Last week, Ihavesynth.com got the chance to meet up with Teenage Engineering to get a closer look at the OP-1 synthesizer/sampler/controller/you-name-it. Teenage Engineering revealed their eye-catching OP-1 at Musikmesse in 2009 and the hype around the synthesizer has been massive, even though it is not yet released. We have posted about the OP-1 before and offcourse we are as curious about the OP-1 as the rest of the world seems to be.

Teenage Engineering is a great gang of 7 tech guys in a white painted garage filled with wonderful stuff like computers, synthesizers, all sorts of tech gear, an electronics shop, 3D printers, bikes, mopeds and a little dog which you can hear in the interview. The Teenage Engineering crew has experience from a lot of different areas, like the gaming industry, programming, electronic music – and it all comes together in their cozy garage.My mate Bjorn had a chat with David at Teenage Engineering, check it out in this clip.

The big question is still unanswered though, no exact release date yet! But we are clearly close now. Teenage Engineering today has 5 prototypes of the OP-1 and they look pretty much like what the final product will look like. They are now making 100 more of these for beta testing, which will be performed by some lucky bastards. When this is done, the OP-1 will go into mass production. The estimate is that it will be released somewhere around late 2010 or early 2011, so get that anticipation started now if you haven’t already! Price will not be over USD 800 which seems like an OK price for a device with as many cool features as the OP-1.

Teenage Engineering have really done some innovative thinking when it comes to the user interface for the OP-1. The interface is really what makes the OP-1 special, and I really like their approach to it. They have asked themselves a lot of questions about usability and how they would like everything to work. The interface uses color-coding and direct visual response to everything you do. The goal is to make the OP-1 accessible and easy to understand without compromising the high amount of functionality that the OP-1 offers. A lot of thought put into one good looking little package.Teenage Engineering are steering away from the "staring at the waveform-sickness" which they describe as a common syndrome when you work with a computer. The symptom is that you just look at a sound instead of listening to it. With the OP-1 interface, Teenage Engineering wants to bring back more of the listening part to making music, and a lot more usability.

The OP-1 has a really interesting EQ part of the mixer with LOW, MID, HIGH parameters, showing us different shapes that describes the sounds.

Check out this exclusive demo of the OP-1 showing the user interface and some really interesting features that has never been revealed before.

The Teenage Engineering OP-1 is really exciting and I cant wait to get my hands on one for a more in depth experience. Come on Teenage Engineering, let us have the OP-1 soon!

In this previous post you can se more OP-1 demos of  tape, multitrack, sequencer, ryhtm and track plus a pulse and sequence school. Read more about the OP-1 and Teenage Engineering at Teenageengineering.com

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