Create Digital Music » High-Density Screens Due; OP-1’s Gorgeous Display

Mar 30 2009

High-Density Screens Due; OP-1’s Gorgeous Display

The age of the high-density screen has begun. You can bet these will start to replace the tired (and functionally limiting) LED readouts of the past. The upshot: hardware with usability rivaling computers. Oh, and it’ll look damned purty.

Teenage Engineering has this gorgeous vid of the Operator-1 “OP-1″ controller/synth prototype in action:

NOW talk | Teenage Engineering Blog

By the way, my sources say this thing is real. Actually shipping is another matter entirely, but there is a talented team backing this one up. And I think we’ll watch hardware makers raise the bar in all aspects of design, whether or not the big-name vendors figure that out or not.

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14 Comments

Denis

bloody hell, this is better then sex!

March 31, 2009 @ 1:07 am

Math:Eugenic

it’s like a panda crapped a rainbow in my brain!

March 31, 2009 @ 1:31 am

marc

i really do hope that this thing goes into production.
if it’s half as functional as it is nice looking, it should be pretty awesome.

March 31, 2009 @ 1:34 am

finnek

looks good, sounds good.

March 31, 2009 @ 2:09 am

Ambient Guy

I thought the recent Korg collection of three small portable devices were a ‘must but this little thing is really like you say, setting the bar higher for hardware manufacturers :-)

March 31, 2009 @ 5:48 am

Eoj

Wow, that display is s to the i-c-k.

Raising the bar of minimal design + good functionality + lush displays as the Blofeld did :)

March 31, 2009 @ 6:55 am

Laul

Really very interesting and exciting.

March 31, 2009 @ 7:04 am

Brian

This looks great. Nice that they sold their tripod to put more resources into the thingy.

March 31, 2009 @ 9:59 am

wi_ngo

Man, this is really good stuff. Really excited to see how the final product turns out, and what kind of price point they’ll be shooting for.

March 31, 2009 @ 2:21 pm

SoundDesignTutorials

Man, that envelope editor was pretty, as was everything else. I really hope this thing will ship and be somewhat affordable one day.

March 31, 2009 @ 2:49 pm

HomeTown

This looks great. The reason the big manufactures have not already done this though is:
1. the price
2. short lifespan of the displays. These have a very limited supply life. Consumer products turn over every 6 months to a year. The development life for a musical product is much longer so when a manufacturer is designing something, they have to find parts that they can source for 3-5 years. These displays go end of life way before that. Even the really big companies like Roland and Yamaha are very small and do tiny business compared to a cell phone or GPS company. In the music word, the design cycles are longer and slower, the product lifespans are longer and the quantity of products sold is low.

It will be a while before the big guys can do something with these.
Meanwhile the little guys can build 50 – 100 and charge a lot of money and give us something that looks really cool.

March 31, 2009 @ 5:11 pm

Johan

Hi!
We use one of the first OLED screens that have a long life time. It is guaranteed to last 5,000+hours.

Regards,
Johan

April 1, 2009 @ 10:24 am

Aaron

5000 hours? Do you mean 50,000?
5000 hours is under 2 years of full-time use (leaving it on 8 hours a day). I ask because I’ve been looking to switch to active matrix from passive matrix OLEDs. The passive ones are rated for 20,000+ hours.

April 1, 2009 @ 4:21 pm

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