Outline Announces Newton Firmware Update

A new firmware update of Newton, the original, patented, FPGA-based signal-processing product by Outline, is billed as delivering new workflow improvements.

In response to a steady request by its user base, the company says Firmware Update 98 allows users to seamlessly save and recall whole-platform snapshots of all its functional parameters and settings on its board.

The possibility of saving and recalling a complete Newton operational status as snapshot is handy for addressing different usage scenarios in multipurpose rooms and venues, whereby different portions of sound system need to be activated (and/or optimized) at specific configurations of walls' and floor partitioning, or when specific event types in the same venue rely on different suppliers of technical services, each with their own production setups, to minimize setup times, and avoid any mismatch in routing, clocking, sub-systems balance and tuning.

In concert and festival settings, snapshots allow users to manage guests'- and main artists' injection setups, each of them starting with a clean slate at soundcheck, for saving the achieved operational balance at the end of rehearsal, just to load it back again by exact running order at showtime -- regardless of whichever host is actually hooked to the system (as snapshots reside within the Newton machine).

Because the update also allows Newton users to choose specific elements of its logic blocks to be saved in each snapshot (and then be recalled at will), system engineers tasked with the alignment and optimization of (even the most) complex PAs, will now be able to run checkup and troubleshooting test routines in full compliance with previous service status.

Also, implemented in firmware update 98 are safe areas to protect output groups (which can't be overridden by snapshot recall), as well as a user-defined safety switch for whichever control function can be locked to its current status as "recall safe."

You can download the most recent version of Isaac, the multi-platform control application of Newton, available for both Windows and macOS architectures, from outline.it/software-app, because even downloading the new firmware update 98 before installing it onto your Newton device falls within Isaac's many functions.