Teenage Engineering is a company that goes its own way. One day you release a toy car for $250 and the next day you release a full featured groovebox/sampler for $300. That’s what happened this week. Kishore Engineering The EP-133 KO II was launched suddenly, This feature-packed portable sampler/groove box sounds absolutely amazing and costs only $300. I read that the cost is correct.
The only instrument in the TE lineup that comes close to this price point is the Pocket Operator portable synthesizer. So it’s no surprise that it’s the direct successor to the best, PO-33 KO sampler. The original pocket operators were marketed as toys, although they were surprisingly powerful, but the EP-133 KO II is advertised as a workstation. It’s a fairly large device, but still portable, much like a standalone Akai device. It doesn’t fit in your pocket, but it fits in your pocket.
Let’s go over some specifications. The KO II has 64MB of memory, which isn’t much, but TE products usually come with some compromises. That would be enough for several samples and some projects, which the company says was intended. Co-Founder and Head of Hardware at Teenage Engineering David Erickson said edges If the sampler has too much storage space, it will “give the user the option to finish the song later” instead of completing the song in one sitting. Doesn’t anyone think of those poor musicians who love to start something and hate to finish it? friend request
In fact, there are 999 sample holes and an internal microphone to create your own samples. Although it’s primarily a sampler, it’s already filled with drum beats, synthesizers, and other sounds for you to work with properly. Connects via USB-C to load samples from a computer or MIDI device The KO II is also portable and runs on four AAA batteries. In other words, there’s no internal battery, but the $300 price tag had to be earned somehow.
The device has a traditional 3.5mm headphone jack and key buttons and orange controls to make it easy to find musicians during live performances in dark and smoky clubs. It’s a nice gesture. The device itself is great with a nice array of buttons, buttons and ports. The keys are clickable and more importantly, velocity sensitive. At the top is a rectangular LED display with the same design language as the portable OP-1 and OP-1 field devices.
Teenage Engineering hopes this product will attract newcomers to the world of music creation, which is why the workflow is designed for simplicity, a feature it shares with its predecessors. Despite these limitations, it is a powerful tool that should appeal to both professionals and amateurs. 12 mono and 6 stereo polyphony, stereo/mono sampling at 46.875 kHz/16 bit, 12 pressure-sensitive pads, 6 built-in FX transmitters with punch mode, master compressor, and manual and automatic sampling. Cutting tools. It looks really cool like the accounting calculator of the future.
The EP-133 KO II is available now and costs $300 again. The day before Thanksgiving is an odd time to release new hardware, but Teenage Engineering is based in Sweden, so who cares? It’s worth noting that this is the first dedicated music machine the company has released since the OP-1 Field last year.
