OB–4 – Portable high fidelity loudspeaker

evo_9 | 282 points

Teenage Engineering makes cute, fun things, but more often than not they feel like they're very overpriced cute fun things for their functionality, and this is honestly no exception. In a sense they're like the Apple of nerdy products.

Their Pocket Operators are the closest thing to a "cheap" product they have and even then, last time I checked, they don't even come with a protective case, which I personally find preposterous even if it goes against the aesthetic. One single drop and it'd probably be game over for a $100+ toy.

kemonocode | 3 years ago

I love everything Teenage Engineering make. My first impression is always "eh, that's too weird, who would want that... who is their target market?", and over time end up at "OK, I WANT ONE!". I own way too many of their Pocket Operators now.

Though, I REALLY think I'm not their target market here: "designed to be played outdoors, in public spaces and at high volume"... that's exactly situations I now try to avoid. Hmm, unless I have it playing "GET OFF MY LAWN" on a loop?

mrspeaker | 3 years ago

They're missing a killer feature they have the hardware to implement: Ad skipping.

Within a fraction of a second they could notice that the audio feed exactly matches a fragment in memory, and mute audio till the feed diverges again from history. One would want this mode off for a "Top Forty" radio station, but on for live content.

An easy enhancement would be to press a "kill" button to immediately mute repeating content, and always automatically mute this content in the future. This feature would be useful for songs one never wants to hear again.

Many baseball fans would pay thousands of dollars to never hear the "Kars for Kids" ad again, wondering why they don't explain their charity's narrow mission, wondering if their cars are sold by an intermediary that redirects profits.

Syzygies | 3 years ago

Just in case you're like "Why does this look familiar?"

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frekvens-portable-speaker-black...

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frekvens-speaker-with-subwoofer...

TE designed both this OB4 and the Frekvens, this seems like the Ikea line taken to a very far extreme. Very neat, lots of cash though.

I have to say, it kinda reminds me of Ikea's Eneby too, but TE did not design that: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/eneby-bluetooth-speaker-black-0...

AgloeDreams | 3 years ago

exposed drivers on a 'outdoor use' 600 dollar device gives me an extreme sense of anxiety.

Reminds me of Braun products; products designed to look nice, but in general usability suffers in favor of sleek metal human interfaces, nice weights, and a generally 'quality' feel.

serf | 3 years ago

...and its already sold out.

One thing I like about this and the OP-1 is they hit that retrofuturism, Tokyo-in-1985 kind of vibe so well with their marketing, its really well thought out.

spectralflux | 3 years ago

Many people here are discussing OP-1 and complaining its expensive price. There's a open source clone called OTTO[1], and it looks promising (although not finished).

[1]: https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO

jhvkjhk | 3 years ago

I would be in the market for a powered/bluetooth speaker that doesn't sound like shit. For the price I'd expect (near) audiophile sound, however little in the marketing even seems to mention sound quality, it just seems very gimmicky.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a semi portable powered/bluetooth speaker that focuses on accurate sound reproduction (within the limits physics puts on a smaller enclosure)?

jascii | 3 years ago

I totally bought into the hype and paid $1k (CAD) for an OP-1 that's unfortunately collecting dust. It's a marvel of design and engineering, but I suck at making music.

For anyone not familiar, these guys are kind of like a cheeky Apple of musical hardware design.

mmastrac | 3 years ago

I have not heard this speaker, but like many portable speakers, the design is distinctly suboptimal even by portable standards. In a portable device, stereo is actually not desirable. Two reasons.

One, you will certainly not experience the intended effect of stereo (the illusion of spatial separation) when the drivers are so close together.

Two, the drivers will actually interfere with each other. Not only are you not getting the effect of stereo, it's making things worse. The phenomenon is comb filtering:

https://audiouniversityonline.com/comb-filtering-explained/

https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-what-exactly-com...

You can visualize the effect by imagining two stones, dropped into a swimming pool, a short distance apart. As the ripples spread outward, they will cancel each other at some points and reinforce each other at other points. These areas of reinforcement and cancellation alternate, and that is essentially what happens (in three dimensions) with the sound emanating from two drivers playing the same sounds in close proximity.

(The actual detriment will depend on how the recording is mixed. If the recording has no stereo separation for a particular sound or instrument, the effect will be worst. If a particular sound is hard-panned 100% left or 100% right, there will be no detrimental effect)

If anybody is interested, for the price of this device ($999) you can get a heck of a home stereo. Wirecutter has excellent recommendations for affordable bookshelf speakers, receivers, etc.

JohnBooty | 3 years ago

you know this is a minimalist company because they don't use capital letters.

bondarchuk | 3 years ago

The radio mixing feature seems similar to what this guy "Radio Wonderland" does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr2wK3jvUhc

I've seen his performances at HOPE conferences and it's pretty cool. See a full set here: https://archive.org/details/hopeconf2020/20200730_0000_RADIO...

sequoia | 3 years ago

"ambient mode - zone out to a drone generated by snippets of a radio broadcast"

This sounds really cool. Is there anything like it available in software?

andor | 3 years ago

Their line of synths is great, but a radio which doesn't support DAB? How am I going to listen to 6music?

pjc50 | 3 years ago

Does this kind of marketing actually work for many people? Without trying to sound too unkind, I genuinely hope there are not that many people out there who want to use this thing by "carry(ing) on one shoulder with speaker elements facing the head".

This thing seems like a very expensive toy.

talentedcoin | 3 years ago

One of my dream projects is a high quality open source, syncable, low latency bluetooth/wireless speaker system, like the JBL speakers except that you can bring your own amp and drivers and software and stuff.

Culturally, this kind of thing could be revolutionary. Outdoor music events with dispersed speaker arrays would be much less noisy than ones with giant central arrays, but everyone would be able to hear the music much better and with much less damage to the ears. You could probably get away with having pretty large gatherings without any noise permits.

One of the things I noticed about clubs in Berlin vs. clubs where I'm from is that the sound systems are distributed more evenly throughout the spaces. So you don't need earplugs as badly as you do in my city where the venues all use these massive mono speaker arrays and if you're in the front row you're gonna get tinnitus.

The JBL setup is designed really well, but it's proprietary and different generations aren't backward compatible.

I wanna see an open source hardware alternative. Where do I sign up!

macawfish | 3 years ago

Like the rest of teenage engineering's products, I'm not sure what this thing is about, but I probably will be buying it.

npmaile | 3 years ago

Exposed, non-protected woofers looks cool - but I can imagine a butter-side-down Murphy's law event happening to me within a week of getting that thing...

thelazydogsback | 3 years ago

I've been looking for a high-end pair of bluetooth speakers, so this really peaks my interest.

I've been wanting the B&O Beolit, but they used to come with built-in charger, so you could just plug in directly into the wall.

But now they switched to USB-C charging, which means that you need to use an external charger unit. Not every USB charger will deliver enough power, so that's just a step back in user experience. The older models had a room for the cable, so what was the point of changing it?

Nothing was added in place of the internal charger and the price didn't drop. They just took away a feature and wrote "Now with USB-C!" on the box, as if they added something.

So this one having "universal built-in power supply" and a power cable in the box, is a really big plus for me!

wodenokoto | 3 years ago

I could find no frequency response nor distortion measurements.

I don't get how this ad made it into the front page.

snvzz | 3 years ago

If it wasn't for the price I would buy it just for this "ambient. zone out to a drone generated by snippets of a radio broadcast" feature as it sounds precisely like my fav type of music.

ArekDymalski | 3 years ago

their stuff is awesome, but so expensive! I've wanted an OP-1 for a long time, just can't fork out that kind of cash for a "toy"

tacticaldev | 3 years ago

Is there an actual magnetic tape inside or are they claiming a "recording" under the name "tape"? Left me kind of confused.

ashleyn | 3 years ago

This might be the first Bluetooth Low Energy Audio product on the market.

andor | 3 years ago

I like the handle, reminds me of 80s portable radios. Though from 80s and 90s experience 2 speakers that close aren't great for stereo separation.

"disk mode" seems interesting, though this is a little overkill for metronome.. Of the other two modes "ambient" seems like a sound machine.

The remote I don't care for, excepting repurposing as a tempest controller used with MAMe.

Can you turn of the recording feature to save battery?

I have a Beoplay A2 speaker (Bang and Ofson) which it flat and slides into a backpack. I love that thing, but the battery is starting to go, and being discontinued I wonder how long I'll be able to keep it going. I always worry about these new things, and wish there was a standard battery packs for these things.

acomjean | 3 years ago

Honest question: So, I get the radio rewind feature, and I really dig the interface, but it kind of feels like it's a feature from some two decades ago? Are there really still that many people regularly listening to FM radio for whom this is a killer feature?

theon144 | 3 years ago

"incredible sounding stereo". With speakers within inches of each other, and you standing many feet away, and moving around? I don't think so.

kazinator | 3 years ago

I don't get why this product gets so many upvotes. The only thing that I find refreshing about it is the use of an active DSP instead of a passive crossover network. Maybe the aesthetics.

For the rest, way too expensive; says the guy who spent more days and money than he likes to admit building his speakers (4" FAST, 5 liter each, active DSP@250Hz, plays down to <40Hz).

archi42 | 3 years ago

Their PO modulars (https://teenage.engineering/products/po/modular) are so great looking I have almost bought one on impulse several times. Then I get to the checkout page and I realize I don't want it that badly.

bborud | 3 years ago

Does it support Apt-X?

AAC is mentioned in spec sheet so I would assume its possible to get acceptable sound quality from iPhone, when using the Music app with AAC files, or even MP3 files.

Anyone knows when using Spotify on iPhone and selecting bluetooth as output, will it use AAC then? or will it re-encode the sound from Spotify, either into AAC or, god forbid SBC?

bni | 3 years ago

Why no DAB radio?

napolux | 3 years ago

I used to hang out with one of their engineers, he was a great guy and I tell you what, he took his job serious, lived and breathed the company and his work. Teenage Engineering is a small team and from what I know this tech was 5 years in the making. I think it is a great accomplishment from them.

panoply | 3 years ago

There is nothing here but marketing, I don't know why people would be engrossed in an advertisement for something basic. Anyone can put together speakers and a battery with parts from amazon or aliexpress.

CyberDildonics | 3 years ago

They have a really weird list of counties (bottom left corner). About 100 of them, and I can't understand why they were chosen. A lot of small countries in there, and big ones missing.

abdullahkhalids | 3 years ago

£599. Nope.

qz2 | 3 years ago

The portable bluetooth speaker market is incredibly crowded already, with offerings from some names like JBL, Bose, Sony and whatnot.

kazinator | 3 years ago

Pity it's not DAB, this looks great.

te_chris | 3 years ago

Is this actually a radio (as in receives terrestrial broadcasts), or just a BT speaker?

aidenn0 | 3 years ago

If they add the ability to dump the cache to a local or network drive, I'm sold.

gglitch | 3 years ago

Teenage over engineering

m3kw9 | 3 years ago

Or just buy a soundboks for $200 more and have portability

perilousacts | 3 years ago

might be a fun guitar amp with interesting loop effects

Shermanium | 3 years ago

Love the brand.

No DAB+ tho, sad :)

unixhero | 3 years ago

Return of the "boom box".

ctdonath | 3 years ago

guys, maybe someone is able to recognise wall clock from promo video?

devnullzero | 3 years ago

portable speakers are one of the worst things invented in this century.

I almost cannot take a walk or take a subway train without some youngsters blasting crappy music very loud at everyone.

znpy | 3 years ago

Is HN being subjected to some astroturf marketing techniques here?

Seems rather suspicious to see so many commenters enthusiastically salivating over an advert for a very expensive radio.

And also for said advert to hit the #1 spot on this site, despite not fitting into the usual categories for a compelling post.

crumbshot | 3 years ago

I'm a little peeved that a site named "teenage.engineering" is not an educational one. I realize this is not entirely rational, but I would have expected (and welcomed) a build-a-kit, not yet another generic consumer product.

This isn't even waterproof. What teenagers do you know?

monadic2 | 3 years ago

> endless looping tape*

> *ROLLING 2 HOUR RECORDING

Then maybe not call it "endless" if it's not even practically endless?

pengstrom | 3 years ago