Teenage Engineering OP1 Field // Sound Quality You Can Finally Trust?

video upload by Dexba

"Yes, no, overpriced toy, saviour of all the portable jams, we will probably never know (and to each their own opinion). I got one, I was sceptical, because I already had four original OP1 in the past, and I was always tempted more by the idea, rather than any particular characteristic other than the portability.

The sound quality on the previous iteration was risible, the output used to hiss like a cat, it lacked dimension, character (other than being toyish) and practicality.

OP1 Field changes almost everything: it now features control over the quality of the tape and some other parameters, different projects we can save and recall, and sound quality is now at least up to par the job of not sounding like the Casio common ancestor, the new Mother Reverb sounds like a reverb and the Spring has become useful! WOW, and I am not sarcastic.

I would have never imagined a jam on my huge speakers with the previous OP1, and now here I am, with one track of the new Dimension analogue-ish synth through the cow (yes!) and the other three tracks coming from Strings, with an increasing number of overdubbing, always through the Grid effect.

Yes, it still lacks some features (I am not talking about the Undo, but for example the possibility of recording on tape while recording the master: it would have been handy to push the overdubbing even further), and the maximum sample length is a bit... old school, but I am so happy I can finally welcome an instrument I won't sell out of frustration in a matter of weeks 🧡"