Fairlight IIL Demonstration at Syco Systems

[CeeCeeGuitar]

:D This guy teaches at teesside uni... he is one wacky guy :)

[sonicwingnut]

@CeeCeeGuitar I'm slightly dissapointed he didn't end any sentence with "..like some kind of BASTARD" here mind.

[usernameregrets]

is there anything like that waveform drawing interface for modern DAWs ie. reason, logic, protools?

[MrWoofington]

Page 6 is rather exciting. I can imagine spending countless hours drawing and combining waveforms to create new sounds.

[TurkBack2]

@MrWoofington It's actually extremely difficult to get anything "musical" out of drawing random waveforms like you could on the CMI. Most of the things one draws end up sounding like a sine wave or something similarly boring. Useful waveforms have a complexity that can't be mimicked by dragging a light pen (or mouse) up and down a bunch of times.

[fabiovsroque]

Besides being a sampler, this machine is an additive synthesizer capable of, for example, create a sound with 32 parcials, with an independent amplitude envelope for each one of the parcials, isn’t it? Where can we see it nowadays? Great machine!

[BigLesbowski]

The new Fairlight CMI 30A has been anounced at NAMM 2011. It almost copies the interface and the retro-look of classic CMI II but inside it has a new engine 'Crystal Core'

so there's no more variable clocks that made that brilliant classic sound

[sleat]

@BigLesbowski Why do you say there are no variable clocks "that made that brilliant classic sound" in the 30A? The entirety of the IIx Fairlight schematics are online. Can you please point to where in the IIx circuit diagram the "variable clocks" are? Might you be referring to the cascaded 7497 decade counters on sheet 2, which are quite ordinary digital devices, and divide the 17.1Mhz clock from the CMI02 card to one of 1024 pitches, which are then octave'd? How can a huge FPGA not do that?

[BigLesbowski]

@sleat

I was reffering to the oldschool technology of sample playback by manipulation of sample rate for different pitches - this process can't be virtualized. I'm not a tech nerd so the term 'variable clock' is suitable for me. Since late 80's all the samplers don't use that method anymore - they just resample

The newest CMI 30A has absolutely nothing to do with technology of the classic Fairlight - just the retro casing with retro-GUI & the Crystal Core engine as in the modern Fairlight DAWs

[sleat]

@BigLesbowski Regarding 30A being unrelated to the original CMIs, tell me, who do you think are designing and engineering the 30A, and how? What your're saying is similar to "The Series III has absolutely nothing to do with the technology of the series IIx" which frankly, is absurd. Do you think the 30A is to be some sort of expensive VST plugin? (It's not). Not a betting man, but care to wager on any of your rather wild assertions? Youre right, though, A '30A is very likely to contain a CC1!

[sleat]

@BigLesbowski You bring up the topic playback by changing sample rate. The original CMIs were further unique, in that they didn't decimate the data in time (i.e. skip samples) durinig playback. Interesting that you're not a tech, but you're sure that the technique of vintage sample playback can't be virtualized. Please provide a reference for this assertion! A IIx or III's original digital logic can absolutely be virtualized and I can prove it with freely available data. Analog side, too!

[BigLesbowski]

@sleat The master clock of the new Fairlight Crystal Core engine has a 192 kHz limit. To avoid any decimation you'll need over 384 kHz - if you want to play a 44,1 kHz sample on the highest octave possible using the oldschool technique (the CMI 30A keyboard is 6 octaves long). The samples which are higher than 48kHz will be inevitably decimated, so this Fairlight needs to be as powerful as the newest Pyramix SACD facility.

[BigLesbowski]

BTW, the Fairlight guys stated that the 30A emulates the 'vintage' sound of IIx by applying the 'random / lo-fi'-type effects on its' channels.

@fabiovsroque search the classic Kawai K5000 from the late 90's - 64 adjustable partials in each of the six layers + multitimbrality

[sleat]

@BigLesbowski Nonsense, mate. You claim a Fairlight CC1 can't output even a single channel of the humble Series III. The kHz values you're speaking of sound like interface output sample rates, not master clocks. The clock which runs the CC-1 FPGA is in the hundreds of MHz, i.e. >1000x larger than the numbers you speak of. The max possible F sub S on series III is 3.3mhz / 16 channels or roughly 206khz. Where do you get 192kHz from in the Crystal Core context? Look me up for more explanation.

[sleat]

@BigLesbowski Also, you seem to confuse rendering to a particular output sample rate with decimation. Decimation is throwing away whole bits or samples. There is a huge difference between using every value from the orig. sample, numerically to render, at some output rate, and skipping whole samples at high virtual output pitches. OTOH Output sample rate only affects the possible frequency response of the final signal, not whether input data is thrown away or not. Decimation is the wrong word!

[BigLesbowski]

@sleat Yes, i meant skipping the samples when talking about playing at high pitches. And in case of 192 kHz limit i meant the output sample rate, not the CPU speed. The CC-1 brochure states that 192 is the maximum available here - it's fixed so the polyphonic sound doesn't require several variable voice cards with several audio outputs. The 30A's minimal recording rate is 44,1, but with this 192 output limit only a 22 kHz sample at C3 can be transposed to the maximum without skipping.

[BigLesbowski]

My final verdict:

The 30A is a marketing unit with powerful brains of HD DAW but limited functionality of the CMI II. The fixed HD sound gets polished by some promised 'lo-fi' effects. It's the emulation & not the recreation. Plus you have the sexy package which everybody loves some much & ready to give $11K away to feel like Boris Blank or Trevor Horn. I see the similar situation with Oberheim, who did his $3.000 Son Of Four Voice - looks retro but just basic non-modular shit from the 70's.

[sleat]

@BigLesbowski My final verdict: You are making decrees through your hat, and pretend to be authoritative, yet seem very confused about key aspects of re-creating vintage samplers with good fidelity. You directly attack the difficult, numerically rigorous, and righteous work being done, which from my fairly good vantage point, is in good faith, from your position of relative ignorance, and it is achieving nothing but showing your willingness to make pronouncements on that which you don't grasp.

[sleat]

@BigLesbowski WRT skipping, I must say it again to defeat the extreme density of the material I'm trying to penetrate with unequivocal facts. Transposing a sample (or n samples) upwards and rendering into an output chan. of ANY bandwidth need NOT entail skipping ANY samples. Using all is precisely what the 30A algorithm does. It uses hardware DSP to render to any selected output sampling rate without skipping any samples from the source material, period, and I can prove it whenever you like.

[BigLesbowski]

@sleat Ok, explain me - I'm interested.

[sleat]

@BigLesbowski Sent you message with details. Cheers!

[Tranzphonic]

are there any modern synths that let you draw waveforms similar to the way the fairlight can? help me out youtube!

[sleat]

@Tranzphonic Virtually any sound editor for PC will let you draw waveforms, however, drawing other things, like harmonic evolution, or using drawing to control how the control surface interacts with your sound, or perhaps controlling how two or more sounds are brewed together, might be more creatively rewarding.

[hedphonehed]

Fairlight Forever!!!

[kingofkeyboards]

notice how it sais shipped at "£28,000" haha

[hereliesahero]

i get taught music tech at uni by this guy! he doesnt wear funky shirts anymore though which is a shame

[PorscheMonty]

My favourite piece of hardware ever. I still have the Motorola Exorciser I used to backup the disks :)

[calyx93]

Isn't this the mythical II system with a hard disk/drive? You can see it to the far right of the two floppy drives. Oh - to have this machine!!!

[thelurker25]

thats a funny computer!!!

[sixfeetjenna]

I love how he forgets the name of the gear..."...somebody actually said that into a microphone, and it was stored inside the...eeerh...*looks at logo*...Fairlight!" :)

[egyptianminor]

Along w/ the Synclavier from New england digital and the Emulator , these were the original digital samplers of the first half of the '80s-extremely expensive, the Synclavier being the most, around U$ 200,000.00

[iw2mln]

Its amazing ... so old machine so realistic sounds !!!!! ... i'm user of many programs and syhthesys VSTs but jesus this is more realistic than them ! I ask my self how it is possible ...

[werdlederdle]

I want one

[6dark6wings6]

@werdlederdle ditto too

[jsrfmaster]

Nowadays, sure, you have Logic Pro, Pro Tools, FL, Cubase etc., but can you actually draw or modify a waveform on-screen with a stylus nowadays? Not really! This was incredibly groundbreaking for its time. OK so maybe the disks took days to load, but the quality of the samples are fantastic, even by todays standards.

Without this machine we wouldn't have some of the classic 80s tracks we still remember today.

[ybot1983]

128K ram was it 8bit?

[6dark6wings6]

@ybot1983 all samplers from the early 1980's until about 1986 were usually 8-Bit and I believe the Fairlight to be 8-Bit as well check the vintage synth explorer for the sample bit rate!!!

[FMC19]

Fairlight not only had "the sound" but was extremely futuristic & ahead of its time

The CMI has it's own proprietary OS designed for ONE purpose...making music, and NOT for everything from accounting to games, etc, etc.

and certainly NOT any form of Microsoft Windows...

[Agenor333]

PC, FL studio? Ah Ah Ah, are u joking?

First, nothing sounds like a fairlight, even today. It add a lot of presence to the samples and has an unique organic feel.

It's like having 8 tasty high-end soundcards, each of which is dedicated to one oscillator, itself able to detune its own clocks on the flight!

I'm still awaiting to see these features on any of the modern big ass mux/demux soft/hard synth/samplers that sounds dull in comparaison! Sometimes, few Mb samples sound better than Gb garbage!

[Meowbay]

@Agenor333 I don't think you understand what is technically going on here. The sound of the fairlight in essence consists of its limitations, not its 'better than newer stuff' tricks. In fact, all its 'patents' based on the way it reproduces sound have been copied. It's EASY to recreate the sound of a fairlight nowadays, including its trademark noise. One only has to actually DO it. And that's where you go amiss. People don't do it. That's not the same as "it can't be done".

[6dark6wings6]

nothing will ever be as good as the fairlight but FL Studio is good as a sequencer and for using VSTi's and VST effects on the fly but only the Sytrus Plugin is good and no one has made any vst emulations of old samplers but the EMULATOR 3X or Emulator 2X for windows XP by EMU Systems themselves but no Emulator II sounds :( ...and I agree nobody will ever make anything close to the fairlight and I also am waiting for these feature on new synth/samplers either hardware ones or software ones :)

[trossachs2003]

That was interesting - seems pretty advanced for it's time. Apart from the programming weve got a touch screen and a basic sort of gui before these become commonplace.

[TheGaetanomariadigio]

You don't speack

You play!

[curszondax]

it was amazing for it's time.

i recoded some  stuff back in the 80s. the band i was with at that time, used a fairlight cmi which belonged to producer Trevor horn of the Buggles.

the orchestral string sounds of the fairlight completely blew us away.

for those people that could afford the £60.000 price tag it was well worth it.

a friend of mine sold his old fairlight for £2000.

personally i think he should have kept it, but he needed the money.

[geofferzh79]

these are ace machines yeah a pc running shitty windows fl studio might do something simler to a fairlight but is not fairlight, infact could you buy one of these babys bet there antiques worth tones of £ or $

[Leviathan121]

I like the cameo part by Bob Moog at the end :)

[dvamateur]

Good old days. Now you can do this kind of thing on a PC, but to my taste it looks very cheesy from outside to sit in front of a PC. And don't get me wrong, the sounds from a PC are awesome. It's just too many people have access to it, and it's just not amazing anymore. Fairlight, on the othe hand, it was amazing. And only qualified people could put their hands onn it.

[grundrickt]

... if you know a software on PC whose does FFT resynthesis in real time ... I buy it ..!!

[korgpadude]

@dvamateur i agree with you

[ciolamorta]

@dvamateur Well, you just explained a part of the reason of today's' shitty music.

[Venatt1]

@dvamateur There is just one little little problem, these days you don't find a synth or workstation that comes with this the type orchestra hit like the one at 1:13. Most likely you'll have to sample it from this very video.

[MarkMargo]

this video is from 80´s?

[ComDev2]

Amiga reads these files.

[waveterm]

Amiga does not read these files. Where on earth did you get that idea ? No wait, you´re from outer space.....alien alert.

WT

[ulisespaceprobe]

1987 pet shop boys' album "actually" was made using a fairlight and some sound effects on "aliens" as well

[Amishman35]

That fuzz guitar is used on a bunch of Amiga Protracker MOD songs. I refer to it as the "sorcery-free guitar".

[EnergyEqualsKgxSOL2]

It's amazing isn't it? That was a hell of a lot of money in those days, still is now.

Amazing machine though

[tfal23]

Ahhh, Orch2...

[SpunkyBlunderbus]

Amazing development for the time - and even now really.

Nice to see Dr Moog at the end of the clip too.

How much were Fairlights when they came out, do you know??

[dj2bklyn]

what are you a moron?

jackbanger?

[JackBanger]

That's not a Fairlight...that's Reason 0.1.0

[Salmagundiii]

Great demonstration, thanks for posting.

[synthisist]

I remember going to Syco Systems to see one. I took a friend, but she was more interested in the pianos, she can actually play excently. I can just about play more or less, and I love synths... This was right next to Paddington Station - if I remember well. Is the person who started Syco Systems Peter Gabriel's cousin, who was very interested in the Fairlight?

Are they still as good as or better then the Korg Oasys, Open Labs, Waldorfs, Kurzweils, etc? Perhaps! The other one is the Synclavia!

[Stephidarling]

Hi,

This is a great clip, is there any chance I could gety a copy of it from you as I want to show it to my students at Uni.

Cheers

Stephi

[Keijz74]

Hello Stephi. I advise you to install RealPlayer on your PC, that will give a "Download this video" bar on top of the video display, which does exactly what it's called.

[Keijz74]

Hi Stephi,

did it work out?

Marc

[kisucat]

Amazing

[dj2bklyn]

so when are we going to see the virtual fairlight?

its taking way too long!

[bondbug73]

I have the complete sample library of the CMI2x. It has something like 22 banks and 300+ samples on it. You can still buy it from the states. Cost's about £20+. Much cheaper than the real thing.

[LuxX63]

Countach shot right!This monster was capable to do very perfect crystals sampler,its used even now from artists!But how can be this?We have 32bit systems,this monster was 8bit...Its a matter of quality of that machine...not a merely APPLE2 like,but a professional machine for the music.How much cost that?Can I have one?

[omarhashim]

hey i know this guy .. his name is Kendal Wrightson. He sold me high-end gear at Syco Systems in London back in 1988. Wow .. here he is on youtube.

[countach]

I love the Fairlight. Jean Michel Jarre's ZoolooK used it vastly.

[053bss]

So did Kate Bush on 'The Dreaming,' a superbly dark album :-)

[logandrummer23]

Darren hayes new album has this rad sequencer on it! its on his myspace page!!

[tatithesentinel]

Awesome! I just love Fairlight CMI,glad that Alan Parsons,Jean Michel Jarre,Mike Oldfield and Peter Gabriel used to play it!

[glennwinstanley]

THE ORCH 2 SOUND!!! COOL

[skaneverdies]

So sick.

[MarcS4R]

wow

[earthacademy]

Jean-Michel Jarre told me it was one of his favourite things; to draw the waveform on the fairlight (ooh, name dropper - ED)

[alanisbad]

I have an "old" akai s2800 sampler and was beginning to think it was obsolete. Watching this clip I'm inspired. See what happens tommorrow

[totaltwit]

thanks for this, things we mere mortals could not get to see at the time.

[douro20]

they cost $25,000 when they came out...rightly so.

[flyp1001]

That was the basic model. The better ones went up to $100,000

[Downmaster]

Now if you consider inflation... costs as much as a small family home.

[CedrickSpangler]

kendall wrightson is an absalute legend....