So I recently got a hold of a KO II from Teenage Engineering. Shout outs to my boy Skeeter Woo for the hookup. So a lot of people who have received this device have gotten units with bad faders, speakers, or the batteries don’t work with the power switch and things like that. I was fortunate and my KO II is in perfect working order. It’s a dope device and I like using it a lot. It’s very easy and quick to get into making a beat and once you understand the workflow its very intuitive.
The device itself seems very well put together. It has a very basic screen, but there are icons that notate certain functions you’re using on the device. It has a plain LED screen that shows your beat count and other parameters, but the icons on the sides and underneath the LED light up to let you know you’re doing a certain function. It’s very cool and it conveys a lot of information to the user. I had no problems understand what each thing does, and rarely had to go to the online guide/manual to figure out how to do something. If you do need help, there are a TON of videos on Youtube where people show how to make a beat from scratch, how to sample and things like that.
The sound of the device is great. It almost reminds me of my 404 mk2, in the way of what you put into it is what you get out. There’s really no mixing/mastering features on the unit, so sample in good sounding samples and your song/beat will sound good. Speaking of sampling, the unit only has 64MB (yes MB!!!) of storage space on it, and a lot of that is initially taken up by the stock sounds that come on the device. What I’ve done is used the browser based “Sample Tool” that TE provides to backup the stock sounds, then delete them off the unit.
You might ask, “Well how can you store anything with only 64MB of space!?”. When you sample a sound into the KO II it takes the audio file and compresses it in some way, so it takes up very little space. The file size of the sample ends up being a lot smaller, like a few kb, so you can fit a lot of sounds on the unit no problem. It’s very cool how they did it and if it weren’t for the quality control issues so many people are facing, I would say the KO II was a shoe-in for device of the year! TE really dropped the ball with the quality control, and this device should have been the crowning achievement of 2023, coming in right at the end of the year.
I still love my unit though, and I think if you can get your hands on a fully functional device, you’ll love it too. It’s very portable, and I’ve taken it to work with me every day this week to hammer out some beats on my lunch breaks. I even picked up a portable speaker to go with it that has AUX inputs, because the default speaker is really only meant for checking your sound when “field recording”. The unit has a mic on it that pretty faithfully picks up your voice or whatever sound you record with it, and the onboard speaker is useful for confirming those recordings. It doesn’t convey bass sounds very well, so kick drums and bass notes aren’t relayed very well with the onboard speaker.
Overall, I would recommend this device to a new beat maker. It’s a ton of fun to use and has a lot of features. I think that once you learn the workflow, you’ll be banging out beats in no time. The mechanical keyboard feel of the keys is really satisfying to use, and I love the clickity clack sounds they make when in use. Hopefully the unit holds up through heavy usage and this time next year I’ll still be producing great music on it. I would suggest you pick up a KO II from Guitar Center, as people seem to be getting good quality units from that source, rather than getting it directly from Teenage Engineering, who seems to be shipping out a lot of duds.
Thanks for reading my little mini-review of the KO II. Have a wonderful holiday! I’m off work the entire week next week, with pay, so I’ll be hanging around the house Djing and cooking up beats on my production devices. I’m hoping I can finish my beat tape and upload it to Distrokid for distribution. Take care of yourself and be blessed. L8r!