#163

hello all- finally got my unit in the mail today!

i have to say, this is one of the most premium pieces of gear that i own. i’m not going to get into the whole debate about price, but from a strictly objective point of view this is built extremely beautifully!!! i guess the main body is plastic… but its hard to describe how nice it feels, metal handle, just every last detail really really well done. i was pretty blown away from it just as a pure object.

then, the sound is very nice- again, i’m happy with it in regards to my purchase. its not the loudest speaker i own of that size, but i’m a bit of a portable speaker snob since i use them all the time in my work. its always almost impossible to communicate how loud something actually is unless you hear it in person. i’ll say that i don’t feel comfortable turning up the volume more than half way for fear of hurting my ears in a medium sized room. so yeah, its loud. and the sound quality is really crisp and sharp. no distortion on what i’ve heard so far, but i haven’t really tried to distort it on purpose yet.

i have to say, scrubbing the audio on the tape is waaaaaaay more fun that it should be!? like, i have never wanted to do that before, and its really silly and pointless… and fun. i keep doing it, my son who is 5 keeps doing it, and the ability to make a loop, and play with the loop is, again, more engaging than i had ever thought. not that i would suggest anyone should get this for the scrubbing feature beyond wanting to have a really great portable speaker. but i was surprised at how nice it is to actually play with.

obviously this is a personal review and everyone is different- i haven’t listened to the radio in… well… my whole life? maybe when i was 13? but damn, having this here, built into the portable speaker with such good sound, i’m having fun scrolling through the stations and will probably keep doing it when i’m in a new place to get the vibe of where i am. i’ve been using disk mode with the ambient patch quite a lot. its not life changing, but its absolutely perfect for me to have on in the background while i’m working. i will most definitely use it all the time when i have the option. so one more point for this speaker where i didn’t really necessarily think i’d care about the ambient option much more than just a fun little curiosity. its kind of cool in that the resulting audio is “new” all the time in that its not an intentional piece of music that i put on which my brain already knows consciously, and yet at the same time the ambience is not so compelling as to distract me from whatever i’m trying to get done. maybe that’s unintentional, but it falls squarely in brian eno’s law that the music must be as forgettable as it is memorable when dealing with ambient.

i have my ortho remote paired with it, and that’s also an experience that i enjoy in practice so much more than i ever thought i would. because in the end, its a portable speaker, so why have a bluetooth puck to control the volume!? but i can leave the speaker in an unobtrusive spot in the room and then have the ortho remote next to me on the kitchen table to adjust the volume to taste, change radio stations, etc. yes it almost feels silly when i write it here, but its such a smooth experience and somehow beyond the basic building blocks of what is happening. plus as others have mentioned in reviews, completely pointless but having the motorized controls on the unit itself follow the ortho commands is sublime.

i don’t have much to say about the mantra or metronome settings… at this point in my life i don’t see myself ever turning them on again after i checked them out once. maybe if i’m at a rehearsal and we need a metronome in an emergency then i can maybe remember in my brain that oh yeah my portable speaker has a built in metronome?

in all the previews and reviews people kept mentioning the lack of no line out… and hearing that i must admit i was kind of confused as to why you needed a line out. but now that i have the speaker in front of me- i want a line out. even just for something stupid like headphones for the radio or ambient mode. but yeah, if you could export the ambient mode from the onboard tape, that would have made a ton of sense. and i’m also sad that for now you can’t ambient mode the line in or bluetooth in audio. but whatever, i find all this extra stuff to just be extra and not why i got this in the first place.

totally happy to have a speaker of this size of this quality. i hope they continue to support the product for years to come, like the op-1 and op-z. if so, i’m sure i’ll value it even more in the future. but for now, i know i’ll really appreciate having it even without any updates.

not wanting to jump into all the ob-4 hate on the price (and especially wanting to avoid all the hate that it wasn’t a synth), but personally i don’t get why everyone is so mad over the price- i mean, i can show you a TON of speakers which cost way way more?? don’t get me wrong, of course i don’t think $600 is cheap, or that amount of doesn’t hold significance to my overall economy. absolutely i would have loved to have paid less. but i bought the speaker to try it out, thought i could return it if i didn’t feel it was worth that amount of money to me. and that debate can still go on, my only point i want to make is that now that i have the unit in hand, the build quality is insanely nice. i kind of get the price point, or at least understand it now that i can actually touch it and see it in front of me.

the minimal controls are totally easy to navigate all the functions with and they feel great to use, top quality. the whole unit itself is really tiny as compared to my first impressions of seeing it online. its as wide as the op-z, the top dimensions of it are basically that of an op-z. i would say that I’m very pleasantly surprised by this small form factor, mostly because it sounds good and now it really is portable, small enough to easily throw in my backpack on a trip.

for sure this product would have gotten a lot more love with a better launch. i live in stockholm and from personal experience of being around town at different events and such, in my estimation TE doesn’t do a lot of stuff as intentionally as everyone thinks. that’s certainly not an excuse for their disastrous PR in recent years, and its really not a great look on them from the outside, but i don’t think they are an evil, greedy, money hungry company out to screw over their fans. they are actually really small in many ways- their whole modular product was just one guy who ended up leaving the company before the project was even finished properly. as an owner of their products i also find their lack of clear communication frustrating, but i’ve also met a bunch of them and i’d say the way they run their company pretty accurately reflects their own personalities. they are nice but introverted and chaotic perhaps. not trying to defend their past recent struggles in how they’ve managed their company, but wanted to give a bit of reality to consider amongst all of the backlash. and yeah, damn, the english language launch video for the ob-4 is hard to take with the sound on. i first saw the clip on my phone on the subway without headphones so i was just reading the subtitles and not getting why everyone was freaking out.

so let this review be an antidote to that video! its a really really cool little speaker. i’m super happy they produced it and i’m glad i bought it!

33 Likes
#164

Super well written, thank you!! It’s not for me, I wasn’t a hater but I’m glad to hear it exceeds your expectations that’s pretty cool :slight_smile: finally good to read a review from someone who has actually used (and heard) it too.

4 Likes
#165

Great review.
I honestly find this thing interesting, but I’m skeptical mainly because of no audio output.
Care to elaborate about the looper side of the ob-4?
Thanks!

1 Like
#166

i don’t have much to add to what the official video describes for the loop stuff- you can make a loop, change its tempo, and then scrub through the tape keeping the same loop length.

the only thing i can say about the loop which isn’t covered by just the basic operation is that i don’t understand how (or if!) its in tempo. i guess its supposed to be in tempo with whatever is playing so you could theoretically do a live remix type thing and then pop back to the live audio while keeping in time. as far as i can tell it works ok, i didn’t try to mess it up intentionally. but i also have no idea, it must be doing some sort of beat detection?

in terms of functionality, for me its again just more of a playing around type of feature. i can’t imagine a single scenario where i’d necessarily want to create a short loop of whatever is playing and then mess with it… i guess it could be like if i had a very minimal gear setup, i could play a pocket operator or something, loop it, glitch the loop, and then go back to the live audio for a sort of break or build up or something? maybe i just haven’t played with it enough yet to uncover some sort of other use that’s actually more relevant to what i’d want to do. another idea i had was that you could create a loop so that you could change the live audio behind it, kind of using the loop as a sort of segue between songs, if the input i was using could only load one song at a time? then at least there wouldn’t be any gaps in the audio output of the speaker if i loaded a new track behind the scenes…

2 Likes
#167

I read most of this thread this morning over coffee. Very entertaining. I clicked on an email I just received about OP-1 soft cases, and clicked, and saw this:

image
image4096×4096 2.13 MB

I guess the speaker cones / no cover issue was well thought out! Here is your solution…

2 Likes
#168

looks very much like the very similar TDK A73. to my mind, except for maybe the recording features, not a real unique design, even.image

2 Likes
#169

Hey all?

I am thinking of buying this, but am concerned by anything 600+ bucks that might have proprietary batteries.

Any idea if these can swap out the battery? I was easily able to swap out my OP-1 battery and would like to do the same once I run the lithium-ion into the groud lol.

Thanks a bunch

#170

Does anyone have an idea what the “brushless dc motor with hall effect encoder” they may be using? Would love to put it in a device I am developing.

#171

I think the value question is interesting. It’s the cost of a PS5 and a couple of games. I could see a situation where I would get 600 worth of use out of it, but I would have to be much more wealthy and have a life situation where many more of my needs, and those of my family are met and a nice minimalist house, and the ability to see other human beings who can stop by and enjoy it, etc. I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable that someone who get to that point in life, but they would have to also not have a desire to buy boutique musical equipment as well so it’s hard to see who they are selling it to, other than wealthy people. I think if you are weighing it against musical equipment, it’s hard to see the gear not winning out. If you are weighing it against other consumer/art items it might make sense.

Another, probably stupid thought: I have hundreds, probably thousands of movies I have collected over the years, and nearly 1000 books. I will probably not reread/rewatch most of them, so I suppose their continuing presence among my things is probably equivalent to a $600 radio in that it is largely decorative. I don’t know, it’s sexy, it’s not particularly useful, and weighing the value of fashion items is basically impossible.

There are definitely grifters out there, but I do not doubt TE made an honest effort making whatever the OB4 is as good as it can be. I don’t fully understand the hatred.

2 Likes
#172

you could look at the AS5601 sensor.

1 Like
#173

Well I ordered one,
Sold a bunch of gear and bought an OB-4 from that Swedish clothes shop “Pancho & Lefty”

Curiously the fact that it works as a radio made my partner honestly glad for this purchase,
A very different reaction compared to her usual indifference for my reoccurring gear acquisitions.

I have a hate/love relationship with TE,
But their wacky ideas always intrigue me, and I like their design aesthetic.

I think in this moment of my life I’m much more of a listener than a creator, so a magic radio seems like a not too bad idea!

Oh, I needed a good speaker too eh eh!
Curious to test OB-4 vs my IK micro monitors, they did the job right these last years for almost 1/3 of the price.

3 Likes
#174

i totally get that money has value, and i can honestly really respect anyone’s position and relationship to money. i’m not saying the OB-4 is cheap or anyone should be able to afford it or even that its good value compared to its price.

what i don’t get is if there is a conversation where the OB-4 is outrageously priced according to what else is on the market. a cursory google search for vaguely similar speakers turned up (as some of the first results):

roughly $1000:

on sale for roughly $900:

and more than $2500:
https://www.mrporter.com/en-gr/mens/product/devialet/lifestyle/speakers/gold-phantom-wireless-speaker/19971654707170278

and, yes, i can find cheaper speakers no doubt! but just wanted to point out, that if you want to be outraged about the price of speakers i can point to ones that are even more expensive than the OB-4. and again, that doesn’t mean that you can’t have an issue with the price of of TE’s speaker, and of course i would have liked the product to be cheaper… but just wanted to point out that i’ve seen way more expensive things on the market without this much “controversy” directed at them (and sure, i can speculate very easily why that is).

4 Likes
#175

Maybe there are similar price controversies about the speakers you just linked to on audiophiles / hi-fi enthusiasts forum. (although judging by the general attitude of that community, they probably complain that 2,5k means it’s cheap and useless)

1 Like
#176

If OB-4 sounds great, battery performs and build lasts, seems to me a real lovely thing to have, particularly for mobile modular. Happy with price so long as the above are met. Love/hate with TE also, opening 6 op-z’s only to return the best options after excessive retriggering, bending and encoders falling out. First new op-1 scratched from new, replacement had dead pixel and was repaired. My original op-1

#177

Does it sound great? I’m curious to hear more about how it sounds. Is anyone finding that it sounds particularly good? I do feel that a very good sounding portable radio is not that easy to find.

#178

Still waiting for my unit,
Meanwhile I saw a YouTube comment saying that now you can use ambient mode with Bluetooth audio:
Is it true @instantjuggler ?

1 Like
#179

thanks for the heads up- i didn’t check on that since getting mine though i use it every day. maybe there’s a firmware update, gonna check!

i also saw on the op-z threads that with the latest op-z update you can actually connect it to the OB-4 by bluetooth but then it drops when audio is played or something. so maybe future updates will open all this new functionality… (also audio out from OB-4 somehow).

1 Like
#180

ok so i found a firmware update! for anyone looking, it was not the most obvious- you have to get the orthoplay app on ios and connect via bluetooth to download and install the app.

since there are no firmware release notes that i could find online from TE, i don’t know what the new features are (if any). i tried to play bluetooth audio on ambient mode, but at least for now for what i was doing the speaker would just flip out of ambient mode and pick up the bluetooth audio like normal. i would love for this to work, if anyone knows if there’s a button combo to press or such?

#181

From the comment to this Reddit post it seems that you gotta hold down the play button for about 3 seconds.

1 Like
#182

Wooooaaaahhhhh, this is so much fun!!! Just ran Steve Reich 6 Marimbas through it, as well as some of my own synth ambient stuff. Works great! Now we just need an audio out option somehow… Thanks for the detective work!

1 Like