4 ms·

> 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 thi

> 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
  - IAmPym 4y ago
    Good example we can explore! So in this case there are a lot of differences: Comparing TE with Yamaha is a pretty massive difference in size of engineering teams and overall engineering knowledge. In the 80s the products, while definitely complex, had some advantages: back then you could get very simple and precise parts from many manufacturers because you had more small chip foundries available. seriously, try and find options for some of the bread and butter chips and you go crazy. The industry has consolidated most functionality into complex SoC parts which increase the bugs. The OP-1 is all run on an ADI Blackfin and even ADI was quite impressed by how much they got running. The graphics, the peripherals, the audio, everything. I was quite impressed! You’d think that the tools got better but… honestly? Not really. The complexity of the chips has grown dramatically faster than the ability of the tools to simplify development. I can give tons and tons of examples of this in this particular industry, even with that exact chip. You pay for cheap chips in development and engineering hours Battery or mobile products are no joke. Small products are no joke. Not only do you have to optimize around cost/performance but also around power considerations. Each major variable you add to development isn’t additive, it isn’t even multiplicative. It’s very difficult to compare apples to oranges here Then you have overall price… the TG77 would have been roughly 2700$ adjusting for inflation (from 300,000 yen in 1989) What comparable products do we have in that price range? Those are better comparisons Just some thoughts. There’s no one right answer to this but if you think you can make a better product for the cost there might just be a business opportunity there!

IAmPym 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
- IAmPym 4y ago
  Good example we can explore! So in this case there are a lot of differences: Comparing TE with Yamaha is a pretty massive difference in size of engineering teams and overall engineering knowledge. In the 80s the products, while definitely complex, had some advantages: back then you could get very simple and precise parts from many manufacturers because you had more small chip foundries available. seriously, try and find options for some of the bread and butter chips and you go crazy. The industry has consolidated most functionality into complex SoC parts which increase the bugs. The OP-1 is all run on an ADI Blackfin and even ADI was quite impressed by how much they got running. The graphics, the peripherals, the audio, everything. I was quite impressed! You’d think that the tools got better but… honestly? Not really. The complexity of the chips has grown dramatically faster than the ability of the tools to simplify development. I can give tons and tons of examples of this in this particular industry, even with that exact chip. You pay for cheap chips in development and engineering hours Battery or mobile products are no joke. Small products are no joke. Not only do you have to optimize around cost/performance but also around power considerations. Each major variable you add to development isn’t additive, it isn’t even multiplicative. It’s very difficult to compare apples to oranges here Then you have overall price… the TG77 would have been roughly 2700$ adjusting for inflation (from 300,000 yen in 1989) What comparable products do we have in that price range? Those are better comparisons Just some thoughts. There’s no one right answer to this but if you think you can make a better product for the cost there might just be a business opportunity there!