[HN Gopher] PO-80 Record Factory
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PO-80 Record Factory
Author : bpierre
Score : 210 points
Date : 2022-09-29 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (teenage.engineering)
(TXT) w3m dump (teenage.engineering)
| odiroot wrote:
| Friendly reminder: you don't really want to do it.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ2czFuIYmQ
| severak_cz wrote:
| This is peak of audio hipsterism! Audio quality is crap. Better
| to record on cassette with some boombox.
|
| Also see this DIY project -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7osjazhLE
| armadsen wrote:
| Nobody that's buying this (including me) is buying it for its
| pure utility. They're buying it because it's cool-looking, fun,
| interesting, educational, or whatever. If my goal was good
| audio quality, of course it's not what I'd buy. I already own a
| high end flash recorder, multiple very capable computers, etc.
| (I also own two of Gakken's earlier wax cylinder gramophones
| and a few of their other kits.)
| MDGeist wrote:
| As someone who has released music on cassettes recently, the
| unfortunate part is that few people seem to have cassette decks
| anymore but many people have low end turntables. I suspect even
| bad sounding records would sell better than cassettes or CDs.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| All new cassette players are very low quality, and the old
| ones are slowly falling apart. Even though they're often not
| beyond repair, not a lot of people have the willingness to
| put in the effort.
| colechristensen wrote:
| In the age of AI fakes and perfect high fidelity available to
| anybody, the "crap" noise and distortion of this kind of thing
| is going to become a signal of reality that will be sought
| after.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Ya they just invented distortion no one does that in music
| right? It's not like they make pedals and plugins
| specifically for distortion. Instead you should pay TE for
| this revolutionary rebranding of an existing device.
|
| It's nonsense sir.
| throwing_away wrote:
| It's really no more nonsense than lo-fi tracks having rain
| sounds in the background or hiphop producers running old
| school beats through a 12-bit sampler to crush it up a bit.
|
| Producers use a ton of subtle tricks to make you
| unknowingly enjoy their work more with a touch of
| nostalgia.
|
| My Roland sampler has a "simulate vinyl" effect that's
| trying to do the same as this product, but in software.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Yes as I said there are already many distortions and bit
| crushers in use by people making music today, this little
| overpriced record cutter isn't revolutionizing anything
| because of distortion.
| tibbon wrote:
| It is bad audio quality - but I find it potentially an
| interesting effect. I could see myself using it in the studio;
| not for final master of course, but as an effect for a section
| of a song or instrument. Compared to a guitar pedal, the price
| is right.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Price wise this seems alright to me, I imagine it's a bit cheaper
| than their usual things because it'll become a thing a decent
| number of people use to make things like rewards for Patreon
| supporters, zine bonuses, etc. Production costs of PS2 plus
| postage per (potentially) personalised 5" seems pretty good to me
| for all involved.
|
| A tangent but it's crazy how bad their LED matrix for IKEA is, I
| like the speakers and all on an ornamental level (especially with
| the 3D printer potential) and the matrix could be super neat
| (even with the lack of dimming options) but the patterns and
| sound responsiveness are so terrible it's a bit baffling they let
| it go out in the condition it went out with... I'd actively keep
| it away from the rest of the set so I didn't have to underwhelm
| people by showing how bad it is (until I get around to modding
| it, anyway)
| tyrnnsrs wrote:
| I applied a colour film over my matrix light because it was so
| bright
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Aside from the fact that this is a rebrand effort and probably
| not TE's manufacturing, their mainline products have particularly
| high quality design.
|
| I've been watching a lot of AvE[1] lately, and his BOLTR series
| features him breaking down hardware and talking about the
| manufacturing.
|
| While Teenage Engineering wank is definitely not his category of
| analysis, it's probably not far off, considering he highlighted
| how spotty the Dyson product line is. I'd love to see him
| disassemble something like the OP-1.
|
| Edit: Missing link reference.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChWv6Pn_zP0rI6lgGt3MyfA
|
| Apparently, OP-1s use CNC'd solid block aluminum machining![2]
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mqO7pVBxRQ
| alangibson wrote:
| It's a shame he doesn't do many BOLTRs anymore. His output
| slowly petered out during COVID.
| lukevp wrote:
| What's AvE? You left off the link. Sounds interesting, want to
| watch the Dyson teardown!
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Sorry about that! Thanks for pointing it out. Viewer
| discretion: language.
|
| [1]: DYSON ANIMAL BALLS | It blows!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPTzNJMd19A
| testmzakrzewska wrote:
| Test1
| pdntspa wrote:
| A higher quality version of this could potentially revive
| dubplate culture
|
| As a producer walking into a set with vinyl of music I've made
| and cut earlier in the day would be DOPE. Impressive AF
| MDGeist wrote:
| Audio quality is about what you'd expect from a lathe cut record.
| That being said, since it is so hard to get vinyl pressed these
| days I could see a small run of cut singles being something
| artists could sell as a novelty for die hard fans. Neat!
| TylerE wrote:
| The big problem here is that due to how soft the material has
| to be to cut, the lifespan on these is going to be somewhere in
| the realm of 1-10 plays.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's like an acetate "dubplate" that promoters used give to
| club DJs to get new music out (mostly replaced by digital
| files now of course). They were good for a small number of
| plays and used just to gauge the crowd reaction.
| TylerE wrote:
| Right, because this is the same process.
| w0mbat wrote:
| When you make an actual record you cut an acetate of each
| side on a record cutting lathe, which this product is a toy
| miniature version of.
|
| Each acetate looks like a one-sided vinyl record only
| bigger (it's got margin around the edge). You can take that
| to a club and play it, but normally you take the pair to a
| pressing plant. They make a metal mould of each one and use
| them to press the vinyl records.
|
| When I was a teenager in 1979 my band made a single on our
| own indie label. We got to go to see the legendary cutting
| engineer Porky in London near Oxford Circus and watched him
| cut the pair of acetates. Like all his work he scratched "A
| Porky prime cut" into the run out area.
| [deleted]
| vitaflo wrote:
| As someone with a 7" portable turntable used for scratching
| (Numark PT01) this thing looks awesome for making my own scratch
| records. The question of course is how deep the cuts are. If
| they're super shallow then that won't be as nice, but I also
| won't be as worried about wearing out a record cuz I could just
| cut another one.
| diydsp wrote:
| Listening to the distortion, it sounds like it could possibly be
| reduced/minimized by experimenting with pre-emphasis curves! I
| wonder if the existing community around this product's
| predecessor has worked on that...
| mmastrac wrote:
| "to get the optimum sound quality for your recordings, use our
| vinyl mastering tool to pre-process your audio before cutting.
| created for use with the PO-80 record factory, it applies the
| desired equalizer curve to your music and makes it easier to
| achieve good lo-fi sound quality on your custom 5" cuts."
| alecfreudenberg wrote:
| Sweet :)
|
| teenage engineering has some of my favorite technical
| documentation
| rkachowski wrote:
| The most surprising thing about this is how low the price is for
| a teenage engineering product. I don't know anything about LP
| manufacturing but 150 for an LP reader / writer seems pretty
| cool.
| tibbon wrote:
| I can never get a handle on their pricing. Its all either
| absurdly low (how do they make pocket operators so cheap?!?!?),
| or absurdly high (why is OP-1 so absurdly high?!).
|
| But at this price, hitting buy asap. It will be a neat effect
| for use in my studio.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| this pricing is still quite high, it's just a lower priced
| category. it's priced at twice the japanese market version.
| sli wrote:
| Closer to 3x, if we're not including stuff like shipping.
| The Japanese version is $55, TE's is $150.
| cole-k wrote:
| Are the pocket operators really that cheap for the
| functionality they provide?
|
| I was always of the opinion that Teenage Engineering was
| ridiculously overpriced, but so much of what they make is so
| cool that it makes me want to buy anyway. I'm not
| creative/musical/rich enough to justify buying an OP-1. If I
| ever was, though...
| Marazan wrote:
| The pocket operators are great value, the PO-20 is one of
| the best all-in-one groove boxes around and the price makes
| it a total bargin.
|
| However, the cases are pure ripoff territory. I wonder if
| there are 3rd party ones available.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| The pocket operators are, on the whole, amazing. Rhythm,
| Tonic, and Arcade are my faves. The pack a shocking amount
| of flexibility into a tiny package, and really aren't
| overpriced at all.
| benj111 wrote:
| The read/write thing got me on the train of thought of DVD-RW.
|
| It uses 5 in discs so an LPRW would fit in a standard bay.
|
| If it records at 33 and plays at 78 it's even a LPRW X 2.23!
|
| I wonder how much data you could store...
| mmastrac wrote:
| Based on cassette data rates using audio encoding, and a
| total hand-wavey ballpark of ~10kB/min using modern encoding
| techniques, I'd totally guesstimate about 100kB of data on
| there.
| benj111 wrote:
| Well that's more than enough for anyone!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My old TI-99/4a stored 90kb on a 5" floppy disk.
| donio wrote:
| It's 3x the price of the Japanese original that was linked in
| another thread. https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/NEOBK-2453544
| dn3500 wrote:
| It's not an LP recorder, the disks are only five inch.
| LegitShady wrote:
| As someone else has already reported, this is just a TE rebrand
| of an existing product with a 3x price increase for what I'd
| call the TE tax.
|
| This doesn't make hifi audio.
|
| It is surprising in the sense that I'm surprised TE didn't
| charge more but not in the sense that it should charge more.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Also see VinyGo, a stereo vinyl recorder:
| https://hackaday.io/project/181401-vinygo-a-stereo-vinyl-rec...
| deworms wrote:
| Something's broken with the design of the website, it looks
| zoomed in and zooming out doesn't even work.
| adius wrote:
| Listening to a vinyl emits much more CO2 than listening to a
| digital recording. I wish people would keep that in mind.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Can you put that in some perspective with just an order of
| magnitude? Somehow it feels like next to auto or plane travel,
| or consuming beef - audio playback of any kind would seem like
| it isn't very significant.
|
| Hmm actually I wonder now if this was a joke and I just got
| suckered.
| Applejinx wrote:
| No, Benn Jordan got into that a while back. It's not the
| listening part, it's the manufacturing that isn't 'green',
| though I'm not sure quite how the math works: for instance,
| whether they're counting the trucking of boxes of vinyl
| circles all over the place rather than just uploading bits
| locally. Some of that would apply to CDs, too, but CDs are
| about as relevant as vinyl records are.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > it's the manufacturing that isn't 'green'
|
| If this is really the case then it probably doesn't belong
| in this thread about a usb-powered (!!) "factory".
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Also worth mentioning that vinyl records cannot be
| recycled.
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| This appears to be a rebranding (at nearly three times the price)
| of the Gakken Record Maker (which is still available online for
| its MSRP of Y=7,980 ($55) [1]). It even comes with a copy of the
| Gakken magazine! Here's a review of the Gakken record maker
| (which looks identical to the Teenage Engineering one) [2], the
| Japanese description from Gakken [3], and an English description
| from a reseller [4].
|
| Gakken is a Japanese educational company. One of their products
| is a magazine called "Otona no Kagaku" (Adult Science) which
| comes with a kit to build a toy version of a mechanical or
| electronic device. Because they're part of a magazine, the kits
| are only available for a limited time. Here's some examples of
| the other issues' kits [5]. Some of the more notable ones are a
| wax cylinder recorder [6] and a gramophone kit [7].
|
| [1] https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/NEOBK-2453544
| https://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4057507221/gkp_shu...
| https://hon.gakken.jp/book/1575072200
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB8qtW19nf4
|
| [3] https://otonanokagaku.net/magazine/vol46/index.html
|
| [4] https://www.turntablelab.com/products/gakken-easy-record-
| mak...
|
| [5] https://otonanokagaku.net/
| https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/series/2993
| https://www.adafruit.com/category/269
|
| [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9X2CS4cs8o
|
| [7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDdZFFLnsUo
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _They 've also made a wax cylinder recorder_
|
| Jan Derogee will be ecstatic to hear that in case he loses his
| reproducer again.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNFQkcbY5cQ
| faefox wrote:
| The margins on everything Teenage Engineering sells must be
| insane. Thinking in particular of their "computer-1" itx case
| which is a handful of pieces of unbent sheet metal and
| commodity parts, all for a mere *$195*.
| itronitron wrote:
| Yeah, seems like it would be rather straightforward to send a
| template design to an online fabrication company. CNC seems
| like it would be overkill but I assume they are willing to
| cut sheet metal.
|
| That could be a fun assignment for a design course. Lots of
| technical details to consider, such as dimensions of standard
| components, but a lot of design freedom as well.
| ortusdux wrote:
| A CNC laser would be the best bet. A good one could cut
| this in about 5 min. Water jets and CNC plasma cutters
| could do it, but they would probably both have issues with
| that many pierces.
|
| I agree though - $195 for this is a bit much:
|
| https://images.prismic.io/teenageengineering/d379b4fd-3721-
| 4...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGpKAIsUIpI
| janekm wrote:
| It looks like it has countersunk screw holes, so that
| would usually be done on a CNC punch:
| http://www.vandf.co.uk/tooling/what-is-cnc-punching/
| (amazing machines) It also looks powder-coated... when
| you consider their likely volumes $195 is not
| unreasonable once you take into account development
| costs, setup costs and overheads.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Not discounting the coolness of CNC punching whatsoever,
| but the reasonableness of $195 is way off, even if they
| are manufacturing in low volumes domestically.
|
| Parts like this should ideally be manufactured via
| stamping, which would also produce any countersinks
| needed. Even better would be to have them cut and bent in
| a progressive die (also a super cool manufacturing
| process!) and would have all cuts and features done in
| one go. But if I were them, I'd probably aim for a buck
| or two for each sheet part, maybe up to five dollars if
| you wanted to keep it at a local shop with low volumes.
| But the big win of having just flat pieces is you can
| make a ton of components at once and they can take up
| very little space on a shelf. Get a few thousand produced
| and powdercoated, and then just keep an eye on when
| supply runs low.
|
| Basically, if they aren't making 90% margin on these (all
| in, shipped to your door) I'd be disappointed.
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| The photo of the record factory on that landing page weighs
| in at 9.84MB -- the margin probably goes towards AWS
| bandwidth costs!
| autoexec wrote:
| For comparison:
|
| War and Peace is only 3.2 MB, or 3.9 MB with the overhead
| of HTML
|
| source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600
| tomcam wrote:
| Yeah but the manga version is 6.6GB
| autoexec wrote:
| Okay, now I'm curious, link to the manga version?
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| How does a professional web designer even put up a picture
| that large without going through some basic compression?
| lrvick wrote:
| I am generally surprised when a web developer produces
| anything at all without 200 separate requests on every
| pageload and a 20M+ footprint.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I've personally experienced this at work before.
|
| A non-technical person uploaded the image to the CMS,
| assuming it will be scaled down at some point after
| uploading. A web developer used the image from the CMS,
| assuming it was scaled down at some point before being
| exposed for the frontend to access it. In reality the
| image never got scaled down anywhere, and ended up on the
| frontend in its full 9 MB glory. This ended up happening
| with _several_ images.
|
| I (not a frontend dev) ended up finding it because I was
| writing a strongly-worded message to my team lead about
| the huge pile of unnecessary tracking/surveillance
| scripts being forced on frontend users, and I wanted to
| make the point that it was making the frontend slow and
| heavy. It turned out out that the tracking scripts were
| nothing compared to the huge images!
|
| Apparently nobody else bothered to check this before me,
| and/or didn't stop for half a second to think about it
| when they saw "Total page size: 13 MB" in their browser
| devtools, and/or didn't actually attempt to do any
| investigation when they saw our shitty Lighthouse rating.
| The world is full of professionals in name and status,
| but not in attitude.
| capableweb wrote:
| Which in turn, the margin AWS has on the bandwidth they
| sell must be insane! People seem to pay for "premium"
| bandwidth and not even batting an eye, people just swallow
| that stuff right up. Just like TE, it must make them a ton
| of money.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Yuri Suzuki has joined forces with cult electronics studio
| Teenage Engineering and Japanese educational toymaker Gakken to
| launch the PO-80 Record Factory.
|
| https://www.pentagram.com/news/po-80-record-factory
| capableweb wrote:
| Also, from the submission URL, second paragraph:
|
| > PO-80 record factory is a compact and portable record
| cutter, made in collaboration with yuri suzuki.
| rbanffy wrote:
| As much as I think this is a bad way to record audio (or data),
| the idea of an audio recording media that can be played without
| electricity or electronics is appealing.
| tyrnnsrs wrote:
| got my order in! this will be really fun to play around with
| nammi wrote:
| If you're interested in how records are cut, Amanda Ghassaei had
| a really cool project 3D printing records that goes into detail.
| She later used laser cutting
|
| https://amandaghassaei.com/projects/3D_printed_record/
|
| https://amandaghassaei.com/projects/laser_cut_record/
| dorfsmay wrote:
| > experience the warmth of lo-fi audio.
|
| I wonder if what some people think of warmth of lo-fi is
| connected to the effect of white/pink/brown noises discussed
| earlier today at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32998960
| bayindirh wrote:
| It's a combination of RIAA equalization, mastering suited to
| vinyl, some distortion, and some surface noise (mostly
| unobtrusive clicks and pops), according what my ears report me
| while listening to vinyl.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Do you find it "warm"?
|
| Is it because you are used to it, feeding nostalgia?
|
| Or could it have to do with noise (distortion, clicks and
| pops) being soothing to the brain?
| bayindirh wrote:
| No, I really find it "warm".
|
| I'm listening to the same Hi-Fi system since I'm six. I
| have both vinyl and CD versions of some albums (I only buy
| vinyls of albums which I like a lot, and listen it with a
| coffee or tea), and they really sound different.
|
| I don't think it's because it's feeding the nostalgia,
| because I can feel the same things regardless of the medium
| and system I listen to these albums/songs.
|
| I don't think soothing the brain angle is valid either. I
| get the same enjoyment and relaxation from both mediums.
|
| For me, CD brings the enjoyment of a well brewed coffee,
| but vinyl brings the same feeling when you (sometime
| accidentally) brew that elusive perfect coffee for you. It
| needs some time and intention to appreciate.
|
| I'm an ex-orchestra player though, so my experience may not
| reflect the views of bigger audiophile crowd.
| Severian wrote:
| Good for scratching, not so much for listening. "Real" vinyl is
| going to be pressed.
|
| The etching comes first on the master platter using a lacquer on
| an aluminum disc. Then that master is electroplated. Then that
| copy is electroplated (several times depending on production) too
| to make the pressing disk. Basically a mold of a mold to get the
| grooves.
| entaloneralie wrote:
| That website is so bloated, if you're on roaming data, don't even
| bother.
| kleer001 wrote:
| needs a mic
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(page generated 2022-09-29 23:01 UTC)