Hi All,
Probably a good time for an update. Here, in no particular order, are the planned initiatives for Tortuga Audio for 2026.
* V4 Series. I am re-affirming my commitment to the V4 series of our LDR stepped attenuator and preamp controller. In addition to a major firmware update, we have an updated solid state buffer module for the V4 and also a new 5 volt power supply board for the V4 which is a whole new offering.
* Firmware Rework. Over the past several months, the V4 firmware has undergone a top to bottom review and has been reworked to improve stability, reliability and maintainability. This was all "under the hood" clean-up and restructuring work and not about piling on a bunch of new features just because. As a result of this work, the V4 series has evolved into a solid and mature product. This refactoring process is now essentially complete with what little that remains being mostly minor tweaks and adjustments.
* Balanced Audio. The V4 currently does not have a balanced audio solution. Based on my experience with the V3 series, I decided to change the way we handled balanced audio, with the V4 series to utilize a special auxiliary board for handling the additional balanced channel. With time and effort, I've come to the conclusion that the original approach used with the V3 is the better approach but with a few essential changes. Hence, going forward, the V4 will have a unitary hardware design where the same hardware is used for both single-ended and balanced audio, with balanced requiring two V4 boards instead of just one. The secondary board will be designated as such by placing a jumper across 2 pins. The secondary board will connect to the primary board via a 10 conductor ribbon cable. The primary board will handle all the controls and user interface.
* Updated Website. The Tortuga Audio website has undergone its first real redesign including replacement of its entire e-commerce ecosystem. The biggest impact of this update, is the disconnection from our legacy preamp products. I decided to only port over the products we currently continue to offer and to leave the legacy products behind. What this means is our updated website does NOT have dedicated product pages for the legacy products we no longer offer. I'm looking into ways to add the legacy products to the updated website but that's a low priority item for now.
* New Tortuga Audio Studio. After 1 year of permitting, and 1 year of construction, the new Tortuga Audio studio/shop is maybe a couple of months away from being mostly done. That timing sounds soft because I'm not going to stress over "when". When is going to be revealed when when is good and ready but "later this summer" is probably close. This studio is going to be our new home. And since I'm acting as my own General Contractor, I get to have all the fun and all the problems building it.
* Finished Preamp Offering. As we finish the studio and get settled in, efforts will shift towards offering a new series of finished preamps based around the V4 series. There will be one significant structural change in how we offer finished preamps in the future. These will be limited run builds. Meaning I will likely only commit to building a small quantity of units and once those are sold, they are gone with no guarantee that more will be forthcoming. I'm being very candid about this up front. I simply do not know if I want to commit to anything beyond a limited production run. I'll evaluate on the other side, whether I want to continue with another batch.
