NGEN 1.2 Firmware Update + New Batch
/Today we have some exciting news to share about NGEN: a new batch and the new 1.2 firmware update.
New 1.2 Firmware Update
The 1.2 update for NGEN is now available and it includes significant improvements to NGEN's performance and musical capabilities.
We've implemented a new threading system that takes care of managing and handling tasks across the two available cores in NGEN and, as a result, we've improve performance across the entire system.
With this new system, NGEN can now use one core for MIDI generation and the other for different tasks (such as display rendering, file management, and so on) to prevent any stutters or glitches during playback.
This means it's now possible, for example, to save and load projects while NGEN is playing. Project changes are now queued and quantized to 1 bar to provide a more musical transition between projects.
The new system also helped us fix many bugs related to file management.
The performance gain provided by the new threading system also helped to improve the display refresh rate, the timing of delayed MIDI notes, file management, and the performance of many other repetitive tasks needed in NGEN.
The new update also includes new internal frameworks for creating, managing, and playing chords. Using these new frameworks, the Generators can more easily create and modify more musical and sophisticated chords and know what chords to play depending on the active key, scale, and transposition. For this update, we've updated the Pop generator to use these new frameworks.
NGEN 1.2 also includes improvements to the UI and workflow, a new MIDI Thru setting, a "New" option for clearing the active project, and many bug fixes.
Update instructions and the complete change-log for the new 1.2 firmware are available on the NGEN User Manual at https://ngen.spektroaudio.com/
Additionally, we've also released 4 new templates for DrumGen: Memphis, Boombap, Jungle, and Garage.
All available templates (including the new ones) can downloaded from the NGEN Resources repository on GitHub.
Instructions on adding them to existing units can be found on the File Management page of the NGEN User Manual.
New Hardware Batch
A new batch of NGEN hardware units is already being assembled and our plan is to start shipping in August 2024.
We’re currently getting ready to open pre-orders for the new batch and we hope to share more details (including pre-order dates) in the upcoming weeks. We’ll also update this blog post with additional information.
UPDATE:
Pre-orders for the new batch will be available on the NGEN page (spektroaudio.com/ngen) on two separate dates:
AUGUST 21ST, 2024 / 1 PM EST
SEPTEMBER 3RD, 2024 / 4 PM EST
Most of the batch is already assembled and tested so our goal is to start shipping units on August 26th. We expect lead-time to be 1-2 weeks.
All units are shipped from Brazil via International Postal Service or DHL (importing / custom fees may apply depending on your country).
We're also working with certain retails to have NGEN units available locally at certain locations worldwide and we hope to share more information about this soon!
Roadmap for NGEN
With the release of the 1.2 update (that focused on optimization, performance and fixes), our plan for the next update is to focus on the new features we've planned for NGEN such as pattern sequencing, file transfer between internal and external storage, and new generators / MIDI effects.
We also plan on creating more video tutorials to help users get the most out of NGEN. If you have any ideas / requests for future videos, please let us know via the Contact form!
