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APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs
- Arainach 4mo agoNot even a price listed. I don't understand the market for this - fancy musical instruments for creativity, sure, there's a market, but who wants to own cutting vinyl? How many records would you need to make for this to be more economical than paying a dedicated shop? How many would you need to do to "achieve higher quality"? How consistent are your results?
- pstuart 4mo agoNor any clue on what blanks cost. But I could see the thrill of this if money was no object.
- jagged-chisel 4mo agoThese are Designed. The target audience has tremendous disposable income, and Taste (subjectively, of course.) No one is buying this for economy’s sake.
- onlypassingthru 4mo agoAre there bootlegs on vinyl? Maybe now there can be.
- actionfromafar 4mo agoIsn't a vinyl cutter the first step when pressing records?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- wmf 4mo agoYou might need different machines to cut wax/vinyl directly vs cutting lacquer to make a stamper.
- fileoffset 4mo agoyes there is, I bought one by accident the other day
- klodolph 4mo agoTeenage Engineering seems to run partly on hype and halo effect. It makes cool things you can’t afford, and you buy something cheaper. Selling a vinyl cutting machine keeps them in the news, which keeps them in your mind, and then you think about how you always wanted an OP-1 but oh maybe you could buy the EP-133 instead. I’m sure there’s a price at which the vinyl cutter is profitable.
- darnfish 4mo agoIt's also possible that TE are full of people who are passionate about design and sound and want to work on and release interesting products in that space. Not everything is a psyop
- klodolph 4mo agoThat took my comment to a much darker place than I anticipated—I think basic marketing is ok, and even if you’re passionate about design, you still should be thinking about the business’s bottom line. But, like, https://teenage.engineering/store/field-desk https://teenage.engineering/store/field-desk Or maybe the TP-7 is a better example. They are obviously following the playbook from brands like Supreme. At least in part.
- kev009 4mo agoThat is hilarious. Ikea with the Rexroth price tag.
- steve1977 4mo agoThat's basically a bad Eiermann desk ripoff, but about twice as expensive as the original. https://www.richard-lampert.de/en/furniture/eiermann-1/ https://www.richard-lampert.de/en/furniture/eiermann-1/
- actionfromafar 4mo agoThe Eiermann looks more sturdy at a glance too, since the legs aren't at the corners.
- retired_account 4mo agoThere’s certainly novelty to this, I’d love one if the price were reasonable. Direct capture, almost like a polaroid for vinyl records, no need to “develop” it. I imagine artists could sell a super-limited (i.e. 1 copy) live recording of a show the second it ends for a premium, especially if they kept the machine on stage and personally packaged and signed it.
- pembrook 4mo agoSir, I commend you for your lack of taste for aesthetics, "coolness", and for maintaining the cynical, pessimistic Hackernews status quo. I've been worried this place has gotten eternal september'd full of redditors, AI bots, and low-IQ emotional mainstream political rants. But then you swoop in here and remind me that it's still 2007 in Hackernews land: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 Never change.
- nine_k 4mo agoTo me, "cool" is a slightly derogatory term when applied to design. It usually means that smoke and mirrors play a significant role.
- Waterluvian 4mo agoI have a real “I was born yesterday” feeling having realized that “Teenage Engineering” has nothing to do with making audio tech accessible to young newcomers.
- fragmede 4mo agorich young newcomers are totally welcome!
- Lio 4mo agoIs that entirely fair? Their Pocket Operators are pretty cheap and accessible.
- picofarad 4mo agoThey're like $100! That's not affordable for a thing that makes beeps and boops. I can only hope behringer continues to undercut them on things I care about.
- Lio 4mo agoYou can get Pocket Operators new from $59 depending on the model. That’s cheaper than any of beringer’s copies. If you can’t afford that consider used or stick to software.
- rtpg 4mo agoThis isn't that but their "record factory" toy[0]... I'm like 90% sure is the same thing as something Gakken released in Japan for half the price as a little fun toy[1] Even in the age of the internet there's a huge business in people basically taking a "normal" thing from another market and then rebadging it to release as an elevated thing. Studio neat has a $231 tiny box cutter[2]. OLFA (A "professional" box cutter maker) sells a 2 pack of tiny box cutters that probably are 5x more ergonomic on account of being made to be used instead of to look nice on a website, for $10. [3] The best version of a thing is likely whatever people who do it all day use. But you can totally make a market for consumers who want "fashionable" things but who don't really get the space. Studio Neat is a big offender on this honestly... basically all of their stuff have "better" things at least at half the cost just available in random stationary stores. I'm all for wasting money on pens, but at least waste them on good pens! [0]: https://teenage.engineering/products/po-80 https://teenage.engineering/products/po-80 [1]: https://hon.gakken.jp/book/1575072200 https://hon.gakken.jp/book/1575072200 [2]: https://www.studioneat.com/products/keen https://www.studioneat.com/products/keen [3]: https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/OLFA-Compact-Knife-Pieces-95B2/dp/B001D38XR0 https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/OLFA-Compact-Knife-Pieces-95B2...
- 1123581321 4mo agoThat fancy box cutter looks high utility; what don't you like about it besides the price? The retraction seems designed for frequently opening boxes, but not constantly. (I open few boxes and have a bog standard box cutter; I haven't used Studio Neat's or OLFA.)
- Our_Benefactors 4mo agoIt’s not made to fit in the hand. There’s no way to lock the blade forward. It’s one of the stupidest designs you could have for a box cutter.
- sandcat_ 4mo agoFor what it’s worth, a non-locking blade is a plus for some people. I wouldn’t really want to leave a locking box cutter around, I’m too forgetful, but one that stows itself away automatically I’d feel a bit safer about. Still a silly price, though.
- cmrdporcupine 4mo agoBack when I DJ'd techno in the 90s I would have killed for this for what it could bring creatively to a set. Just the ability to cut my own tracks onto white labels and put custom loops etc on vinyl would have really changed things entirely without having to front a whole bunch of cash (which I def did not have) to get a batch of records pressed which probably nobody else would order or play. But now mixing is done digitally and playing with vinyl is a mostly lost art and it's trivial to put your own material together into audio files and mix it.
- dylan604 4mo agoI've heard tales of Ritchie Hawtin playing multiple turntables (6-8 depending on who's telling) where he'd have tracks separated as stems into dub plates and do live remixes by swapping out the plates. The things people did before Ableton!
- cmrdporcupine 4mo agoI saw him do 3... maybe 4? tables? But mostly 2 or 3 decks plus a 909. Around here in Toronto area we had a local (Jeff Milligan / "Algorithm") who was famous for absolutely precise beatmatching, and often 4 deck mixing. Very minimal wonky/bleepy techno. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2083209238436343 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2083209238436343 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAthnDk7ZcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAthnDk7ZcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6EJOzGj4xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6EJOzGj4xM
- dylan604 4mo agoPlaying that minimal techno, I'd need at least that many tables just to keep from being bored.
- cmrdporcupine 4mo agoI mean, it's not listening music, it's dancing music, and contextually needs to be placed in a very atmospheric, very dark room. And mixed well.
- colechristensen 4mo agoMarket: music industry veterans that won the race and have boutique record labels for small runs of obscure or promotional or small bands. Have five records printed for the merch table and the next show. Once you have the machine hopefully the marginal cost of a record would make sense for extremely small runs. Where a band with no money might struggle to afford a $1000 minimum run somewhere else, they might be able to make beer money at a show with records made on one of these. Probably not "economical" in the machine may never pay for itself, but somebody rich buying one as a mechanism to promote musicians on a small scale probably makes sense to them.
- Brian_K_White 4mo agoI would buy a machine that makes new floppy disk media if it existed, and not because of any economical argument. I would buy a machine that makes new laserdiscs if it existed, and not because of any economical argument. ... aluminized paper for electric arc printers ... wax film thermal print head ribbon ... a re-inker for cloth typewriter ribbon (at least this one is straightforward to design and build myself some day) ... extra wide cloth matrix printer ribbon with 4 colors ... 1.9mm magnetic tape for exatron wafers A record cutter has way more potential audience than any of those. They will sell every one they can even manage to make.
- thenthenthen 4mo agoThere is one company that sells similar lathe cutters in Europe. To aquire it you need to go on a multi day training in a remote Swiss forest. Then it’s around 10.000 EUR in equipment, granted you supply your own record player (sl1200 ~700EUR). But yeah cutting high quality stereo records is an art. No matter the money you throw at it, it will involve a lot of maintenance, skill, experience, spare parts, mastering skills, consumables, and time (these cut in real time). Indeed, who wants to do that? I welcome any effort in this niche though!
- thenthenthen 4mo agoConsistency is super hard to achieve if you are not cutting daily in a (climate) controlled environment, even then, you will burn out the cutting head transducers, your cutting heads will dull (super fast). Operational costs are pretty high. Wonder how much they will charge for this lathe. I guess 40-80k USD?
- dylan604 4mo agoMight I introduce you to the concept of dub plates? I absolutely love playing vinyl as a dj, and being able to cut my own would be worth it to me. Some people are just silly about their hobbies even without going into lalaland like an audiophile. Growing up, my dad had an 8-track recorder and a box of blank cassettes. I would record my music to them as the car I drove still had an 8-track player. It's goofy. It's fun. It's not logical per se, but it's also not hurting you. So leave me to my idiosyncrasies and go back to your Spotify feed and obey and consume as you do
- phodo 4mo ago>> "who wants to own cutting vinyl?" Well, Sega gamers for one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c744iD0_fWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c744iD0_fWU
- CyberDildonics 4mo agoMaybe a party novelty for hipsters. This stuff is like expensive watches. If there was no one to show it off to there would be no one who would buy it.
- dhosek 4mo agoThere used to be places where you could make your own one-of-a-kind record: pretty much direct microphone to vinyl¹ which I’m guessing this essentially is. But that said, I kind of feel like most of Teenage Engineering is more stunt than practical. ⸻ 1. A booth for making records like this plays a role in the plot of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. Elvis Presley’s very first recordings were a similar thing, the two sides recorded in a booth to make a singular record to give his mother as a present in 1953.
- TylerE 4mo agoProducing a lathe cut is the first (physical) step of many of pressing vinyl. This isn’t targeting consumers, or even record stores, but record pressing plants. This is kind of a big deal because this sort of fundamental equipment hasn’t been available new for decades. The vast majority of plants/mastering facilities are using old Scully lathes from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Those are getting ever older and harder to source parts for, and with the vinyl boom the number of pressing plants is actually going up.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- atoav 4mo agoTeenage Engineering has the market of people who have a lot of money to spend on a hobby, want a fancy product design and don't care about cost. The exception is their PO series stuff which is actually kind of affordable for what you can get out of them.
- gizajob 4mo agoVinylrecorder.com There’s been a market for this for nearly 30 years (and the rest).
- protocolture 4mo agoEvery Teenage Engineering Product: Damn I would buy this for 50 bucks. I actually have a project that requires a bunch of custom vinyl, but I am guessing this is not economical.
- navaed01 4mo agoIn a world of digital rationality, I’m glad teenage engineering are here to design the absurd and analog. It doesn’t make rational sense - and I think that’s the point
- Triphibian 4mo agoSometimes it is nice to have one thing that does its one job extremely well.
- stigz 4mo agoPrice? If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
- PCI-eX16 4mo agoour shared vision is to enable access to anyone who wants their music or sound on a physical record. FWIW, You can get 100 records + jackets printed professionally for ~$10 a pop. Gakken toy record cutter is low quality, but costs $160. I wonder what this would cost. Surely it's impractical for personal use, as marketed.
- rtpg 4mo agoThe Gakken toy record cutter was only 8000 yen when it was released[0]. My spouse bought one on a whim. The quality is ... quite bad. It's a tool for learning about how this works though! So it was a fun little activity. But it really is "just" what it is. Maybe Teenage Engineering's toy that looks like is exactly the same tech is better. I have my doubts. [0]: https://hon.gakken.jp/book/1575072200 https://hon.gakken.jp/book/1575072200
- emj 4mo agoThe two groove cutters(?) on the APC-2 look like the weigh more than that toy cutter. It is interesting that this prints in realtime is that a toy thing?
- handspun 4mo agoShipping is making things prohibitively expensive in many parts of the world
- whywhywhywhy 4mo agoYeah that copy doesn’t line up with the reality of the pricing or production run of this thing at all. Cool project but the opposite of democratization.
- georgelyon 4mo agoCool, but can it make parallel grooves like HENGE’s Journey to Voltus B? https://www.outofrage.net/post/review-henge-journey-to-voltus-b https://www.outofrage.net/post/review-henge-journey-to-voltu...
- vr46 4mo agoI looked and went, "WTF is that? Looks like a record cutting machine" Scrolled down WTAF I'm a total TE fanboi, I have the OP1F and OP-XY, they're everything I ever wanted and my MPC and Digitakt haven't be touched in months. And the Digitone Keys is unplugged propped against the bookshelf. It's extraordinary how addictive these two little synths are for making things happen. The APC-2, however, is a fascinating outcome of what happens when you have a bunch of creative people who like - and can - do things that are new to them and make them new to others. It's no wonder they keep getting asked to do cool stuff like Panic's Playdate, Baidu's Raven, Nothing Smartphones and Headphones. TE have retained this incredible playful vibe that has long drained from Sony and Apple. I've heard every lazy comment about hipsters and rich kids who are supposedly their target audience, and the cost of the products, as if the visible ingredients are all that accounting measure. Swiss watches cost orders of magnitude more than TE's amazing inventions, and their only purpose seems to be to remind the wearer how amazing they are when they look at it. "God, I'm good," thought the Rolex wearer as he glanced at his wrist. Hipsters will buy anything that looks cool. But that doesn’t mean anything that looks cool was made for them.
- alexjplant 4mo ago> I've heard every lazy comment about hipsters and rich kids who are supposedly their target audience, and the cost of the products, as if the visible ingredients are all that accounting measure. Swiss watches cost orders of magnitude more than TE's amazing inventions, and their only purpose seems to be to remind the wearer how amazing they are when they look at it. Nobody pretends that high-end watches are anything besides objets d'art and even then not every watch is a Rolex synonymous with conspicuous consumption. TE, on the other hand, has legions of fans that buy this stuff without knowing the first thing about music production just because they think it's cool and want to try it out. Nobody who buys a $700 Tissot thinks it tells better time than a $17 Casio. I have no problem with any of this. The world needs more aspiring creatives and it's none of my business how these consumers choose to spend their money. The fact that you find it appropriate to unilaterally shit on people who have nice watches while being in possession of a $2000 groovebox is, however, as the kids say, "a choice."
- 4mo ago
- spicyusername 4mo agoVery cool. I love this company and wish there was more like them.
- 999900000999 4mo agoVery strange. It appears they’ll just rebrand a few record cutters and call it a product. TE always comes off as really low quality for the types of prices they charge. The MPC Sample is 400$ and looks well built, the KO2 is 300$ and has faders falling off. Roland has a few samplers in the same price range as well.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- rumori 4mo agoHave both and none is falling apart. Both have their advantages, the Sample is a more robust and also just bland, KO2 is more fun and interesting. It’s comparable to Nintendo vs Sony, both excellent in their own way.
- karinatran 4mo ago[flagged]
- mvkel 4mo agoDon't think of Teenage Engineering as a device product company. Think of them as a device art company. Suddenly it makes sense.
- hn_go_brrrrr 4mo agoSo, Apple until the M chips?
- wyre 4mo agoApple is a consumer company selling device art. Teenage engineering is a device art company selling consumer products.
- xrd 4mo agoHas anyone tried to 3d print vinyl?
- hstaab 4mo agoMost 3D prints are vinyls already! the surface encodes some patterns of the motor movements and medium curing process. Shame it wouldn’t sound very good and there’s no machine to play them.
- aa-jv 4mo agoNot 3D printed, but laser cut: https://github.com/kallaballa/sndcut.git https://github.com/kallaballa/sndcut.git Works pretty well, certainly not high quality audio, though. Maybe if someone out there has a more precise laser, it'd work ..
- alnwlsn 4mo agoAudio file to gcode is not difficult. Here's a record laser cut into a tortilla [0]. I once tried to mill one out of MDF on a CNC machine [1]. It didn't sound very good, but better than I expected. 3D printing one seems very difficult, since 3D printers build walls instead of cut grooves. Maybe you could play it if you had some kind of bifurcated needle? Anyways, it's enough of a joke that it probably wouldn't work well that it was a Prusa April fools joke [2]. A better printer, maybe a resin one, can do it [3]. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdzCv_9eaoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdzCv_9eaoM 1 - https://hackaday.com/2022/06/17/wooden-you-like-to-hear-a-cnc-cut-phonograph-record/ https://hackaday.com/2022/06/17/wooden-you-like-to-hear-a-cn... 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV1egpbrg90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV1egpbrg90 3 - https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/3d-printing-records/ https://hackaday.com/2012/12/21/3d-printing-records/
- jrflo 4mo agoI think it's cool that they make stuff like this. It's refreshing to see something engineered for the sake of being beautiful and cool, instead of worrying about BOM cost and margin.
- snvzz 4mo agoWhy wouldn't you use an ADC and store music digitally?
- gf263 4mo agoInb4 all the commenters going “umm, why would I want this? I could simply burn a CD or make a Spotify playlist if I wanted to share music”
- tcbawo 4mo agoI always loved the story of the "three-sided" Monty Python record, where the B side had two parallel concentric grooves, causing different tracks to play depending on where the needle was dropped. I always wondered what kind of equipment went into producing it.
- dhosek 4mo agoFrom what I know about record manufacturing, creating the lacquer master would involve adjusting the angle of the groove to allow for two concentric grooves to be laid, along with some care in creating that master. But once it’s done, the manufacturing process is handled through a stamping process (so a vinyl record isn’t cut, it’s pressed with a metal die that’s created from the lacquer master through electroplating).
- TylerE 4mo agoYou’d cut it normal equipment, with very wide groove spacing. Start the two grooves 180 degrees out of phase. They’ll never intersect. You could do it with more than two grooves, just to having them at 360/n degrees apart. You’ll just have to make the groove spacing wider as the number of tracks go off. Of course that comes at the cost of playback tine.
- hackernulls 4mo ago[flagged]
- gizajob 4mo agoA Porky prime cut.
- ogn3rd 4mo agoJack White did something similar with Lazaretto.
- mapontosevenths 4mo agoI bought a Record Store Day release of Ella Fitzgerald live in Berlin that did this around 2020. Very cool stuff.
- gregsadetsky 4mo agoUnrelated, but related - if you want to have 1 record made, reach out to https://recordcut.com/ https://recordcut.com/ Their hours are "2:30 PM to 12 Midnight", I sort of believe... 7 days a week? Rich will actually answer the phone, and guide you. I've done it a few times (it's an incredibly cool gift). A single record is $12. Extremely worth experiencing it.
- scratchyone 4mo agoooh, this seems super cool. i see that he doesn't print jackets, have you gotten them printed elsewhere for that?
- gregsadetsky 4mo agoyeah, I glued the jacket together - but no, I didn't get it printed professionally. that's a great thought!
- hackernulls 4mo ago[flagged]
- alacritas0 4mo agoI need to remember this when I buy gifts
- Herdinger 4mo agoSimilarly if you're in Europe I recommend: https://drdub.com/en/faq/ https://drdub.com/en/faq/ I've done it twice and had a great experience, although in the 10X pricing range compared to recordcut.com. I've used https://www.online-druck.biz/lp-cover.html https://www.online-druck.biz/lp-cover.html for the sleeve, but I don't know if they ship internationally.
- dackdel 4mo agoid pay to watch mkbhd(or similar) review the apc-2. and compare one made on apc-2 to someone like recordcut(or similar). that said. im glad companies like teenage are catering to the whimsy. because why not. im sure it will sell out. and they will stop producing it after they have scratched the itch of wanting to create a product like it. and hopefully after that we can get our hands on the un-redacted files.
- edb_123 4mo agoVestax actually did something similar in the early 2000s with the VRX-2000 lathe cutter. It cost around $10K back then. The audio wasn't the best, but hey, you could make your own dubplates, and it did so in stereo!
- fragmede 4mo agoAPC is an interesting choice of name. A Professional record Cutter. I wonder if they chose it because of the APC40, which is a delightful set of MIDI pads.
- emsign 4mo agoFancy machine for just making dubplates.
- geokon 4mo agoI wonder if it can make a flexidisc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc I remember to listening to some in my childhood and never understood why the tech was not the standard (relative to the brittle cumbersome vinyls). Maybe the sound quality is worse. Unsure
- vortegne 4mo agoWorse sound quality and even worse longevity.
- trq01758 4mo agoBecause brittle really is a second name for Flexi disc. They have shallower groove which means limited dynamic range, higher hiss/surface noise/distortion, plus because they are so light they often don't sit flat on a turntable so welcome speed variations aka "wow and flutter" and frequent skipping. You could listen 500-1000 times to normal vinyl before any audible degradation and the same may happen to Flexi disc after 5 or 10 times.
- drcongo 4mo agoI remember our home stereo in the 1970s had a rubber non-slip-matt with concentric grooves in it, often flexi-discs were so flexi that that the needle would follow the groove on the other side instead of the one on the disc. They were almost unplayable on that unless you set the tonearm counter-weights to as light as possible. That built-in obsolescence was often the point of flexi-discs as they were typically used as giveaways in magazines with the goal of promoting the artist - the faster it wears out, the sooner the consumer is likely to go purchase the real thing.
- bux93 4mo agoFlexi discs were cool inserts for some home computer magazines; you'd dub the flexi disc to music cassette, and the noise and beeps were computer programs for your home computer.
- trumpdong 4mo ago
- nubinetwork 4mo agoAren't vinyls typically pressed, not carved from a blank? I wonder how accurate they can actually get if they have to carve every notch into the groove.
- dale_glass 4mo agoYou need to carve the master to have something to press from.
- Flipflip79 4mo agoThe original master is cut. Only subsequent copies are pressed. This is the standard way records are made
- hudo 4mo agoMaster is carved (cutted), and then reverse master pressed, from which all the records are then pressed, if i remember correctly.
- dale_glass 4mo agoHow does it buffer audio? One thing I didn't realize for a long time is that it turns out that a lot of these machines have a digital stage. To cut a disk you need to pack the grooves as close as possible. But the spiral isn't fixed, it's adjusted dynamically. Quiet sections can be packed close together. That means that before cutting, the machine needs to know how much physical space it needs for the audio it's about to put on the disk. And that requires a buffer, and that's very often digital. So it turns out there's precious little vinyl out there without a digital step being involved out there. Not that it matters anyway, since vinyl is a pretty terrible technology, but still, it's kind of funny.
- odeono 4mo ago[dead]
- gizajob 4mo agoIt’s great technology for long-term archiving. “Look ahead” to determine optimal groove spacing doesn’t have to be done digitally, even though digital makes this much simpler. I’d guess that musicians and producers using an all-analogue recording / mixing / mastering process where they have zero digital stages to the master tape are very few and far between nowadays. Kevin Shields for one, but he likely has other options for his analogue master disk cutting, and only needs to attend disc cutting once or twice a decade/century. A transparent digital stage for the master isn’t going to make a huge amount of difference really, and the limited bandwidth of vinyl compared to digital means that the vinyl master has to be squashed and limited regardless.
- Daub 4mo ago> I’s great technology for long-term archiving. Dam right. It’s a medium that a reasonably intelligent individual from any time in future/past history could intuitively understand. Let’s not forget that NASA chose a record to store the digital images it sent with Voyager on precisely that assumption. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/voyager-golden-record-overview/ https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/voyager-golden-reco...
- avsn 4mo agoOriginally lathe cuts were used by producers in electronic genres namely jungle/DnB as a way to test yet unreleased tracks on the dance floor. Those records were created in very low numbers and could only survive a handful of plays. As stated here in the comments, producing such records requires a great amount of skill and understanding of the process, as well as understanding the way tracks translate to physical media. TE here again does a great amount of art-washing and Supreme-isation of previously "niche" things for the audience that treats music culture as a costume. A great toy for average Rick Rubin book enjoyer.
- bayindirh 4mo ago...and here's a great documentary about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac This is a video about Amen Break, read from a wax disc which can't survive more than 5-6 plays.
- kavanafm 4mo ago[flagged]
- jchip303 4mo ago[dead]
- trumpdong 4mo ago> direct drive precision polished tungsten shaft Isn't marketing wonderful. Who cares what the motor shaft is made of? (and why not ordinary steel? tungsten just sounds cooler? they want to reuse it for a lightbulb filament later?)
- aembleton 4mo agoI suppose its better than it being made of rust like so many other projects like to advertise.
- vile_wretch 4mo agoTungsten will certainly isolate better than other softer metals. The entire product is centred around embedding vibrations into a physical object. The material that is used to transfer or isolate those vibrations is important especially at signal levels used in lathe cutting.
- iainctduncan 4mo agoThis is fantastic. There is a shortage of places that can press vinyl, making it very difficult to start an indy label. Vinyl (believe it or not) is going up in sales, many young people want to own a physical product of music, even if they don't have turntables. It's a way to support acts. Selling vinyl is thus one of the ways indy acts and labels can actually make money. Is there a performative and marketing element? sure. But that's the music world, a great deal is performative. We have depended on patrons who want to support the arts and be seen supporting the arts for time immemorial.
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoA lot of fans don't own a player, and just want to collect cool cover art. =3
- ufocia 4mo agoYou could just sell old vinyl with new labels and sleeves and they would be none the wiser.
- allears 4mo agoThis isn't a press, it's a cutter. It's used to make vinyl masters, which are then used to create a mold for pressing. This device will only make discs slowly, one at a time. You would still need a bunch more machinery to press a quantity of discs. However, a vinyl master, although it has a limited playback life, is the best vinyl sound you're gonna get.
- musictubes 4mo agoDinsynch makes an “acoustic lathe” for a little less than $2k. It doesn’t look nearly as cool as the TE setup but will probably be similar in execution and quality. https://youtu.be/udQC04YrXq0 https://youtu.be/udQC04YrXq0 Actual transcription lathes will be much more expensive and I think can record on better material. Those can be used for direct to disc recording production. I’m not sure if what TE and Dinsync offer can make something that can be used for production.
- MoonWalk 4mo agoThought cool; clicked on the link; saw it was Teenage Engineering; and closed the tab. Their track record consists of vastly overpriced and under-functioning products.
- waffletower 4mo agoGiven Teenage Engineering's long history of premium boutique pricing, I don't see this device being priced for individuals outside of the 1% demographic. My price estimate: $25,000 US. But to their credit, even this cost would be far cheaper than purchasing a traditional vinyl pressing machine (~$200,000)
- mieses 4mo agoAwesome design as always but Teenage Engineering has zero product support. After they make and sell a product they move on to other cool ideas. If anything stops to function you are left with just form.