#129

I feel like its very early days for the opz. In terms of synthesis, there isn’t a lot going on. To the extent that it seems obvious that that wasn’t the point of it.

The op1 didn’t do anything really new – but it did made 4 track recording, making weird sounds and working inside the box fun again. In such an extreme way that people still either love, or hate it. The opz follows the same line imho.

The opz is not unique in its features, and like the op1, doesn’t do anything really new (even the unity controlling could already be done via midi for years) – so what is it for? If not for synthesis, then for sequencer, or groovebox, or controller? All of those things have been done very very well already by other machines.

How does this particular machine effect your personal workflow. Does its combination of features unlock something new (like the op1 did for so many) or not? Who can say.

From using it for a few days, my answer is that it absolutely does unlock something new. It has quirks, take it or leave it. But it has an effective workflow for sequencing visuals from unity with a hardware synth/sequencer, that is nothing short of epic. For that alone I am sure the opz will find its place in history.

Also regarding the screen: For anything deep (of which there is plenty) it will get complicated and you will need the screen. Count on it!

In short – amazing device worthy of infinite praise …if you want to use it for what it does! :smiley:

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#130

I got one of the first OP-1’s back in 2011; had to have it shipped over from TE directly, pay weird import fees and stuff. It’s sitting next to me on my desk at work right now. I’ve toured with it, played shows with it, made records with it, etc. The OP-1 is second only to the SP-1200 and Music Easel in being “more than the sum of its parts” - there truly is a weird, transcendent magic at work.

I’ve had a Z on preorder for a long time. My excitement is waning daily, though. The first batch apparently shipped with some sort of printing error and TE’s response is to shrug and say “you got a collector’s item now, LOL!” Their approach to support is very lackadaisical like this. My OP-1 was bricked, completely dead to the point of not starting up, by their last OS update and I ended up having to pay to ship it back to them so that they could flash the ROM. It was expensive, and that sucked on principle. With the Z already having problems like this, it’s frustrating to see that that’s their philosophy toward their customers.

The Z has since been yanked from the website - who knows what’s going on?

1 Like
#131

So late last night, I discovered via the app that at the longest note length setting(ln the synth tracks) the value changes to “drone” instead of a number. The note holds indefinitely.

You dont have much control over synthesis, but with the 4 synth tracks droning with some lfo, fx sends, master chorus/filter, and careful level adjustment, you can get some really thick musical/non musical textures. If youre leaning on the musical side, the master transpose track lets you play the drone nicely.

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#132

Its so wierd to have tons of DSP and not being able to control more than 2 synthesis parameters on the units :frowning: At least it drones I guess!

I’ll hold on for now and see if Teenage Engineering deeps dive in that in the next couple updates!

Thanks!

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#133

I can wax poetic about the power of toys all day, but this kind of stuff does bug me. Hopefully they’ll get it fixed and talk to their customer service people about the power they wield. Customer service is a window to the soul of the company. That’s my line. You can use it in the future if you’d like.

I went to operator-1 to see what people were saying. I can find three issues:

  1. The first batch doesn’t have glow in the dark paint.
  2. The app is disagreeing with the hardware about some of the icons (but it’s unclear which ones).
  3. The battery life is 4 hours instead of 20.

The only one that I worry about is number 3, the battery life. I’ve never turned on the OP-1 and been disappointed. It seems to be always charged. I’m hopeful that this is a firmware issue. If not, it looks like the battery is replaceable, so…maybe there’s hope there? My guess is there isn’t a more powerful battery in the same form factor so this will need to be fixed in firmware or we’ll just need to live with shorter battery life.

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#134

The tape is more than speed change. It’s a playable/sequenceable audio buffer, and you can pick and choose which tracks get sent to it. Very useful for extra textures on your track.

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#135

Yeah, I’ve probably oversimplified. I’m really disappointed. :frowning:

#136

What’s extra concerning is that they’re apparently going back and scrubbing information from their website, such as the promised battery life and glow-in-the-dark legending. They’re literally trying to make it look like that was never promised. Very concerning.

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#137

i’ve been starting to think of the op-z as the drum machine complement to my op-1 tape deck and synth/sampler

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#138

No superlong bassdrums though :slight_smile:

#140

8 posts were merged into an existing topic: VideoLAB Thread

#143

Snagged one from Big City from that small batch, was really excited to have a handheld CV sequencer - remember very clearly seeing the CV and gate outputs. Dove into the manual and wait a minute! Now the CV outputs are gone?! :man_facepalming: Guess I’ll be tinkering with a goofy little sequencer until the expansions start to roll out. Anyone know if the visualizer will work with a newer iPod?

1 Like
#144

Mine arrived today, and I’ve been playing with it for a few hours. It’s wild!

It’s strength is definitely the sequencer. There’s a lot of power accessible quite quickly. Sixteen tracks, each with different length and clock divisions. The Step Components are especially interesting: per-step rules like probability, random note selection, note slides, even jumping around within the sequence on that track specifically. For instance, I can have track two play a stable 8-note pattern, but have track four playing six notes before jumping to a random step on only track four. There are ten projects, with sixteen patterns per project. Project changes are instantaneous.

By default, each track is already set up to output MIDI on separate channels (track 1 to channel 1… track 16 to channel 16). This means that I was able to plug it into my Hermod and start sequencing my modular with no additional setup.

The sound “plugs” (generators) remind me more of the Pocket Operators or Braids. Each generator only really has two parameters, but then there are two filter controls (cutoff + res), four envelope controls (ADSR), four LFO controls (rate, depth, destination, shape), and four mix controls (two effect sends, pan, and level). For samples, the only sound manipulation control is pitch. While Braids proved that you could do a lot with two knobs, I’m hoping they throw in some weirder synth and effect engines in a future update.

One odd complaint is that the case is kind of sharp and pointy. Hopefully someone will make a rubber bumper case for it.

The app is very cool. I definitely needed it for training. There are a few things that you can only do with the app (assign MIDI out CC values to each knob), but their all setup related. After an hour or two, I became much more comfortable using the device without the app, although I definitely prefer using the app to visualize the Step Component relations.

17 Likes
VideoLAB Thread
#145

This is interesting. I didn’t realise it was set up like that.

#147

i got mine yesterday as well and played with it in bed last night (so tiny!!). i think it’s pretty brilliant and sounds amazing.

btw the first four tracks, the drum tracks, are all samples that can be swapped out (maybe the FX track too?). i’ll probably change at least a couple of them to have more melodic tracks to work with. you can do this easily with the op-1 but if you don’t have an op-1, someone on the operator forum made this edit tool so you can get chromatic samples working on the Z drum tracks.

operator one thread

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#148

I made this thing sequencing only a single step (yes, it’s only a single step looping by itself) and using step components.

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#149

Should I get this AND an op-1 would this be a good travel set?

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#150

That was one of the first things I did! I used the drum utility - but this tool seems very handy thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

Is there probability? I assumed there was for a long time, but after digging through the manual it seems like that was left out. I wish it had probability- I’ve really gotten used to that feature after kria and digitakt and would love to have something like that in such a small sequencer.

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#151

That was this first thing i looked for too, its not there.
Some step component alternatives are setting a trig to:
Play every Nth pass
Have a random chance to trig per pass.
Have other trigs set to randomly jump over the trig you want to not play
Etc.

So ther are plenty of cool things, n]but not quite probability. another one I find i’m missing is like the “play every nth time” but instead i wish i could “NOT play every nth time”.

It is very cool tho, and the spark components work independently, so you can set the step component effect to have it own play rules, vs the actual trig rule etc.

#152

I love the compactness, but I’ve not been interested in step-sequencing basically at all in probably over a decade. I’m hoping with OS updates it might become more tempting. I love my OP1, and given its flexibility in a small package, it’d be one of the last things I’d ever sell despite not using it much the last few years. As a result, I’m a big believer in TE’s approach and sensibility despite being hesitant to buy the OPZ. That’s why I’m always sort of keeping one eye on it. Maybe at some point it’ll make sense depending on how it evolves.

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