You see it a lot in art, some people collect only as an investment vehicle - others buy what they like without regard for future returns. Ones mostly about the money.
Just goes to show that you can take pretty much anything, market it to relatively affluent and bored tech workers and make a killing.
All I'll say is that you should reserve your judgement until you've tried some competing products. The Playmobil laptop looks like a great way to do your Word documents until you try a Dell or Apple machine.
Edit: it's worth noting that both of these systems are sequencers, not tape recorders. I consider that a benefit (much longer record times) but if you want a multitrack recorder then you should look elsewhere (maybe a 4iXo DAC?)
Sure it's cheap if you compare it to Stradivarius, but if you use instruments in same type ("a CPU feeding ADC/DAC with some knobs and buttons") it is one of most expensive one in category.
OP-1 field (the only version they sell) is 2000 EUR. That's top end of synth world and you usually get more knobs and keys with that. That's the price of Korg/Roland/Yamaha workstation-level keyboards.
Do NOT try to compare it on price with anything, it will always look like a bad joke. Subjective, might be worth to you etc.
No other gear company has tackled the all-in-one synth-sequencer-4trackrecorder-groovebox that is the OP-1 in the decade since its release. TE not capitalizing on this would be financially naive.
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
> No other gear company has tackled the all-in-one synth-sequencer-4trackrecorder-groovebox
Seriously?
Plenty of other companies have. If you're old enough to remember, Elektron had an 8 track sequencer/recorder/groovebox that cost roughly the same price as the OP-1. Their mono model was actually cheaper than the OP-1 (and arguably nicer).
...which is of course to ignore the hundreds of other sub-$1000 grooveboxes that do 90% of what the OP-1 does. Hell, that's to ignore DAWs that cost 1/3rd of the price with 300% more features. If you buy an OP-1 as your introduction to electronic music, you are wasting your money.
To each their own, the only real winner here is the one selling their product.
Then again, considering how little progress there is to be made with music technology and how much of the industry is buoyed by marketing and brand, it makes sense that people defend their choice of consumption so fervently.
Like I said above, it's my mistake for criticizing consumerism on a website that lives, eats and dies on how much people buy into arbitrary things like marketing and brand.
I think it is because "just making same thing" is frowned upon and also industry cares to not eat itself.
For example take Digitakt and Digitone. It could easily be combined into one device "it is just code" and CPUs got faster since release of those but they don't, because they know having those "blind spots" in each of their devices (that other of their devices fit) is good for sales. Got a Digitone ? Want Drum machine to it ? Well, Digitakt got same interface you already know. Even their newest device Syntakt omits a lot of FM stuff to not step on Digitone niche.
Also there is plenty all-in-ones with more capability, all the way to monsters like MASCHINE+, MPC X or Force. People buy OP-1 coz they want to work within the limits and think that will make better music, not because it can do something unique anything else can't.
Which is understandable, given myriad options it's easy to get lost in tinkering with them instead of focusing on creation.
Even ignoring the keyboard, the creativity and fun of the OP-1s tape and synthesis modes, things like the gyro and FM radio, are fairly unique. There is a reason it is so successful.
Yes, because it managed to capture a self-sustaining hype cycle powered by customers who for the most part don't really know what they're buying. It's more of a status item than an actually fun or useful musical instrument, IMO. This thread reminds me, I need to sell mine.
GarageBand on iPad is perfectly fine for the type of screwing around you can do on an OP1, it's much more powerful overall, and it even supports stuff like MIDI inputs and MIDI clock master.
MASCHINE+, MPC X, Force, dozen other 440 style grooveboxes. Arguably Dirtywave M8
I mean it is neat device and I'm kinda surprised nobody cloned the minimalistic format (I guess Volcas are kind of that, although more "one thing" rather than versatility, but the asking price is truly ridiculous
You can’t sustain a business any other way. Consumer electronics are cheap because they can sell millions worldwide. Stuff like the OP1 sells in the 10s of thousands so they’re not getting any special deals from their vendors either.
I'll agree that it's a zero-sum game either way, but it ends with the high-margin vendors getting undercut. Something we could have avoided if they worked to make their product cheaper instead of working to make it more expensive.
> Stuff like the OP1 sells in the 10s of thousands so they’re not getting any special deals from their vendors either.
10s of thousands is enough to get the economies of scale to start working. Even for stuff like custom LCDs for pocket operators.
Yes niche costs few times to make than truly mass market as you still need to pay yourself a salary and not just "earn good profit on unit", but on the other side the only reason OP-1 is niche it is because say OP-1 is just that expensive that most people look at it and go "okay, I could get this and this and that and still have some money left over". They know hipsters will buy it and have no real reason to try to sell more units for less money, as that devalues the eliteness of it.
I also think that as much as it is a cliche "never being into money" it's an important aspect of success, because you can either be driven by profit at one end of the spectrum and a genuine passion for a great product on the other.
If you do succeed and become wealthy, then it doesn't matter if a synth is $500 or $50'000, you can have it.
I'm kind of irritated by this. TA are legendary for super-expensive toy-like products that must have insanely high margins. So somehow the "I was never into money (but now I collect antique synthesizers with four or five figure price tags)" line doesn't ring entirely true.