Its been an interesting past year since my last blog post. The development of the soon to be renamed FS-256 is ongoing at a full pace. The version 2 prototype hardware arrived a few months ago, and is now in the hands of the Beta test team. The V2 prototype is very close to production ready, with the exception of a few small items that will be cleaned up for the first production run.
The V2 hardware now includes walnut side panels, a black anodized aluminum case, new custom designed knobs, front panel LED's, and a change from encoders to fully continuous rotation potentiometers. The potentiometers have a smooth and solid feel. Since they are fully rotational (they go past 360 degrees of rotation), they work very well with a patch loadable digital synthesizer as rotation is now relative to its previous position, and not absolute. When you load in a patch you can begin working on sound design seamlessly as the absolute rotation of the potentiometer does not matter.
In other news, due to a recently discovered trademark issue, the product will be renamed from FS-256. The new product name is expected to be selected shortly.
Development of the firmware is ongoing, with new features being added weekly, and bugs identified by the Beta team being resolved. The sounds coming out of the product are unique and interesting, some of which simply cannot be generated without additive synthesis. I'm looking forward to sharing some videos demonstrating the product in the near term.
The current plan is to have a first production run available in Q4 of 2024 (yes a year later than stated in last year's blog post!), though final product release to market is still to be determined. I want to ensure that a high quality and polished product is released to market.
To our international and overseas customers - unfortunately the product will initially only be available to the North American (Canadian and US) markets. There are numerous costly compliance and safety tests required to market a product European and other locals. The plan is to perform this compliance testing in 2025, which will allow for the product to become available for sale outside of North America. Thank you for your understanding.
And to everyone who's been following this project - thank you so much for your interest and patience. This project is a labor of love, and I am truly excited to see the product I had envisioned emerge, with the goal posts finally in sight.
Best Regards,
Eric