tladb

OP-1

I bought the Teenage Engineering OP-1 because it looked good. Great looking piece of hardware, useful and colourful UI and intriguing tape recorder based workflow. When the synth arrived I was not disappointed on any of those points. What was more difficult to determine was the sound from the videoed trade shows.

Visually and operationally the OP-1 succeeds. It is physically well designed and built. The button layout, and the colour based UI which matches the coloured encoders (knobs) works really well.  These leads to a really intuitive and fast way to create music. Its really very smooth in moving between synth engine, sequencers, effects, recorder and master modes. The coloured display generally relates well with the  encoders so it become very accessible and invites exploration. This is good because the manual is brief and has more than a few errors.

The accessibility the OP-1 helps with sound design because there a very few presets and no effective preset management. The sound in the 1-8 sound keys can be stored and accessed in the Snapshot collection named by date and time. Renaming is done by mounting the OP-1 as a USB device and renaming the files on in the snapshot folder with the computer keyboard. However on ejecting the drive the OP-1 will crash into a basic operating system mode which will delete the the previous named file and then fail to create the new file with “press any key to continue..” as a final command.

Lack of presets is disappointing because sound design is not one of my strengths and it would be nice to get s better indication of what that OP-1 is capable of. From my experiments I found the sound to be fine, useable not great. This could just be my preferences, weak imagination or lack of sound design skill but I am just not hearing sound that impresses me or that I would be really keen on using in a general project.

The manual has just two exercises in sound creation. A helicopter sound and a singing bird sound. Sounds for all musical genres.

Additional synth engines are in the OP-1 specifications so better or at least different sound could be forth coming. There could be more control options implemented for future engines with the shift + encoder option which would make eight elements to control . Four can be a bit limiting.

Experimenting with sampling using the included FM radio had mixed results. In the manual there is a pro-tip to suggests that by plugging in headphones into the audio out there with be improved reception with the cable. This should be standard practice to get any vaguely decent reception. FM radio sounds may satisfy a retro aesthetic but it is a bit redundant with all the stations broadcasting on the net if you want their audio.

With the synth mode you get 6 seconds and with the drum mode 12 seconds recording time. Synth mode is one sample played at different pitches over the keyboard. Drum mode has the sound broken in to sections so each key plays a different slice. If you want to hear the full sample or slice you need to trigger the sounds manually at the keyboard. The Endless sequencers longest note is 1/4 and the step sequencer only has 1/16 notes so the sound will be short. The actual editing of samples is a bit crude. The wave shown is not the wave of the actual sound. Setting the start and end point of the loops is rough and could have a fine resolution,

The sequencers are interesting and playable. You can set them up to and then let them play but it is more creative to take advantage of the controls to manipulate the parameters while they  run. The tombola spins the notes so they bounce around . To this  you can add notes change spin speed or note gravity to change the sequence as it runs. With the step sequencer the notes can be rotated through the sequencer, the sequencer can have its length shorter than 16 and then have the active part moved across the notes . This gives  options to change the pattern as it runs. The endless sequencer can have the note sequence randomised, reversed and have different pattern applied to it. Then there is the old standby of playing notes manually on the keyboard.

What is really distinctive about the OP-1 is the tape recorder model used for creating a song. It is a very literal model of a tape recorder which could have been loosened a bit for contemporary convenience. It would be convenient to have a “copy” action which copies to memory and leave in place the original. The “lift” action is like a cut with empty space being the same. There are tape tricks where the tape recorder can have it’s action broken, reversed or chopped but to capture this sound you need to record the output in your DAW. It would be good if you could capture this to another track on the tape recorder. This would keep the procedure within the OP-1. In the physical world this would be impossible but programmable in the virtual. Overall though the easiest use would be create sections then record the output rather than trying to make up a song entirely within the tape recorder.

The input/Output is incomplete. That is there is output but limited input. The renaming files problem with the USB drive was mentioned above. The MIDI out works to control  software synths such as in Reason and the sequencer MIDI can be recorded but incoming MIDI events are not recognised. The OP-1 can be seen as a MIDI source in Numerology and Live  but not notes. The manual has known issues on the front page stating that disk mode is one way for audio files at the moment.

I am still a bit ambivalent about the OP-1. It has nailed the the design and accessibility for a synth. The work flow is smooth and its feels good to use. The biggest drawback for me is that the sound is unimpressive and limited.

So I am looking forward to the update s to the OP-1  operating system which will fix the errors and give more synth, effects and sequencer options.

I have Soundcloud collection of preset sounds: