Noise Engineering has announced in a recent blog post that they will bid farewell to four of their popular Eurorack modules. The modules in question are Basimulus Iteritas Altar, Manis Iteritas, Cursus Iteritas, and Ataraxic Iteritas. The blog goes on to explain that the CPU chosen for the Noise Engineering oscillators where chosen back in the early days of the company. The model, made by a company called XMOS, was powerful enough to do what they wanted and also affordable as it was an older product in the XMOS lineup. Unfortunately, the CPU also turned out to not be very user-friendly and lacked features such as being able to be updated in the field. Noise Engineering soon realized this limitation and rectified it with their Versio line, which allows customers to swap firmware through a simple USB connection.

According to Noise Engineering, the brand has been spending years dreading that XMOS would one-day end-of-life their chip. While they were able to make it work over the course of the pandemic the writing was on the wall and they have now finally gotten confirmation from XMOS that the CPU has been EOL’d. This has forced Noise Engineering to reassess its products as they have seven Euroack products that run on XMOS. These include the four core Iteritas, Ataraxic, Basimilus, Cursus, and Manis as well as the Loquelic Iteritas, Loquielic Iteritas Percido, and Cursus Iteritas Percido. Since Noise Engineering still had a reasonable stock of CPUs they had to prioritize what to do. The end result is that the four core Iteritas are being discontinued while LOquelic Iteritas, Loquelic Iteritas Percido, and Cursus Iteritas Percido will remain in production for the foreseeable future. Noise Engineering has stated that this option allows them to set aside extra CPUs for warranty repairs. 

In response to the question of whether or not they will replace the modules that they have EOL’d, Noise Engineering has stated that oscillators are still one of their favorite types of modules in Eurorack. They did confirm that they have lots of ideas still left to explore in the sound-generator space and that they have plenty of oscillators and voices left in their lineup, such as the Tymp Legio for percussion and Virt Iter Legio for stereo sound design. However, while they have revealed that they hope to eventually have more direct replacements their focus is currently on other “grand things.” For more information visit the official Noise Engineering website (https://noiseengineering.us/blogs/loquelic-literitas-the-blog/goodbye-iteritas). Although discontinued, some retailers still have stock available, so there’s time to get one before it is too late.