP-1 was a lot of fun when I owned it. However, I always felt the sound left quite a lot to be desired, and also the outputs were quite noisy, and it certainly wasn’t made for any kind of precision.

OP-Z could work quite nicely as a tactile MIDI Sequencer controller. If it had sampler functionality, proper inputs and enough internal memory, it could also be a fun portable sampler. Doesn’t seem it has that functionality however.

Another cool thing about TE is how they follow a logic in their UX and dig deeply in this area.
IMO PO-32 is brilliant in this regard.
OP-1 is awesome and I still find tricks once in a while, like you would find new areas in a video game you know by heart.

I don’t agree with the fact that the sound is thin. One can dial very aggressive sounds, or use the Unison to get pretty fat digital bass.
But you have to surrender to its logic to get the most of it, that’s for sure.

I love it that OPZ doesn’t need a screen.
I can already see myself dive into this.

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The bass the op1 can produce is very heavy and very real! Lets keep that a secret :sunglasses:

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The secret bass society of the OP

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If you look closely at the street layout in DC from above you can clearly see the OP-1.
All the signs are there…

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Sonic offerings for the sacred COW

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A synth that got quite some guts… :punch:

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I think the main reason is, that android doesnt have a proper common solution for midi and music yet. there are someone fragmented solutions, like Samsungs, but if you just have limited development power its obvious, that you focus first in the easiest to manage System.

But isn’t the mobile device only a screen with OP-Z? All sounds should be coming from the OP-Z and all that it needs to work with the mobile device is bluetooth? Bluetooth works just fine with most Android devices.

I think they need to synchronize the music with whats going on onscreen. They even copied the synth engines to the app, so that the sound is reproduced in the app (the op-z then only works a a controller i guess). they also rely on metal, apples relatively new graphic engine. latency could be an issue, or maybe they have just one or two coders that are happy to finish just one ios app by september, who knows.

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