EP–133

It looks like it's made of plastic. Some of their other outrageously priced products are made of aluminium. Maybe that accounts for a chunk of the difference.

Their pocket operator series were inexpensive, at $60-100 per model, but were very basic with essentially a bare PCB and most of the electronics protected by being placed under the screen. I believe that much of the cost of their expensive products is due to a lot of custom parts like CNC machined aluminum enclosures. This product seems designed to hit a price point between the pocket operators (~$100) and their plastic OP-Z (~$500).

I'll put my comment about price here. I saw "teenage engineering" and immediately thought "no way I'd afford that", but I clicked anyway. Sort of like how I'd look at a Lamborghini poster as a kid.

From the Verge article[0] on this device, it was designed from the ground up to a) only need parts that they could actually get during the pandemic, and b) sell for less than $300.

I think this looks really cool and I want my in-laws to gift it to me for the holidays.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/22/23965528/teenage-enginee...

64Megs is only going to get you so far.

1010Music Blackbox is by bar a much, much better investment.

Screw Teenage Engineering. They degrade everything they touch.

Ha! I'm teetering on the edge of buying a MicroFreak. There's no way I could justify the cost of anything from TeenageEngineering - though £299 isn't as steep as I was expecting from these. Stay Strong!

Insert the meme of me turning to look at this, while the dusty Novation Launchpad sitting on my desk is looking at me with jealous anger.

I want this. I don't need it at all. But wow, I want it.

Yep! If you showed me that landing page hiding the price, and knowing TE, I would have said that it was going to be at least double or triple the price.

Can't help but feel it's their gameplan. And I try to remain non-reactive, but I thought it was smart.

That toy car looked ridiculous, but not completely out of line with their shenanigans in the past. So it seemed somewhat "in character."

And then to immediately follow-up with a way more useful, beautiful, functional, cool and interesting product that's "only" $50 more expensive – with all the anchoring price point tactics and such dialed-in – and is like, 3x less than their OP-1 was (maybe even more), and "only" 2-3x more expensive than their higher-end pocket operators that essentially have similar functions... Then I do think they know exactly what they're doing.

All that being said, it absolutelye worked on someone like me and I bought one lol. I was so, so ready to be offended and be presented with more egregiously expensive-but-useless doodads. But $300 for a slick sampler... That's really not bad at all. Considering the Roland 404 is $200 more, and some other audio gadgets I bought with less functions are in the $200 range.

Absolutely both.

They have been successfully releasing extremely well designed and extremely frustrating devices for a while now.

And if anything, they’re getting more and more popular, working with ikea or panic and both iterating on old ideas and exploring new ones.

Yeah, very weird. They have a sample prep tool that converts existing samples to the correct format, and obviously the internal sampling records to that rate.

"93.75kHz and 46.875kHz are the sampling frequencies Bruno Putzeys uses in all his digital products for Hypex, Grimm audio, KII, etc.", as outline here[0], for the following reason:

    5.2 Clock
    The clock circuit is the same as that used in the CC1
    except that the sampling rate is set to 93.75kHz instead
    of one of the more traditional audio rates. This is specifically
    done to improve the performance of the SRC chip.
    An uncommon clock frequency reduces the odds that mix
    products between the incoming clock and the internal
    clock fall inside the PLL loop bandwidth of the SRC.

[0] https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/w...

It might be because of the clock of the CPU or the dac being 24Mhz.

24MHz/512=46.875KHz

Edit: or 12, 6, 3...

  24MHz/512=46.875KHz
  12MHz/256=46.875KHz
  6MHz/128=46.875KHz
  3MHz/64=46.875KHz...

I've heard Lexicon used to use weird sample rates in its reverbs to make it harder to reverse engineer.

It may have to do with part availability during the pandemic, perhaps?

It's so nice, actually. Great little effect that fits well with the rest of the page's aesthetic.

Not only is it a nice effect.... but the Muhammad Ali landing page is downright insane. That hero image choice is pure gold. It is insanely brave to not put the product in the hero too. Utter envy.

Edit: OH MY GOD, THE PACKAGING.

> Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.

— Brian Eno

The $299 don't include VAT.

Prices in the US generally don’t include VAT, and maybe there’s some exchange or import fee on top as well.

Speaking in general, prices tend to differ between regions away from just basic exchange rate math, since shipping costs means you don't get proper arbitrage pressure, which is what would pushes prices toward (lowest advertised price) x (exchange rate).

Thanks for the pointers everybody. They make sense. The frustration of seeing a 299 price tag and then being hit with a 349 price after one click on the store link is bad.. Didn't stop me from buying though :D

Welcome to most of the world outside of US. I can drive 3 hours and pay 20-30% less for everything including exchange rate.

Totally on the same page! The form factor is spot on, and the vibe is just downright cool. But samplers aren't my cup of tea, so I'll wait to see what other gadgets they roll out in this series.

Thats Teenage Engineering - sexy looking, highly dysfunctional junk that you will regret investing in, instead of getting real professional gear.

I'm not really in that scene, but I know for a fact trackers are going well in their niche. One that I know of is OpenMpt (I'm not good enough to use it properly so I can't speak to how good it is), but there are more.

In general, teenage engineering devices look fantastic and are really capable in the right hands, but they look deceptively simple while they are in fact really complex to make good music with. I know of a few people who burnt $1k on an OP-1 because they thought they could make music easily with it.

For a software sampler, I would highly recommend Koala Sampler [1], which has a very easy to use workflow and is modestly priced ($5 for the base version, with sub $5 upgrades). If you don't like it, you probably won't like the EP-133.

There's also hardware trackers like the Tracker and Tracker Mini from Polyend [2] and the Dirtywave M8 [3] that might interest you as well. Their workflow is closer to what you used in the past.

[1] https://www.koalasampler.com/

[2] https://polyend.com/tracker-mini/

[3] https://dirtywave.com/products/m8-tracker

Really depends on the kind of music you wanna make. Since this is a sampler though, you can probably fire up something like reaper (free) or fl studio (less free) and start chopping up your favorite songs to make something new. Teenage engineering makes some really unique hardware though. I own their OP-1 and it’s a hell of a learning curve to get efficient with it but it’s so cool.

You think they licensed it, rather than just copying it from google image search? (Speaking as someone whose spouse licenses images and sees people doing that ALL THE TIME.)

There is software included that allows you to add your own samples(audio files).

Yes, you'd be able to use whatever samples you want; transfer from the computer ("drag and drop samples using the sample tool") or record them yourself via the input.

It has 64MB for samples, I think you can record via the line in + microphone or with a software companion.

From what I see in their docs [0], you can either record samples directly from their hardware, or use a web tool [1] using Web MIDI (!) to update them. Guessing from the Web MIDI use, probably should be easy to create open tools or even load that page offline to update its samples.

  [0]: https://teenage.engineering/guides/ep-133/functions#10.1-sample
  [1]: https://teenage.engineering/apps/ep-sample-tool

That's my guess as well. Either monochromatic OLED (cheap!) and colored icons (not so cheap?) or the other way around. LCD with front panel might also be fine as long as it's bright enough, and the front panel is dim enough.

Love that guy.

> Teenage Engineering Syndrome, oppressive proprietary products with undeniably appealing designs

Kind of comes with the sector/industry, not a lot high-quality, standalone gear that wouldn't be considered "oppressive proprietary products".

What have you made?

I finally gave up and just bought it from their Amazon store. https://www.amazon.com/teenage-engineering-sampler-sequencer...

Yep - in the same way that you can prepare a meal with a Swiss Army knife instead of using kitchen knives, you can play music on a qwerty keyboard instead of a piano keyboard. You can achieve the same end result, but one tool is more tailored to doing the job.

For many -- myself included -- the buttons and encoders make it much easier to play as a musical instrument. When I buy a digital instrument I'm not just buying the sound engine, I'm also buying a specialized controller for playing that sound engine.

It has midi in so if your DAW has midi out then yes you can control it.

you're username suggests so :)

Yeah, this is destined for the dusty depths of a desk drawer full of other similarly sexy-looking but ultimately frustrating, useless stuff that was designed with the principle of making it fruity-looking first, and useful to the actual user, last ..

The 1010Music Blackbox is still the pocket-sized sampler to beat ..

> I have a few qualms with this app: > 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. > 2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue. > 3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?

A laptop can do a great many things. That doesn’t mean it’s the best form factor for doing it.

Music making devices are very much about the ergonomics of devices and the reduction of friction in workflow. This is also significantly more portable than a laptop, with much lower latency than you would likely get.

When people compare devices, they should really consider not looking at just paper /capabilities and what it means to a user.

Curious as to why that's insane? It's on par with / a little less than most streetwear brands. Of course you can buy a hoodie for $25, but you can also buy one for thousands. You're only going to pay what something is worth to you; it's very subjective.