{"id":2138,"date":"2024-04-05T07:11:55","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T07:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aitesonics.com\/teenage-engineerings-ko-ii-sampler-review-150038528\/"},"modified":"2024-04-05T07:11:55","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T07:11:55","slug":"teenage-engineerings-ko-ii-sampler-review-150038528","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aitesonics.com\/teenage-engineerings-ko-ii-sampler-review-150038528\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenage Engineering's K.O. II sampler proves the company can do cost-friendly cool"},"content":{"rendered":"
There’s something of a theme running through Teenage Engineering’s recent<\/a> products<\/a>. That theme is you need more money<\/a>. The Field range represents the Swedish company\u2019s most exclusive music making gear. So when its website teased a new product with a colorful countdown, the wallets of Teenies<\/em> everywhere braced for impact. Once that timer hit all zeros, the big reveal turned out to be the EP-133 sampler<\/a>. Or, to give it its full name, the EP-133 K.O. II 64MB Sampler Composer. The real surprise though, was that it both looked cool and, at $299, was reasonably priced.<\/p>\n The countdown was really just the start. Barely 24 hours after the K.O. II was revealed units started landing in buyers\u2019 hands. Within days, YouTube was awash with first look videos and tutorials. Before our review unit even showed up, several users were complaining that theirs had defective faders. Enough folks were having this problem that it quickly became known as \u201cfadergate<\/a>.\u201d One brave creator even took their unit apart and, possibly, discovered the cause \u2014 the internal pins were bent and not making a connection. I asked Teenage Engineering about the issue and will update this story once I hear back.<\/p>\n Some buyer\u2019s theorized that the issue might be caused by the fact that the K.O. II ships without the caps on its rotaries and fader. They come loose in the box to enable the packaging to be flatter, but the cap for the fader is unusually tight fitting. This led to speculation that the enthusiasm required to push this cap down might be putting too much pressure on components inside, opening up the cruel possibility of users breaking their own devices before they even got to play with them. I used extra caution, along with some needle-nosed tweezers to support the fader as I applied its cap and so far\u2026 so good?<\/p>\n The K.O. II name tells us that Teenage Engineering considers this something of a sequel to the original PO-33 K.O<\/a>. Clearly the K.O. II isn\u2019t a Pocket Operator, but its retro desk calculator aesthetic does take subtle design cues from that series. At 12-inches diagonally, it\u2019s in iPad territory size-wise. The K.O. II also runs on AAA batteries (or USB power) which is another nod to the PO series. It\u2019s hard to say how long it\u2019ll run on those batteries and it\u2019ll vary from brand to brand, but I\u2019ve been using some cheap rechargeables for over a week and they seem to be going strong.<\/p>\n Personally, I was never particularly enamored with the Pocket Operators and much prefer the form factor of the K.O. II. It\u2019s still very portable, but feels a bit more \u201cserious.\u201d It\u2019s also just very nice to look at, which is something Teenage Engineering is quite good at. The model number, EP-133, indicates that we might see others in the line, so fingers crossed for giant calculator versions of other instruments, too.<\/p>\n Fader fully checked and batteries in place, the K.O. II springs to life with a flourish of icons across its display. Those icons are actually fixed and not made up of pixels. Teenage Engineering calls it a \u201cSuper segment hybrid display\u201d which basically fuses the digital watch part with a bunch of colorful, cute custom icons to let you know when certain modes or features are activated. It reminds me of the old Game & Watch handhelds where you can see where all the icons are and they are simply switched on or off as needed. Some of the icons are pretty abstract but there is a guide on the website<\/a> to let you know that, for example, the red umbrella means undo.<\/p>\n Something I like to do with music gear is to see how easy it is to use without reading the manual. This works for all gadgets of course, but with music gear there are common tasks like sequencing, timing adjustment, automation and so on. How you achieve these on a drum machine might be very different to a keys-based synth. Teenage Engineering in particular likes to do things its own way but I was pleasantly surprised with the K.O. II. Within minutes I had managed to figure out basic navigation and how things are organized (sample groups, accessing shift functions, what the fader does and when and so on).<\/p>\n During this blind test I also got to know the K.O. II\u2019s buttons and faders. It was obvious from the launch materials that we weren\u2019t getting rubber MPC-esque pads here but I would describe the ones on the K.O. as keys rather than buttons. Fortunately they are satisfying to click and they\u2019re pressure sensitive so you can give your drum hits different velocities or play notes at different strengths, just be sure to focus on the lower part of the key as that seems to be where the sensor is.<\/p>\n You probably should<\/em> read the manual<\/a> though. If for no other reason than it\u2019s likely the prettiest one you\u2019ll use in a while. There\u2019s also a very cute tool for managing your samples<\/a> which works via desktop browser. For the brave, you can also use this on your phone if you have Android (Chrome, Brave and Opera should all work). On iOS the same browsers can\u2019t access Web MIDI and therefore will not work. (There\u2019s the iOS Web MIDI Browser<\/a> which crashes when I tried it with an iPhone but it does connect so your mileage may vary.) The K.O. II won\u2019t show up on your PC as either a drive or an audio interface, so the main uses for the USB port are power and sending\/receiving MIDI.<\/p>\n The workflow for grabbing sounds is pretty straightforward. If you want to sample from either a PC or phone or other sound-making device then as long as you can connect it to a 3.5mm cable you\u2019re golden. For everything else, you\u2019ll be using the built-in mic, which is surprisingly good. I recorded a few short vocal phrases and other found sounds and they come out well, assuming you\u2019re in a quiet environment.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t worry though, if you don\u2019t have a bunch of samples yet, the K.O. II comes with a bunch pre-installed, and they\u2019re pretty great. There\u2019s a good mix of drums, bass pads and lead sounds \u2014 certainly enough to get you going straight away. You\u2019ll definitely want to add your own though to make your projects unique. The presets use about half of the 64MB of memory, but you can back them up, delete them and free the slots up for your own. Max sample length is 20 seconds (same as on the OP-1 Field).<\/p>\n If 64MB doesn\u2019t sound like a lot, know that it translates to about 11 minutes of samples at the 46kHz\/16bit in which the K.O. II records. You can halve that time if you sample in stereo. Even if you go all out, over five minutes of samples should be plenty enough for most songs (we hope). If there\u2019s going to be a bottleneck, it\u2019ll more likely be due to the 12-voice limit. This means the K.O. II can make 12 sounds at once, so if you have six stereo samples playing at one time, you\u2019ll hit that limit. My compositions aren\u2019t interesting enough to hit that threshold, but if you\u2019re a maximalist, then it\u2019s worth keeping in mind.<\/p>\n A common technique to help avoid hitting the voice limit on other devices is resampling \u2014 basically merging separate sounds down into one new sample. This is also the technique for baking in any effects and modulation, which, given that the K.O. II can only manage one master effect at any one time makes the lack of resampling all the more obvious. Understandably, it\u2019s possibly the biggest complaint among users I\u2019ve seen so far (after fadergate of course).<\/p>\n There are ways around this, but it would involve recording out into another device and then sampling that back into the K.O. II and no one should have a sampler for their sampler, not in this economy. Teenage Engineering does have a decent track record of adding functionality via firmware updates \u2014 the company just added a new effect<\/a> to the OP-1 Field as I wrote this \u2014 so fingers crossed.<\/p>\n While we\u2019re on the topic of features the K.O. II doesn\u2019t have, there doesn\u2019t appear to be any kind of song mode. There are four sample \u201cgroups\u201d that you can think of as tracks (drums, bass, lead and so on). Each of these groups can hold up to 99 patterns and patterns can be up to 99 bars in length. The active patterns across the four groups can be saved as a \u201cscene\u201d and scenes can be triggered consecutively. But, importantly, there\u2019s no way for that to happen automatically right now. This means if you wanted to tease a whole recorded song out of the K.O. II you\u2019ll have to either get clever with MIDI or trigger scenes and patterns manually in real time.<\/p>\n This performative nature might be a burden for songs, but I found it to be a feature in other areas. On top of the master effects you also have 12 \u201cpunch in\u201d effects that can be applied \u2014 or punched in \u2014 by holding down the FX key and then any of the 12 black pads. Each is marked with its effect name (Level, Pitch and so on). These punch-in effects express themselves differently based on the amount of pressure you apply, making it a very expressive experience. The effects on these keys also correspond to modulation tools when used with the fader. So FX+7 adds the \u201cLevel\u201d punch-in effect (rhythmic gating) while Fader+7 will assign gain\/level to the fader until you choose another modulator such as Attack or Low Pass Filter.<\/p>\n I swear, half of the things you learn about how to use the K.O. II happen by accident. Yes, it\u2019s in the manual, but I discovered you can solo groups by pressing the FX button and the corresponding group. You can also press multiple buttons to \u201csolo\u201d multiple groups or sounds at the same time. With a group or group solo\u2019d you can then apply punch-in effects to create a lot of variations in real time. With so many touches like this, I am starting to assume that Teenage Engineering envisioned the K.O. II as a playful performative device rather than a linear song-making machine.<\/p>\nFadergate<\/h2>\n
In use<\/h2>\n