18 ms·

OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

• ArekDymalski 6y ago
  If it wasn't for the price I would buy it just for this "ambient. zone out to a drone generated by snippets of a radio broadcast" feature as it sounds precisely like my fav type of music.
  • H1Supreme 6y ago
    > snippets of a radio broadcast Although his work is more house music, and less ambient, there's a producer named Akufen who has done some really interesting music with this exact sound palette.
    • timc3 6y ago
      Yes, he has done some amazing tracks
• pjc50 6y ago
  Their line of synths is great, but a radio which doesn't support DAB? How am I going to listen to 6music?
  • ddingus 6y ago
    The US digital radio effort has been complicated and slow to ramp up. Many digital streams are commercial free in an attempt to drive receiver adoption. Many cars still ship with no digital capability. Ordinary FM makes reasonable sense here.
    • RL_Quine 6y ago
      It’s not an american product though.
      • ddingus 6y ago
        Do they believe they will sell in the US?
        • dvtrn 6y ago
          Do you believe it wont? teenage engineering has a very consistent following among audio geeks around the globe, as other comments are enthusiastically alluding to, I'd have already bought one if they weren't already sold out
          • ddingus 6y ago
            Oh I think it will. And analog FM works in many places around the globe, including the US. They should do well with that thing.
    • joezydeco 6y ago
      What is HD Radio, then? https://hdradio.com/get-a-radio/new-cars/ https://hdradio.com/get-a-radio/new-cars/
      • vel0city 6y ago
        HD Radio is a digital radio standard in the US, Canada, and Mexico. Many new cars are sold with HD Radio. Many new cars are sold without HD Radio. Go look at some new car listings, you'll find tons without HD Radio. Many will only say AM/FM. Sometimes they'll also mention Radio Data System (RDS), the thing that shows a snippet of text with song titles and station names. Some will mention HD Radio Ready, as in you can buy an additional module to upgrade the OEM stereo with an HD Radio decoder, this is also common with satellite radio. Sometimes a car will have HD Radio.
        • joezydeco 6y ago
          It was a rhetorical response to the statement "The US digital radio effort has been complicated and slow to ramp up". The answer was "it exists and has been ramped up for a while". And I'm not even talking about SDARS.
          • ddingus 6y ago
            Compared to analog FM, in the US, adoption has been slow. When they run ADS on the HD streams, we will know it is much closer. Some regions are almost there. Many are not.
          • vel0city 6y ago
            It has existed for a while and has been ramping up more and more over the last decade. I'm probably one of a small handful of people I know who listen to/care about HD Radio in their cars or their home stereos. Even decently technical people I know are still often surprised to find out about digital subchannels available on the radios they already have, whenever they actually have an HD Radio. Its been nearly two decades since HD Radio was chosen as the standard in the US, and yet in 2018 still nearly half of the new cars sold had only regular analog radios. Nearly 20 years and HD Radio was only on less than a fifth of all cars on the road. http://www.insideradio.com/more-than-half-of-new-cars-now-equipped-with-hd-radio/article_055842a0-3f18-11e9-af44-abb5c736f701.html http://www.insideradio.com/more-than-half-of-new-cars-now-eq...
    • baybal2 6y ago
      USA drew a short stick in the digital radio battle, by deciding on using a proprietary standard. The rest of the world has the DMB vs. DAB competition driving the adoption, and technical improvements, while USA still had the same HD Radio of 10 years ago, and near no mobile receivers.
      • ddingus 6y ago
        I agree, BTW. We could have had a much quicker, cheaper system. Then there is the whole artificial highs above about 8khz thing...
  • filleokus 6y ago
    My very basic understanding is that most regular DAB (not DAB+) is inferior in audio quality compared to FM? Also, and I don't know how much it has decided their design decisions, but Teenage Engineering is Swedish based, and here DAB hasn't really become a thing. It's been, more or less, in a "trial" state since 1995, not covering the whole country and steps to upgrade to DAB+ and replacing FM canceled a few years ago.
    • sp332 6y ago
      My very basic understanding is that most regular DAB (not DAB+) is inferior in audio quality compared to FM? Broadcasters can divide the ~1,000 kbit/s into many channels, usually 9-12. It's rare for a single channel to get more than 128 kbit/s, so a strong FM signal might sound better.
    • 076ae80a-3c97-4 6y ago
      Techmoan did a great video covering why DAB is surprisingly crappy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27w3quNTP84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27w3quNTP84
    • ricardobeat 6y ago
      At least in the Netherlands, DAB sounds a lot better than FM, there is a massive difference in quality and sound stage.
    • pjc50 6y ago
      Yeah I think it was a combination of a technical decision to keep the CPU power requirements down and a political decision to not give people high enough quality for piracy. "Home taping is killing music" and all that.
    • gertrunde 6y ago
      Yeah... DAB can be good, if the station chooses to transmit at a higher bit rate (which can range from 64kbit mono to 192kbit stereo at least), and signal strength is unfortunately a significant factor. In the UK, the BBC stations tend to be pretty solid, the commercial stations can be somewhat bad, although a lot of the commercial music stations seem to have shifted to DAB+ (predominantly 40 kbit/s DAB+ Stereo HE-AAC v2 apparently - presumably to fit more stations in, ~10 on the BBC ensemble vs ~20 on the commercial "National 1" ensemble).[1] [1 - http://www.wohnort.org/dab/uknat.html http://www.wohnort.org/dab/uknat.html]
• AgloeDreams 6y ago
  Just in case you're like "Why does this look familiar?" https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frekvens-portable-speaker-black-20422612/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frekvens-portable-speaker-black... https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frekvens-speaker-with-subwoofer-black-60422653/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frekvens-speaker-with-subwoofer... TE designed both this OB4 and the Frekvens, this seems like the Ikea line taken to a very far extreme. Very neat, lots of cash though. I have to say, it kinda reminds me of Ikea's Eneby too, but TE did not design that: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/eneby-bluetooth-speaker-black-00357636/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/eneby-bluetooth-speaker-black-0...
  • CarVac 6y ago
    I have the larger Eneby and it puts out a frankly ridiculous quantity of sound without distortion.
    • AgloeDreams 6y ago
      I have the Eneby, the tiny Frekvens, and twin Symfonisk speakers. Ikea's Symfonisk Sonos speakers are Eneby taken much further... but thats it. Like they are literally Eneby Drivers married to Sonos One SL boards. Add some porting and a case and boom, Symfonisk. But what they can do is pretty shocking, The TruePlay tech really irons the package into incredible quality by tuning out all of the downsides of the Eneby's lesser hardware. You can downright hear it outside like a house party at max volume with no discernible distortion.
      • CarVac 6y ago
        Hm, the Symfonisk are much smaller than the Eneby 30. The volume of the Eneby gives it surprising bass extension (40 Hz) but it's a bit lumpy on the way down there. I've never dared to test max volume at the risk of disturbing my neighbors…
        • AgloeDreams 6y ago
          Symfonisk is based on Eneby 20, Max volume I tested was with a twin pair (As they do stereo pairing via Sonos.) You will probably hear better quality out of a pair like I did but post TruePlay tuning, it sounded very different before and after. In the smaller room of mine, Trueplay seemed to think it was too muddy sounding and tuned out a lot of lower end EQ. The notable Eneby 20 vs Symfonisk sound to me was that the Eneby had bass that seemed...not crisp? I don't know the right word but the highs in a drum line were not there. The vocals could have sharp highs but then you couldn't hit the stick hit the drum, just the sound of the drum. Despite the exact same drivers, Symfonisk had a WAY different profile that was more crisp and had more dynamic feeling bass. I wonder if the speaker's Z-Depth helps that.
• pengstrom 6y ago
  > endless looping tape* > *ROLLING 2 HOUR RECORDING Then maybe not call it "endless" if it's not even practically endless?
  • anamexis 6y ago
    Well, a tape loop doesn't have any ends ;)
  • ebg13 6y ago
    It's endless like an Ouroboros.
  • jmiskovic 6y ago
    It's endlessly looping at least. BTW whole 2 hours is unheard of even for specialized music looping equipment, most I've seen is about 30 mins.
  • Someone 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_tape_cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_tape_cartridge I wonder which teenagers they target :-)
• mrspeaker 6y ago
  I love everything Teenage Engineering make. My first impression is always "eh, that's too weird, who would want that... who is their target market?", and over time end up at "OK, I WANT ONE!". I own way too many of their Pocket Operators now. Though, I REALLY think I'm not their target market here: "designed to be played outdoors, in public spaces and at high volume"... that's exactly situations I now try to avoid. Hmm, unless I have it playing "GET OFF MY LAWN" on a loop?
  • comboy 6y ago
    I understand say OP-1. But how much time on average have you spent on each of those pocket operators? And are you able to use it productively after leaving it alone for some time without checking manual?
    • vageli 6y ago
      Personally, when I was commuting for work I would spend the 90 min ride in or back working on some things, though I spent more time with the OP-Z. Sure it takes time to reacclimate to the controls but these things are not simple machines like bicycles. The overlays with the OP-Z for example are really handy for quick reference.
      • sanitycheck 6y ago
        I was going to mention the OP-Z - I was uncertain about it until I got one, but it turns out to be a really good example of an "expert" UI. No screen, lots of button combos to memorise, an enormous amount of functionality. Completely unapproachable without hours of studying the manual, but when you know it it's very efficient to use.
    • tweetle_beetle 6y ago
      The Pocket Operators are genuinely pretty inuitive, simply because they have so many buttons, and each one has at most two functions (from memory). The labelling is also pretty good for the first 2 series at least, I haven't tried any of the third. That said, the original official case hid the LEDs which reduces usability substantially - the only useful elements on the screen are the BPM and sync status in the corner. My issue with them is the lack of a case makes them not very ergonomic and not very portable, for the sake of an aesthetic. All the after market cases have a major downside: doubling the volume (size), hiding elements of the interface, requiring gluing components, price, etc. Also they're pretty expensive for what they are - you really want at least two, by which time you could buy a Volca. I've thought about desoldering all the buttons and pots to build a more durable unit with bigger mechanical Cherry style switches and bigger LEDs, but I'll never get around to it.
• tacticaldev 6y ago
  their stuff is awesome, but so expensive! I've wanted an OP-1 for a long time, just can't fork out that kind of cash for a "toy"
  • codetrotter 6y ago
    The OP-1 is kind of a weird thing. I remember a few years ago I was almost convinced that I should have one, except for the price tag which was way over my league. And back then it was still being sold for about $900 in stores I think and now it’s like $1500. On the bright side though I picked up a decent Korg Triton Le 88 waveform keyboard with weighted hammer action keys a couple of years ago second hand, and for that one I paid $300 which I think was a pretty good price. Online websites seem to indicate that these often sell for $550 to $600 second-hand, or at least that people are listing them asking for that amount. But the greatest thing for my music making happened a year later when I was able to pick up an Akai MPC X second hand in excellent condition for $1000. The guy that sold it to me had barely even used it. The retail price for those things are $2000, and I love my MPC X to bits. The MPC X combined with the aforementioned keyboard make for a wonderful time when I work on music. I have always preferred working with my music without using a computer for it when I play, and with the MPC X you get something that is still very tactile while at the same time also having quite a few of the features of a DAW. My keyboard is connected to the MIDI in and MIDI out of the MPC X, and I play on the keyboard, record MIDI notes, make changes to them and do all kinds of stuff. Now you may be wondering why I am bringing this up. Like, an 88-keys keyboard and a piece of other hardware sitting on top of it, all on a keyboard stand, it’s not portable so it’s not an apples to apples kind of deal quite. But the point is that I paid $1300 for this music gear and even though I don’t have the portability that an OP-1 would give you it just gives me so infinitely much personal joy to be making music with. The OP-1 meanwhile, I think even if you picked it up second hand you’d be unlikely to find it for less than $1000 anytime soon. And I think for me personally, yeah the OP-1 looks neat I suppose, but I am lucky that I could not afford it because this setup that I have instead I think is giving me much much more than the OP-1 ever would for me. When in the distant future I can afford to buy anything more for my music making, I don’t think I would actually ever buy the OP-1 at this point tbh. Because whereas I used to be intrigued by it and inspired by some of the videos I was seeing and the music people make with it, I think for me the truth is that it would not really help me musically. Not saying the OP-1 isn’t good or anything. Like I said, some people make cool music with it. Just think that for me I have found a different path to music for myself than what the OP-1 is for. And I feel like with my MPC X and my keyboard I can do all of what I would have been able to do with an OP-1 but not only that but so much more.
• bondarchuk 6y ago
  you know this is a minimalist company because they don't use capital letters.
  • justwalt 6y ago
    i understand
  • dinkleberg 6y ago
    Wow you aren’t kidding, other than the OB-4 part, I can’t find any capitalization on the site. An interesting choice.
• abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  They have a really weird list of counties (bottom left corner). About 100 of them, and I can't understand why they were chosen. A lot of small countries in there, and big ones missing.
• aidenn0 6y ago
  Is this actually a radio (as in receives terrestrial broadcasts), or just a BT speaker?
  • rtkwe 6y ago
    Yeah it's an FM radio. It's all over the page. They even have an ambient drone that's sounds like it's time stretched samples from the FM radio. > have you ever wished you could instantly rewind when listening to the radio, to hear the title of the song just played? > 72 hrs listening how about normal radio listening for a week without charging? > if you skip the traditional inputs like line in, bluetooth and FM radio
    • aidenn0 6y ago
      I missed that flipping through on my phone somehow. Probably because FM radio was just another bullet-point under "wireless" along with 2 bluetooth modes. The lack of any visible tuning controls also threw me.
  • primozk 6y ago
    Also FM radio.
  • ryanjm33 6y ago
    Website says, "line input, bluetooth, FM radio and disk"
• napolux 6y ago
  Why no DAB radio?
  • rtkwe 6y ago
    First guess is the FM is more of a toy experimental feature combined with DAB probably requiring license fees. Also there's no DAB in the US or regular service outside of Europe.
    • speedgoose 6y ago
      Teenage Engineering is Swedish.
      • moogly 6y ago
        http://public-service.net/docu/DABFactsSweden.pdf http://public-service.net/docu/DABFactsSweden.pdf
      • rtkwe 6y ago
        I know, but Europe is the only place that uses DAB basically and not universally so if they sell out side of there which they do having DAB is just a cost and no benefit unless they build different SKUs.
• npmaile 6y ago
  Like the rest of teenage engineering's products, I'm not sure what this thing is about, but I probably will be buying it.
  • panpanna 6y ago
    I was sceptical to their OP1 until I saw youtubers recording Stranger Things theme on a op1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lu5XB1Y2rHk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lu5XB1Y2rHk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hKupFmiMvbw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hKupFmiMvbw
• Shermanium 6y ago
  might be a fun guitar amp with interesting loop effects
• qz2 6y ago
  £599. Nope.
  • rvz 6y ago
    Quality engineering. But for the average user, it's expensive for a radio.
    • whywhywhywhy 6y ago
      TE's quality is hit and miss if you talk to people who have used their devices a lot. You're mostly just paying for the unique features, smaller production runs and look of the device. I own an OP-Z and luckily haven't had any issues but the forums are full of people who's units are bent or have the dials pop out.
  • andybak 6y ago
    Yeah I'm with you but I can totally understand people that do. Unlike £250 bluetooth ear buds. That I'll never understand
  • gambiting 6y ago
    I was about to say, at that price it's taking the piss a little bit. No matter how good and clever the engineering is, it's just too expensive.
    • bondarchuk 6y ago
      "JBL Boombox 2" is going for about 400 euros right now and as far as I can tell JBL bluetooth speakers are hugely popular to the point of almost becoming a genericized word for bluetooth speakers. This is just 1.5x the price for something that at least looks much better. I'm not getting either but it doesn't seem outrageous.
  • tweetle_beetle 6y ago
    At least it's made in Europe, unlike the OP-1 which they quietly moved to Chinese production after increasing the price...
• te_chris 6y ago
  Pity it's not DAB, this looks great.
• spectralflux 6y ago
  ...and its already sold out. One thing I like about this and the OP-1 is they hit that retrofuturism, Tokyo-in-1985 kind of vibe so well with their marketing, its really well thought out.
• serf 6y ago
  exposed drivers on a 'outdoor use' 600 dollar device gives me an extreme sense of anxiety. Reminds me of Braun products; products designed to look nice, but in general usability suffers in favor of sleek metal human interfaces, nice weights, and a generally 'quality' feel.
  • jhvkjhk 6y ago
    Your words remind me Apple.
    • AceJohnny2 6y ago
      Well gee. Jony Ive is openly inspired by Dieter Rams, the designer behind many of Braun's products. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-Rams-Apple-has-achieved-something-I-never-did.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-...
      • jhvkjhk 6y ago
        Wow, thank you.
    • centimeter 6y ago
      Except Apple hardware is more usable than basically any of their competitors (these days, software is a different story).
      • chrischen 6y ago
        People complain about Apple products because it’s one of the most used by people who actually care about what they use, and then fail to provide any decent alternatives.
  • manspeterson 6y ago
    The whole product reminds me a lot about the Braun T52. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=braun+t52&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=braun+t52&iax=images&ia=images
• talentedcoin 6y ago
  Does this kind of marketing actually work for many people? Without trying to sound too unkind, I genuinely hope there are not that many people out there who want to use this thing by "carry(ing) on one shoulder with speaker elements facing the head". This thing seems like a very expensive toy.
  • nwsm 6y ago
    TE's products are mostly "expensive toys". It's not really an insult; lots of people spend lots of money on "toys".
  • bkanber 6y ago
    Considering they're sold out now, I'd say yes, this kind of marketing works.
• andor 6y ago
  This might be the first Bluetooth Low Energy Audio product on the market.
• unixhero 6y ago
  Love the brand. No DAB+ tho, sad :)
• andor 6y ago
  "ambient mode - zone out to a drone generated by snippets of a radio broadcast" This sounds really cool. Is there anything like it available in software?
  • November-Echo 6y ago
    +1 Anyone?
  • gosub 6y ago
    The example on the webpage sounds like a radio station passed through a granulator with a lot of reverb, something like Clouds from Mutable Instruments. It's an open-source granular effect eurorack module, there is a software port in VCV-Rack. This is another famous granulator: https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/granulator-ii/ https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/granulator-ii/
  • oskenso 6y ago
    I'd love to see how teenage engineering implemented this one
  • whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    Similar in concept: http://youarelistening.to/ http://youarelistening.to/ but just overlaying not melding the two.
• ashleyn 6y ago
  Is there an actual magnetic tape inside or are they claiming a "recording" under the name "tape"? Left me kind of confused.
  • aikah 6y ago
    i believe it's 100% digital. There was a similar system on the OP-1 which emulated a tape
• crumbshot 6y ago
  Is HN being subjected to some astroturf marketing techniques here? Seems rather suspicious to see so many commenters enthusiastically salivating over an advert for a very expensive radio. And also for said advert to hit the #1 spot on this site, despite not fitting into the usual categories for a compelling post.
  • uoaei 6y ago
    It's ok that you are not privy to the hype around Teenage Engineering in general. Musicians like their devices because the UX design is interesting and relatively smooth, and the devices have a lot of flexibility for making interesting music.
    • devilduck 6y ago
      Kind of funny to see synth stuff come up on HN. There are people who know and need to let you know they know, and people who don't know and don't get it being grumpy about it.
    • munificent 6y ago
      The musician love for TE is on the wane as the company pivots from doing innovative industrial design for creative people to becoming another pointless luxury brand. They sell a $170 blank sweatshirt now.
  • zemo 6y ago
    HN is fundamentally a community built around products and commodities (and especially tech startups). What discussion happens here about programming is a very market-centric view of the field. This post seems par for the course to me.
  • talentedcoin 6y ago
    I'm with you. This is a product for rich narcissists.
    • zemo 6y ago
• sequoia 6y ago
  The radio mixing feature seems similar to what this guy "Radio Wonderland" does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr2wK3jvUhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr2wK3jvUhc I've seen his performances at HOPE conferences and it's pretty cool. See a full set here: https://archive.org/details/hopeconf2020/20200730_0000_RADIO_WONDERLAND.mp4 https://archive.org/details/hopeconf2020/20200730_0000_RADIO...
  • gokhan 6y ago
    Kudos to his original and inventive work. Thanks for the link.
• mmastrac 6y ago
  I totally bought into the hype and paid $1k (CAD) for an OP-1 that's unfortunately collecting dust. It's a marvel of design and engineering, but I suck at making music. For anyone not familiar, these guys are kind of like a cheeky Apple of musical hardware design.
  • zoba 6y ago
    Want to sell it?
    • mmastrac 6y ago
      That would be an admission that my musical ability is non-existent. But it's definitely something that crossed my mind.
• wodenokoto 6y ago
  I've been looking for a high-end pair of bluetooth speakers, so this really peaks my interest. I've been wanting the B&O Beolit, but they used to come with built-in charger, so you could just plug in directly into the wall. But now they switched to USB-C charging, which means that you need to use an external charger unit. Not every USB charger will deliver enough power, so that's just a step back in user experience. The older models had a room for the cable, so what was the point of changing it? Nothing was added in place of the internal charger and the price didn't drop. They just took away a feature and wrote "Now with USB-C!" on the box, as if they added something. So this one having "universal built-in power supply" and a power cable in the box, is a really big plus for me!
  • js2 6y ago
    FYI, piques.
  • richrichardsson 6y ago
    FYI: "piques my interest" is the idiom.
  • AgloeDreams 6y ago
    FWIW, Bluetooth is the wrong tech if you want high end. You are much better off with something Wifi connected and the quality is much much better. Obviously doesn't work for everyone, but I imagine this is not much better at reproduction than even mid-range Sonos Speakers.
    • AgloeDreams 6y ago
      Side note, you sound like the perfect customer for the SONOS Move.
• m3kw9 6y ago
  Teenage over engineering
  • stuntkite 6y ago
    This is thought out and useful criticism. Thank you for contributing.
• ctdonath 6y ago
  Return of the "boom box".
• jhvkjhk 6y ago
  Many people here are discussing OP-1 and complaining its expensive price. There's a open source clone called OTTO[1], and it looks promising (although not finished). [1]: https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO
  • thih9 6y ago
    Note that OTTO departed from OP-1 and doesn't attempt to clone its features. E.g. the "tape" has been removed, source: https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO/pull/66 https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO/pull/66 . Instead they plan adding: "A simple loop-station-style audio looper that can get audio from line in or synth. It has overdub and one level of Undo.", source: https://otto-project.github.io/docs/ https://otto-project.github.io/docs/
• kemonocode 6y ago
  Teenage Engineering makes cute, fun things, but more often than not they feel like they're very overpriced cute fun things for their functionality, and this is honestly no exception. In a sense they're like the Apple of nerdy products. Their Pocket Operators are the closest thing to a "cheap" product they have and even then, last time I checked, they don't even come with a protective case, which I personally find preposterous even if it goes against the aesthetic. One single drop and it'd probably be game over for a $100+ toy.
  • acomjean 6y ago
    I have a couple pocket operators from about 6 years ago. You are right, they're just a circuit board with surface mounted buttons. But after years of use including letting me nieces play with them, they still work and are pretty well made (And about $40.. now actually 50-90). For me they're a good learning tool, (PO-12 rhythm being one of the cheapest hardware drum machines.) though functionality is eclipsed by the smartphone in many cases.. I will grant you the optional case was so pricy it wasn't an option I would consider (I think it was like $30). https://teenage.engineering/products/po https://teenage.engineering/products/po pricing https://www.guitarcenter.com/Teenage-Engineering-Pocket-Operators.gc https://www.guitarcenter.com/Teenage-Engineering-Pocket-Oper...
    • shams93 6y ago
      Yeah my usb mini port broke on my old op1 but my pocket operators work fine with nothing but a rubber shield they do sell rubber shields for them for ~$30.
  • ehsankia 6y ago
    "Apple of X" categorization is very apt, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with trying to occupy that part of the market. I also consider Nespresso and Dyson to also be in that category, for example. It's obviously not everyone, and far from being the best value you can get, but I'm glad they exist.
    • morsch 6y ago
• kazinator 6y ago
  The portable bluetooth speaker market is incredibly crowded already, with offerings from some names like JBL, Bose, Sony and whatnot.
• thelazydogsback 6y ago
  Exposed, non-protected woofers looks cool - but I can imagine a butter-side-down Murphy's law event happening to me within a week of getting that thing...
  • mnw21cam 6y ago
    Also, 4-inch woofers? That's pretty small to be attempting to produce any serious amount of bass. (Source: I made myself a bass amp for my bass guitar when I was a teenager. It had a 12-inch woofer, and needed it. I don't think speakers have broken the laws of physics quite that well in the intervening years.)
    • dimnsionofsound 6y ago
      You’d be surprised what modern neodymium drivers in a well designed enclosure can accomplish bass-wise. Though you are right in that the laws of physics have not changed, and something has to give, usually what has “given” is the increase in power output of small amplifier boards, thus allowing DIYers (like myself) and manufacturers alike to throw more power into lower efficiency, but higher mass (and thus more bass in a smaller enclosure) drivers. With Hoffman’s iron law where you can have two of efficient, low, or small, it seems like efficiency is what has gone down to get more bass extension while keeping enclosures small-ish. I’d be happy to provide photos+construction details of one of the portable speakers I made, and frequency response measurements if you’d like, to illustrate this.
      • thelazydogsback 6y ago
        Reminds me of the venerable Radio Shack Minimus 7 -- this was truly a revolutionary product at the time at set the bar for "bookshelf" speakers for years.
      • mnw21cam 6y ago
        I you're on the button with the efficiency thing. My speaker only had a 50W amplifier, but it was quite capable of being loud in a large (capacity 600 seated) school hall.
• jascii 6y ago
  I would be in the market for a powered/bluetooth speaker that doesn't sound like shit. For the price I'd expect (near) audiophile sound, however little in the marketing even seems to mention sound quality, it just seems very gimmicky. Does anyone have any recommendations for a semi portable powered/bluetooth speaker that focuses on accurate sound reproduction (within the limits physics puts on a smaller enclosure)?
  • nomadtwin 6y ago
    I bought an Ikea Eneby 20 about three years ago (there's a dual speaker version available). It's my travel companion. Still in use. Almost daily. Indoor. Outdoor. Techno, Rock, Spotify...it just sounds good (bass a little prominent but can be fixed trough EQing or a piece of cloth) It looks good (not like a plastic toy) and sounds absolutely great. Paid $40 back then. (last time I checked it was 50€+ in EU right now). You absolutely can pay >400 and it might be accurate hifi, but what you really want from a speaker is joy :)
  • Guest19023892 6y ago
    What about KEF LSX or LS50? Or Devialet Reactors?
    • pvarangot 6y ago
      I wouldn't call that semi-portable.
      • Guest19023892 6y ago
        The LS50's are a little large, but the others I would consider semi-portable. Look at the below image, the Reactor is the size of a small toaster and you just need to plug in a power cord. You could easily move that to different rooms, plug it in on the terrace, bring it to a friend's house, etc. If that's not at least semi-portable, I don't know what is. https://i.imgur.com/V1fEu7h.jpg https://i.imgur.com/V1fEu7h.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7dSAtEY.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7dSAtEY.jpg
  • 6y ago
• perilousacts 6y ago
  Or just buy a soundboks for $200 more and have portability
• theon144 6y ago
  Honest question: So, I get the radio rewind feature, and I really dig the interface, but it kind of feels like it's a feature from some two decades ago? Are there really still that many people regularly listening to FM radio for whom this is a killer feature?
  • gglitch 6y ago
    Honest answer: I carry portable FM radios around with me all the time and enjoy my local stations immensely and wish I could rewind to hear a title or composer's name, or some melody or similar, almost daily. I realize I could build something like this myself if I put enough time into it, but I'm pretty sure the pricetag would be excusable for me. Honest question: Do you have any suggestions for how I can duplicate all of the above (portable, FM, good sound, rolling digital audio cache) for cheaper, and without spending weeks soldering and coding?
    • teruakohatu 6y ago
      Plug a cheap fm radio into a rpi and record and stream it to the Internet and then play it on your phone. Maybe a weekends work?
      • twic 6y ago
        You're not wrong, but this has big "DropBox? just use rsync" energy.
        • samatman 6y ago
          Except this was an answer to a specific question, not a dismissal of the product. If that famous comment had been a reply to "wow Dropbox is cool and I signed up for the beta, but hey, how would you implement something like this yourself?", no one would remember it.
• acomjean 6y ago
  I like the handle, reminds me of 80s portable radios. Though from 80s and 90s experience 2 speakers that close aren't great for stereo separation. "disk mode" seems interesting, though this is a little overkill for metronome.. Of the other two modes "ambient" seems like a sound machine. The remote I don't care for, excepting repurposing as a tempest controller used with MAMe. Can you turn of the recording feature to save battery? I have a Beoplay A2 speaker (Bang and Ofson) which it flat and slides into a backpack. I love that thing, but the battery is starting to go, and being discontinued I wonder how long I'll be able to keep it going. I always worry about these new things, and wish there was a standard battery packs for these things.
• JohnBooty 6y ago
  I have not heard this speaker, but like many portable speakers, the design is distinctly suboptimal even by portable standards. In a portable device, stereo is actually not desirable. Two reasons. One, you will certainly not experience the intended effect of stereo (the illusion of spatial separation) when the drivers are so close together. Two, the drivers will actually interfere with each other. Not only are you not getting the effect of stereo, it's making things worse. The phenomenon is comb filtering: https://audiouniversityonline.com/comb-filtering-explained/ https://audiouniversityonline.com/comb-filtering-explained/ https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-what-exactly-comb-filtering https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-what-exactly-com... You can visualize the effect by imagining two stones, dropped into a swimming pool, a short distance apart. As the ripples spread outward, they will cancel each other at some points and reinforce each other at other points. These areas of reinforcement and cancellation alternate, and that is essentially what happens (in three dimensions) with the sound emanating from two drivers playing the same sounds in close proximity. (The actual detriment will depend on how the recording is mixed. If the recording has no stereo separation for a particular sound or instrument, the effect will be worst. If a particular sound is hard-panned 100% left or 100% right, there will be no detrimental effect) If anybody is interested, for the price of this device ($999) you can get a heck of a home stereo. Wirecutter has excellent recommendations for affordable bookshelf speakers, receivers, etc.
  • amorroxic 6y ago
    Thank you for the perspective here. A wish there was a way to bookmark comments on HN..
    • grzm 6y ago
      You can use favorites for this feature.
    • Firaxus 6y ago
      To expand a little on what grzm said: If you click on the "X time-unit(s) ago" part of the comment heading in a new window/tab, it will open that comment as its own item where you can then favorite it. It's a little hidden, I have often wished the same thing as you without remembering that favoriting comments is possible, even though I've evidently done it before since when I favorited the parent I found other favorited comments in my favorites list.
• Syzygies 6y ago
  They're missing a killer feature they have the hardware to implement: Ad skipping. Within a fraction of a second they could notice that the audio feed exactly matches a fragment in memory, and mute audio till the feed diverges again from history. One would want this mode off for a "Top Forty" radio station, but on for live content. An easy enhancement would be to press a "kill" button to immediately mute repeating content, and always automatically mute this content in the future. This feature would be useful for songs one never wants to hear again. Many baseball fans would pay thousands of dollars to never hear the "Kars for Kids" ad again, wondering why they don't explain their charity's narrow mission, wondering if their cars are sold by an intermediary that redirects profits.
  • geekuillaume 6y ago
    Adblock Radio does exactly that: https://github.com/adblockradio https://github.com/adblockradio. They should get in contact with the creator!
  • majormajor 6y ago
    Radio adblock that replaced it with silence would be nearly useless for me... waiting through silence isn't any better. Something that listened to two streams and cut over to a "backup" when it detected an ad in the primary would be more interesting, if it also switched back automatically!
• CyberDildonics 6y ago
  There is nothing here but marketing, I don't know why people would be engrossed in an advertisement for something basic. Anyone can put together speakers and a battery with parts from amazon or aliexpress.
• macawfish 6y ago
  One of my dream projects is a high quality open source, syncable, low latency bluetooth/wireless speaker system, like the JBL speakers except that you can bring your own amp and drivers and software and stuff. Culturally, this kind of thing could be revolutionary. Outdoor music events with dispersed speaker arrays would be much less noisy than ones with giant central arrays, but everyone would be able to hear the music much better and with much less damage to the ears. You could probably get away with having pretty large gatherings without any noise permits. One of the things I noticed about clubs in Berlin vs. clubs where I'm from is that the sound systems are distributed more evenly throughout the spaces. So you don't need earplugs as badly as you do in my city where the venues all use these massive mono speaker arrays and if you're in the front row you're gonna get tinnitus. The JBL setup is designed really well, but it's proprietary and different generations aren't backward compatible. I wanna see an open source hardware alternative. Where do I sign up!
• snvzz 6y ago
  I could find no frequency response nor distortion measurements. I don't get how this ad made it into the front page.
• gglitch 6y ago
  If they add the ability to dump the cache to a local or network drive, I'm sold.
• kazinator 6y ago
  "incredible sounding stereo". With speakers within inches of each other, and you standing many feet away, and moving around? I don't think so.
  • thelazydogsback 6y ago
    I would love it if every product in this category to be able to stream from the same source and be selectable as stereo (if two speakers), mono-center, mono-left-only and mono-right only -- this way I can by more than one and place them as I like. I'm not sure Bluetooth is up to it, which means that one would need to act as master and broadcast to slaves. (And the master would probably have to delay a bit to phase-match w/the remote.)
• znpy 6y ago
  portable speakers are one of the worst things invented in this century. I almost cannot take a walk or take a subway train without some youngsters blasting crappy music very loud at everyone.
  • morsch 6y ago
    Fortunately this century also invented noise isolating earphones.
    • znpy 6y ago
      cool, so now it's my duty to spend to not hear other people's bad manners.
      • morsch 6y ago
        If you prefer to suffer in dignity, more power to you!
• monadic2 6y ago
  I'm a little peeved that a site named "teenage.engineering" is not an educational one. I realize this is not entirely rational, but I would have expected (and welcomed) a build-a-kit, not yet another generic consumer product. This isn't even waterproof. What teenagers do you know?
• bborud 6y ago
  Their PO modulars (https://teenage.engineering/products/po/modular https://teenage.engineering/products/po/modular) are so great looking I have almost bought one on impulse several times. Then I get to the checkout page and I realize I don't want it that badly.
• archi42 6y ago
  I don't get why this product gets so many upvotes. The only thing that I find refreshing about it is the use of an active DSP instead of a passive crossover network. Maybe the aesthetics. For the rest, way too expensive; says the guy who spent more days and money than he likes to admit building his speakers (4" FAST, 5 liter each, active DSP@250Hz, plays down to <40Hz).
• devnullzero 6y ago
  guys, maybe someone is able to recognise wall clock from promo video?
• bni 6y ago
  Does it support Apt-X? AAC is mentioned in spec sheet so I would assume its possible to get acceptable sound quality from iPhone, when using the Music app with AAC files, or even MP3 files. Anyone knows when using Spotify on iPhone and selecting bluetooth as output, will it use AAC then? or will it re-encode the sound from Spotify, either into AAC or, god forbid SBC?
• panoply 6y ago
  I used to hang out with one of their engineers, he was a great guy and I tell you what, he took his job serious, lived and breathed the company and his work. Teenage Engineering is a small team and from what I know this tech was 5 years in the making. I think it is a great accomplishment from them.