5 ms·

> Reliable. It is for people who want something that is high quality and doesn't break. My TE OP-1 synth has not really matched these adjectives. One of the k

by wyager 5y ago

> Reliable. It is for people who want something that is high quality and doesn't break. My TE OP-1 synth has not really matched these adjectives. One of the keyboard keys is misconstructed, so it’s on a hair trigger. The lightest brush will cause it to get set off. I have to replace the keyboard at some point to fix it. This should have been caught in QC. It also undergoes fairly frequent software crashes (esp. for a musical instrument). I’ve crashed it at least 3 times doing random UI interactions. Given that this is one of their flagship products, and a lot of people use adjectives like “reliable” and “quality” to describe it, I’m very skeptical that these descriptions are actually accurate when applied to other TE products.

IAmPym 5y ago
Small sample size bias Small companies don't have the same QC that a large corporation does, you'll never get the same consistency across products at the early stages of a company. Unfair to compare against that. You should definitely contact support and let them know, my guess is they'll take care of the keyboard. Could be debris inside it somewhere, could be a number of other tolerance issues or something else. Crashes are definitely a problem. Knowing the chip they use and the complexity under the hood. The fact is though, all instruments suffer from issues like this. You will not find a single piece of gear on the market that doesn't have bugs. Crash issues are rare in our gear only because they are more simple by comparison. When I was writing the Tempest OS I had tons of crash bugs I had to work through because it was ambitious and quite complex, nearly all of which got fixed as the OS matured. Same with the OP-1 I'd imagine. Professional musicians learn to work around things and create systems to deal with inevitable problems. It's just the reality of the game.
- kjs3 5y ago
  I shall remember the next time I drop a large dime to pick up something marketed as 'reliable', 'high-end', etc., that if it doesn't meet expectations I should just suck it up and limp along with whatever the vendor gave me. Good to know.
- DoctorNick 5y ago
  > Crashes are definitely a problem. Knowing the chip they use and the complexity under the hood. The fact is though, all instruments suffer from issues like this. You will not find a single piece of gear on the market that doesn't have bugs. Crash issues are rare in our gear only because they are more simple by comparison. When I was writing the Tempest OS I had tons of crash bugs I had to work through because it was ambitious and quite complex, nearly all of which got fixed as the OS matured. Same with the OP-1 I'd imagine. It’s been on the market for TEN YEARS. They have had plenty of time to defuckulate the software.
  - IAmPym 5y ago
    I'm just trying to give you perspective Nearly every complex instrument still has critical bugs after 10 years because development moves on after 4-5 years. Hardware bugs are != software bugs in terms of complexity because the debugging and tools you have available are simply not even close to comparable. This is why you don't get a whole lot of complex instruments from small companies. I applaud anyone who gives it a shot, it isn't easy.
    - wyager 5y ago
      > I applaud anyone who gives it a shot, it isn't easy. You make it sound like a hobby project and not a $1200 instrument nominally targeted at professionals. The reality is that nothing I do on the OP-1 is very complicated. It should be a lot more reliable than it is.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      That's where open sourcing it might come in handy. Oh, and don't worry about 'hobbyists' not being able to get their hands on expensive toolchains, that's their problem once they can get their hands on the source and that's you holding that back based on the assumption that they won't be able to do anything with it.
    - ajxs 5y ago
      I appreciate your obvious experience in this area, however synthesisers with more features, and more complicated user interfaces than the OP-1 have existed longer than I've been alive. I know this is not from a small company, but take for instance Yamaha's SY77 from 1989. It's built around a 16-bit Hitachi H8/500 processor, with 1MB of SRAM. It's CPU, synth engine, and peripherals are all glued together with 7400-series logic chips. Its AFM/AWM engine, sequencer, and the UI that controls them hold up well by today's standards. Compared to whatever ARM SoC the OP-1 is built around, the EE involved in designing the SY77 is much more complex. There is no comparison between the tooling available to Yamaha in the 80s, and the open-source tooling/libraries/resources available for embedded development in 2022. I understand economies of scale, however can't we expect more from a company like Teenage Engineering for the huge prices for their gear? My TG77 is 33 years old. I replaced some aging capacitors because they were making the main output a bit noisy, however aside from that it's worked very well.
- Phrodo_00 5y ago
  > Unfair to compare against that. They're a consumer business, they get to be compared against other similar businesses. A product's quality rating shouldn't depend on the size of the company.

by wyager 5y ago

IAmPym 5y ago

Small sample size bias Small companies don't have the same QC that a large corporation does, you'll never get the same consistency across products at the early stages of a company. Unfair to compare against that. You should definitely contact support and let them know, my guess is they'll take care of the keyboard. Could be debris inside it somewhere, could be a number of other tolerance issues or something else. Crashes are definitely a problem. Knowing the chip they use and the complexity under the hood. The fact is though, all instruments suffer from issues like this. You will not find a single piece of gear on the market that doesn't have bugs. Crash issues are rare in our gear only because they are more simple by comparison. When I was writing the Tempest OS I had tons of crash bugs I had to work through because it was ambitious and quite complex, nearly all of which got fixed as the OS matured. Same with the OP-1 I'd imagine. Professional musicians learn to work around things and create systems to deal with inevitable problems. It's just the reality of the game.

kjs3 5y ago
I shall remember the next time I drop a large dime to pick up something marketed as 'reliable', 'high-end', etc., that if it doesn't meet expectations I should just suck it up and limp along with whatever the vendor gave me. Good to know.
DoctorNick 5y ago
> Crashes are definitely a problem. Knowing the chip they use and the complexity under the hood. The fact is though, all instruments suffer from issues like this. You will not find a single piece of gear on the market that doesn't have bugs. Crash issues are rare in our gear only because they are more simple by comparison. When I was writing the Tempest OS I had tons of crash bugs I had to work through because it was ambitious and quite complex, nearly all of which got fixed as the OS matured. Same with the OP-1 I'd imagine. It’s been on the market for TEN YEARS. They have had plenty of time to defuckulate the software.
- IAmPym 5y ago
  I'm just trying to give you perspective Nearly every complex instrument still has critical bugs after 10 years because development moves on after 4-5 years. Hardware bugs are != software bugs in terms of complexity because the debugging and tools you have available are simply not even close to comparable. This is why you don't get a whole lot of complex instruments from small companies. I applaud anyone who gives it a shot, it isn't easy.
  - wyager 5y ago
    > I applaud anyone who gives it a shot, it isn't easy. You make it sound like a hobby project and not a $1200 instrument nominally targeted at professionals. The reality is that nothing I do on the OP-1 is very complicated. It should be a lot more reliable than it is.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    That's where open sourcing it might come in handy. Oh, and don't worry about 'hobbyists' not being able to get their hands on expensive toolchains, that's their problem once they can get their hands on the source and that's you holding that back based on the assumption that they won't be able to do anything with it.
  - ajxs 5y ago
    I appreciate your obvious experience in this area, however synthesisers with more features, and more complicated user interfaces than the OP-1 have existed longer than I've been alive. I know this is not from a small company, but take for instance Yamaha's SY77 from 1989. It's built around a 16-bit Hitachi H8/500 processor, with 1MB of SRAM. It's CPU, synth engine, and peripherals are all glued together with 7400-series logic chips. Its AFM/AWM engine, sequencer, and the UI that controls them hold up well by today's standards. Compared to whatever ARM SoC the OP-1 is built around, the EE involved in designing the SY77 is much more complex. There is no comparison between the tooling available to Yamaha in the 80s, and the open-source tooling/libraries/resources available for embedded development in 2022. I understand economies of scale, however can't we expect more from a company like Teenage Engineering for the huge prices for their gear? My TG77 is 33 years old. I replaced some aging capacitors because they were making the main output a bit noisy, however aside from that it's worked very well.
Phrodo_00 5y ago
> Unfair to compare against that. They're a consumer business, they get to be compared against other similar businesses. A product's quality rating shouldn't depend on the size of the company.