I’ve owned both the OP-1 and the OP-1 Field over the years, but I’ve always struggled a bit with the workflow — mainly working only with tape, and no MIDI with proper editing possibilities.
That said, I came back to the OP-1 Field about a week ago, and I’ve been getting along with it better and better. Also, the new Amp effect is a really great addition and increases the value of the OP-1F a lot for me.
But… right in the middle of that joy, my OP-1 Field crashed when I shift-lifted all tracks — and I never got the chance to put them back. About 1.5 hours of work, which I genuinely liked, was just gone. I’m currently on firmware version 1.6.5.
I can (and of course must) accept that I sometimes make mistakes during the creative process that cause me to lose small things. That’s part of making music.
But it’s really not fun to use the OP-1F if I can randomly lose a large amount of valuable work from time to time, without being able to do anything about it.
So I’m wondering:
Are these kinds of crashes common on the OP-1 Field?
Can this happen on any firmware version, or was I just unlucky jumping back in on 1.6.5?
Is this something that can reasonably be expected to be fixed soon?
Unfortunately, the OP-1 Field is going back into its box for now, until I know that this kind of thing no longer happens.
Unfortunately, you’re not the only one experiencing this kind of “issue.”
A year or two ago, there was a really nasty bug on the OP-1: if you powered it on with a USB cable plugged in, it would completely reset the machine. It happened to me twice, and I lost hours of music…
Since I’m stupid and their products are always very appealing (on paper), I invested in an OP-XY, thinking I’d be able to interface it easily with the OP-1. That turned out to be difficult and very unstable. The OP-1 can freeze at any moment, and audio or MIDI chains can break after just a few minutes of use.
You only need to browse this forum for a few minutes to find plenty of frustrated user reports—the number of bugs is overwhelming. It’s a daily issue.
I would never trust this combo for live use.
TE shows a completely assumed lack of professionalism when it comes to maintaining their products. A company like Elektron provides serious long-term support for the machines they produce—this is true for most companies.
TE’s commercial strategy is different: once a product is released, they lose interest in it and start preparing the next one (there’s a new EP being announced today, actually), relying on hype to attract an audience constantly craving novelty.
The false promises of updates are also part of this “addictive” system. In that respect, TE has perfectly understood the new paradigm of our time…
I’m sorry to read that the OP-1f erased your music, that’s frustrating and painful when it happens. Be sure to report it to TE to help get the bug fixed.
Shift-lifting all tracks has issues in 1.6.5. Were there any tracks in your project that were recorded before the 1.6.5 update? Someone here mentioned the bug isn’t happening when shift-lifting all tracks if the project is brand new. I haven’t tested it yet, I’ll get a chance to this week.
Well that’s not good. I appreciate you posting about it here, now I’ll refrain from lifting all tracks until this gets fixed. And thanks for reporting it to TE.