Teenage Engineering is a company that follows its own path. He’ll release a $250 toy car one day and a full-featured groovebox/sampler for $300 the next. That’s what happened this week. Teenage engineering has just surprise launched the EP-133 KO II, a portable sampler/groovebox that is feature-rich, looks absolutely stunning, and costs just $300. You read that cost correctly.
The only musical instruments in TE’s lineup that come close to this price is their Pocket Operator portfolio of portable synthesizers, so it’s no surprise that this is a direct follow-up to their best, the PO-33 KO sampler. The original Pocket Operators were marketed as something of a toy, despite being surprisingly robust, but the EP-133 KO II is advertised as a workstation. This is a fairly large, but still portable device that is more like an Akai standalone machine. It doesn’t fit in your pocket, but it does fit in your bag.
Let’s go over some specifications. The KO II has 64 MB of memory, which is not a lot, but TE products tend to have some disadvantages. However, it will be enough for a lot of samples and a few projects, which the company says was intentional. Teenage Engineering co-founder and hardware leader David Eriksson said The edge that if the sampler had too much storage “it would give the user the option to finish later” instead of completing a song in one go. Won’t anyone think about the poor musicians who love starting things and hate finishing them? Asking for a friend.
In fact, there are 999 sample slots and an internal microphone to create your own. Although this is a sampler first and foremost, it comes preloaded with drum hits, synths, and other sounds so you can get right to work. Connects via USB-C to load samples from a computer or MIDI devices. The KO II is also portable and runs on four AAA batteries. In other words, there’s no internal rechargeable battery, but that $300 price tag had to arrive somehow.
The unit features a traditional 3.5mm headphone jack and the most important buttons and knobs are orange, to help musicians find them during live performances in dark, smoky clubs. It’s a nice touch. The device itself is gorgeous, with an attractive panel of buttons, knobs and connectors. The keys click and, more importantly, are velocity sensitive. There is a rectangular LED display on top that features a similar design language to the OP-1 and OP-1 Field portable synthesizers.
Teenage Engineering hopes this product will attract newbies to the world of music creation, so the workflow is designed to be simple, a trait shared with its predecessor. Despite that caveat, this is a powerful instrument that should appeal to professionals and amateurs alike. It features 12 mono and 6 stereo voices polyphony, 46.875 kHz/16-bit stereo/mono sampling, 12 pressure-sensitive pads, 6 built-in FX sends with punch-in mode, a master compressor, and manual and auto sampling. cutting tools. It also looks cool, like an accounting calculator from the future.
The EP-133 KO II is available today and, again, costs $300. The day before Thanksgiving is a strange time to release a new piece of hardware, but Teenage Engineering is based in Sweden, so what does it matter to you? It’s worth noting that this is the first dedicated music-making machine the company has released since last year’s OP-1 Field.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/teenage-engineerings-ko-ii-groovebox-is-feature-rich-and-only-300-164933466.html?src=rss
