{"id":1205487,"date":"2023-11-22T11:49:33","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T16:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1205487"},"modified":"2023-11-22T11:49:33","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T16:49:33","slug":"teenage-engineerings-k-o-ii-groovebox-is-feature-rich-and-only-300","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1205487","title":{"rendered":"Teenage Engineering's K.O. II groovebox is feature-rich and only $300"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teenage Engineering is a company that follows its own path. It\u2019ll release a $250 toy car one day<\/a> and a full-featured groovebox\/sampler for $300 on the very next day. That\u2019s what happened this week. Teenage Engineering just surprise-launched the EP-133 K.O. II,<\/a> a portable sampler\/groovebox that’s feature-rich, looks absolutely stunning and costs just $300. You read that cost right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only musical instruments in TE\u2019s lineup that approach this price point is its catalog of Pocket Operator portable synthesizers, so it\u2019s no surprise that this is a direct followup to the best one, the PO-33 KO sampler.<\/a> The original Pocket Operators were marketed as something of a toy, despite being surprisingly robust, but the EP-133 K.O. II is being advertised as a workstation. This is a fairly large, but still portable, device that more closely resembles an Akai standalone machine. It won\u2019t fit in your pocket, but will fit in your bag.<\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s go over some specs. The K.O. II boasts 64MB of memory, which isn\u2019t a lot, but TE products typically come with some tradeoff. It\u2019ll be enough for a bunch of samples and a few projects, though, which the company says was intentional. Teenage Engineering co-founder and hardware lead David Eriksson told The Verge<\/em><\/a> that if the sampler had too much storage it would \u201cgive the user the option to finish later\u201d instead of completing a song in one-go. Will nobody think of the poor musicians out there who love starting things and hate finishing things? Asking for a friend.<\/p>\n

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Teenage Engineering<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

There are 999 slots for samples, as a matter of fact, and an internal microphone for making your own. Though this is, first and foremost, a sampler, it ships pre-filled with drum hits, synths and other sounds so you can get straight to work. It connects via USB-C for loading samples from a computer or MIDI devices. The K.O. II is also portable, running off of four AAA batteries. In other words, there\u2019s no internal rechargeable battery, but that $300 price tag had to come about somehow.<\/p>\n

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 sets in dark, smoky clubs. That\u2019s a nice touch. The device itself is gorgeous, with a handsome panel of buttons, knobs and connectors. The keys are clicky and, more importantly, velocity sensitive. There\u2019s a rectangular LED screen up top that boasts similar design language to the OP-1 and OP-1 Field portable synthesizers.<\/p>\n

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Teenage Engineering hopes this product will attract newbies to the world of music-making, so the workflow is designed for simplicity, a trait shared with its forebear. Despite that caveat, this is a powerful instrument that should lure in professionals and amateurs alike. It features 12 mono and 6 stereo voice polyphony, stereo\/mono sampling at 46.875 kHz\/16-bit, 12 pressure-sensitive pads, 6 built-in FX sends with a punch-in mode, a master compressor and both manual and automatic sample slicing tools. It also looks really cool, like an accounting calculator from the future.<\/p>\n

The EP-133 K.O. II is available today and, again, costs $300. The day before Thanksgiving is an odd time to release a new piece of hardware, but Teenage Engineering is based in Sweden, so what does it care? It\u2019s worth noting that this is the first dedicated music-making machine the company has released since last year’s OP-1 Field. <\/a><\/p>\n

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
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\nSource: Engadget – Teenage Engineering’s K.O. II groovebox is feature-rich and only 0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teenage Engineering is a company that follows its own path. It\u2019ll release a $250 toy car one day and a full-featured groovebox\/sampler for $300 on the very next day. That\u2019s what happened this week. Teenage Engineering just surprise-launched the EP-133 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,110],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-1205487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engadget","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-engadget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1205487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1205487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1205487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1205487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}