[HN Gopher] PO-80 Record Factory ___________________________________________________________________ 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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-29 23:01 UTC)