The Ultimate Pocket Operator Guide // Which is right for you?

this is the ultimate peel guide and we're going to be going through each and every pocket operator that's out right now there's currently 12 of them so strap yourselves in my friends i understand that this might be a little bit overwhelming so if you're looking for a specific po i've left a timestamp to each of them in the description teenage engineering has all of us by the gonads because each of these pocket operators has different and unique features another reason why it's difficult to figure out which one you want to settle on we'll be discussing the unique features of each po which ones i like which ones i don't like to help out your choice even further i have a playlist that goes into each individual po highlighting how they sound and all these unique features that's all linked in the description and today's sponsor is my volts they offer rip cords as well as usb powered batteries for pretty much any sort of synth gear including pos so a great option to replace disposable batteries which are bad for the environment as a synth user i encourage you to check out their kickstarter which i have also linked in the description the products that they're coming out with is specifically geared towards solving audio routing and syncing issues within the synth world which benefits the whole synth community and so more on that later in this video and if you want to jump straight to it there's a time stamp for that as well in all right we're ready let's dive into these bucket operators i'm assuming that if you're here you're already familiar with pos they have a very particular sound sort of in the quirky 8-bit realm they're very consistent with like throwback 90s super nintendo sounds with most pos you're sort of stuck in that realm unless you're using the ones that are able to sample in which case you can step outside of that realm the po workflow is very simple and straightforward they're all equipped with their own stock sounds stock patterns in the grand scheme of synths they're very limited in terms of space but chaining together patterns is one of the easiest things to do for example here i'm going to press down these four patterns let's say and they'll just play in a loop some more general po knowledge you could change the bpm you could shuffle your beats and you could also change the tempo of your beats here so that's like a blanket overlook of pos in general let's take a look at them individually starting way back i think all the way back to 2014 with the po12 rhythm [Music] this model costs 59 on perfect circle funny enough this is my favorite pocket operator mostly because it's the punchiest of all of them i just think it has a perfect combination of the best sounds plus the simplest workflow [Music] i love my drum sounds and this po knows exactly what it is it's a drum machine there are no melodic sounds these two knobs here allow you to change pitch and decay of each sound each trick is separate and you'll notice that when you press play you can see which notes are playing when within the sequence so visually it's just easy to work with this is the most straightforward po workflow and it also exists on several other pos as well there's an effects button right here which you can record onto your patterns [Music] so like i said this is the simplest po and knows exactly what it is no bs whereas i guess the reason to dislike it is that same fact the fact that it's quite simple and limited so it's kind of like a blessing and a curse at the same time let's take a look at the po14 sub which is 49 on perfect circuit by the way there are affiliate links to each of these pos in the description if you purchase using those links i actually make a small commission off of that which is one of many ways to support this channel the po14 is exactly what its name suggests it's got some really nice fat base tones the po14 is different from the po12 because there's only one drum for tracks all the way down here [Music] i honestly find that they're pretty meh compared to the po12 drums the rest is a fat selection of bass tones [Music] so all together this po has two voices a drum beat as well as a bass voice over top of that you have the option of changing the bass tone after it's been recorded so some flexibility there once again you have two knobs here for effects parameters you could record those effects onto individual instruments as well [Music] these effects parameters change depending on which base tone you're using one reason why i dislike the po14 is that you don't have much leeway with the drums seeing as there's only one track for drums there's only so much you could do and your patterns end up being quite [Music] linear [Music] not much flexibility there essentially you're not able to layer your drums you could tell that the po14 is really meant for fat bass tones the po16 factory is next it costs 49 on perfect circuit the po16 essentially has the same workflow as the po14 but with synth tones instead of bass tones i actually dislike the po16 tones a lot i find that a lot of them are quite harsh [Music] like the po14 there are two voices one for synth one for drums the drums are once again on this channel over here i also find that the effects are a little bit harsh as well these sounds aren't really my cup of tea but just to give you an idea of what this pio sounds like [Music] [Applause] [Music] this one does not pass the vibe check for me but hey there's 11 other ones to choose from the po20 arcade which is 59 on perfect circuit this po shines brightest with its two unique features that is the chord function as well as the side chaining sort of thing it's got going which we will get to in a second with the aesthetic of it it really makes me feel like i'm at an arcade in the mid 90s like the po12 workflow when you play a track you can see which notes are playing when within the sequence the sounds are great too so let's take a look at those unique features so you hit the chord button right here and you're able to sequence a chord progression so let's say one two three four let's do that and now it's gonna loop through this chord progression [Music] let's hear some more chords maybe these four it's cool because it's a progression that sounds good just like one sequence after another there's also this quarter note sidechain effect that i was talking about let's play that [Music] one thing that i dislike about the po20 is that when you arm track effects they stay armed so you actually have to press down on the effects again for it to lift whereas with other pios if you lift your finger the effects automatically lifts we're sort of pulling at straws here this is more of a personal preference more than a dislike the po24 office which is 49 the same sort of layout workflow as the po20 and po12 the one that i like all of these samples are corky office sounds so things that you would hear in an office [Music] i find that in general this one occupies the higher frequency like thinner sounds in fact the po24 is part of the po cocktail package that teenage engineering offers which consists of the po24 office po-32 tonic as well as the po12 rhythm going back to frequencies if you were to sync these three together the po24 would cover the high end sounds the po-32 could cover the lower frequency bass and punchy tones and the po12 could be like the rhythm section so the extremely punchy drums and all of them together sound like this [Music] and here's an idea of what the po24 sounds like on its own i actually dislike the po24 sounds on their own i find that they're just too thin and it serves better as a piece of the puzzle the po28 robot this one is 59 i actually received this one quite recently so it hasn't been added to the all sounds of all pocket operators series yet no worries though we'll be touching on it here similar sort of workflow as the 14 and 16 but with sounds that are in the po20 arcade realm and you guessed it with some unique features let's get a quick idea of what it sounds like [Music] uh so the drums once again are down here limited to linear patterns [Music] there's this unique glide button for melodies and unlike any of the peels that we've covered in this video thus far you're able to add a third voice over top of synth and drums i don't mean that you could program a third voice i just mean that you're able to jam with a third synth over top of two other parts that have been programmed [Music] one thing that i really dislike about this one and oh my god is it annoying if you record a synth riff the sound changes so let's say i've chosen this sound let's record something that's not the sound that i chose you have to toggle back to right mode and choose the synth sound after you've recorded it right tonight you can change it from there not sure what they were thinking about here but this is definitely a weird one we won't go through effects because it's pretty much the same deal as the other pos next up is the po32 tonic [Music] this is my next favorite after the po12 i would go as far as saying that it is the po12 but with like a mixed variety of melodic bass and drum tones i mean check out these one shots it almost packs as much punch as the 12 with the same visual workflow besides that there's not really too much to be said about it there is an extra acc which i'm not sure what that stands for i think it might be accent it seems to be a dropout function so let's play this pattern dropping out that let's start with the hi-hats there we go from a po standpoint there's not really much to dislike about this one the only dislike that you might have is just like the 12 this one might be too simple for you i don't know it's it's pretty solid the po 33 ko which is 89 on perfect circuit people went nuts over this one when it first came out because it's the first peel that was able to sample so that's one of the major selling points of course there are two types of sampling that you could do so drumming as well as melodic if you choose melodic whatever you record will be divvied up into a scale let's check it out you could also sample one shots and full-on riffs into the drum sampler it'll auto chop itself up into all of these 16 steps much like the op1 i am recording something in additionally if you decide to sample one shots from some other piece of gear the po will dippy those sounds up across all of these 16 slots and you could use it as a kit you could swap in basically any kit that you want the pio is also one of the most flexible in terms of layering check this video out for a full understanding on that you can layer like a with this thing i actually just demonstrated this before you also have extra effects parameters by pressing effects so you have tone filter as well as trim oh yeah and a dislike about the po33 we're gonna go with i don't have any the po-35 is another one that's able to sample and it's 89 on perfect circuit this po is essentially a vocoder sampler anything that you sample into it gets synthesized into an instrument [Music] another one that divvies up all the drum sounds onto track 16. [Music] but of course if you want you could always just swap out the kit like the po-33 also like the po-33 if you hit effects you have access to different parameters so trim as well as tone this is all utilized for sampling and we have another unique feature alert you hit pattern and twist this knob here you could actually change the type of scale so major minor blues and arab you could also change the root note of the scale so minus c all the way up to plus c so that's a two octave difference major scale [Music] so there's a few options to choose from there [Music] all right so now we're getting into the 100s let's check out the po128 mega man which is 89 i would say that this is the strongest po for arranging i'll explain that a little bit later as you could probably guess this po features sounds from the og super nintendo original mega man this is the only po so far that we're able to choose any note we want and isolate that on a specific instrument in terms of arrangement you have your drums down here [Music] as you can see it says low so all of your bass tones are down here [Music] pi is for melodic tone so they're up here [Music] so these three elements bass drums melody combined with being able to program any note that you want it's the perfect arrangement pocket operator it's just really easy and straightforward to stay melodic and mark sections have an actual arrangement whereas the other pos lean more into the experimental synth realm let's take a quick look at some of the effects [Music] one thing i dislike about this pocket operator is that you're not able to sample with it i mean we're in the hundreds now right so they should all be able to sample the po133 street fighter which is 89 the po-133 is essentially a pop culture marketing version of the po33 it's the prettiest po in my opinion the animations are super nostalgic you could sample over these as well but like why would you want to sample over these iconic sounds here's an example where i chopped up some kung fu sounds from some random youtube video and combined them with sounds from the street fighter po the editing parameters are also the same as the poko so geared towards sampling you have trim to trim your samples tone to change the pitch of your samples filters so that's filter resonance there are some minor differences with the track effects compared to the poko which we won't look into now check out this video for more on that and last but definitely not least is the po137 rick and morty which is a whopping 89. [Music] for what it's worth my rick and morty pocket operator videos have gone viral several times on tick tock you are so welcome so obviously you're able to sample with the po137 but once again do you really want to sample over rick and morty quotes my favorite part about this pio are the effects and i find that they work especially well with the quotes show me what you got through me let you go right runway these effects are form and pitch but there's definitely some other sort of modulation happening there once again the bottom right is your drum kit which sounds pretty good but like all of the other sampling pos you're able to swap out kits and you could layer your drums that way teenage engineering once again with the very strong collaboration marketing i mean these effects are on point what i dislike about this one is that they're making me sample over the rick and morty things pro tip if you accidentally sample over one of the stock sounds you're able to reset your po to factory settings all you have to do is follow these instructions alright so let us now talk about today's sponsor which is my volts you guys are going to want to hear this one because it's directly related to pocket operators other synths as well as saving the planet so we all know that pos are energy and battery guzzlers especially if you're someone like me who owns all 12 of them my volts helps me feel better about this with their usb powered batteries to clarify these are not rechargeable batteries they are usb powered which is the best option because they last forever all right so you might be asking what do you need to power these batteries this 3 volt rib cord cable which is powered by usb also from my volts they're actually nearing the end of their kickstarter campaign so the batteries will be available in coming weeks their rip cords are already available and they have different voltages for different instruments anything that your instrument needs in terms of voltage they have you covered as a po and synth person i highly suggest that you head over to their kickstarter campaign this is all linked in the description by the way the products that they continue to come up with directly benefit us synth users so yeah go check it out okay that was a massive video and thus is the ultimate po guide hopefully this informed you and took you a step closer into figuring out which po is right for you we didn't cover everything but i wanted to put out a video that documents the unique features of each po and just gives you guys a better idea of what you're looking for all of my other po content is linked in the description if you want more information on the instrument i hope that you subscribe if you like this content i make music production synth and machine videos and just work with gear all day long that's what this channel is about alright that's all i got for you today i will see you guys in a few days thanks for watching and see you soon

Channel: Liam Killen

Views: 124,732

Keywords: liam killen, liam killem pocket operator, pocket operator guide, The Ultimate Pocket Operator Guide, which pocket operator should i get, which pocket operator to get, which pocket operator is the best, which pocket operator should i get first, which teenage engineering pocket operator is the best, po ko, po 35, po 33, po 32, po 28, po 24, po 20, po 16, po 14, po 12, po 137, po 133, po 132, po 128, rick and morty pocket operator, mega man pocket operator review, guide, po

Id: alj5_SxRPYU

Length: 20min 54sec (1254 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 22 2021