Via Failedmuso:
Any electronic musician who was around in the 80's is undoubtedly aware of the Fairlight CMI. Along with the New England Digital Synclavier, it was the premier sampling workstation back in the day and carried a price tag to boot - so much so that owning a Fairlight became a status symbol of sorts. You knew that if a musician had one of these in their studio that they were selling a hell of a lot of records. As sampling technology became cheaper however, the Fairlight CMI died out since these new machines could do much more than the Fairlight for a fraction of the cost.
Imagine the surprise, then, when a few days ago Fairlight founder Peter Vogel made a posting on the Fairlight CMI Yahoo Group thinking aloud about the possibility of a computer-based Fairlight IV:
"There have been discussions from time to time about replicating the CMI using a software emulation. These efforts will have limited success because the "Fairlight sound" relies on the peculiarities of the hardware used in the original design.
In the days when I was the designing CMI hardware, my greatest challenge was to minimise the distortions and artifacts that were inherent aspects of the hardware available at that time. In effect, we struggled to make the Fairlight sound less "Fairlight". So the intimate details of what makes a Fairlight sound like a Fairlight are indelibly etched in my brain.
When Fairlight brought out the Crystal Core Engine last year, my imagination ran wild. Here was a tiny board with enormous capabilities that could be configured to faithfully reproduce the CMI hardware in its FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). Every bit of the 1980's CMI hardware, the essence of its sound, could be reconstructed faithfully in digital hardware form.
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I also recently discovered that ALL the IP relating to the original Fairlight CMI including all of the hardware and filter designs, sample libraries etc are still retained by Fairlight.au in Sydney.
So I have been wondering if it would be worthwhile to develop a faithful reproduction of the CMI on the "Virtual Hardware" of the CC-1?
This would perform identically to the original CMI series II or III, but run on a PC fitted with the Crystal Core card. The MIDI input would come directly into the CC-1 so there would be no problem of latency introduced by the PC.
At this stage I'd like to "feel out" the market to assess the level of interest in this project and whether the significant investment in R&D will be worthwhile.
The Fairlight Series IV (CC-1, I/O box and software) might be sold for approximately $US5,000.00.
So my question is, what do you think of this idea? How would a Fairlight CMI at this sort of price be received by the market? Who would the buyers be and how would I tap into them?
What do you think?
Peter Vogel"
My personal thought is that he must be out of his mind to think people are going to pay $5000 for a software sampler on a card hybrid in this day and age (especially with the possibility of a global recession looming...). You can pick up decent hardware samplers on Ebay now for a few hundred bucks... about the same as the high end software samplers. It would really have to bring something ground breaking and extraordinary to the table to fetch this kind of price and just the 'Fairlight sound' isn't going to do it. Am I being overly critical or does this just seem like a crazy idea?
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11 comments:
You are dead on. Considering how saturated with how saturated the market is with samplers, most of which come in waaaaay under $2000, this would have to revolutionize the music industry so much that the creative decisions would have to be done for you.
However, if, as you put it, musicians with these are "selling a hell of a lot of records," maybe buying one will ensure just that. ;)
i have to agree.
BTW, what exactly made the Fairlight sound so special??? the fact that it was a bit lo-fi???
I was wondering about that myself. Yeah, the lofi bit is kind of neat, but it also sounds horrifically dated. If people want lofi, there are a million ways to achieve it without dropping $5000...
Although I am often out of my mind, I think you're being a bit hasty on this occasion.
I am not proposing another software sampler. If you have a look at the architecture of the Crystal Core card you will see that a synthesiser running on this engine can dramtically outperform anything running on a Pentium-class processor, see:
http://www.fairlightau.com/Downloads/Public/Crystal Core Technology White Paper October 2006.pdf
So the question I'm pondering is how to put this crazy amount of horsepower to work.
Peter Vogel
Holy crap! The man himself! I must admit I lack the technological IQ to make sense of the White Paper you posted, but from the post you made on the Yahoo group, I got the impression you were seeking merely to reproduce the sound of the Series II and III. Are you actually looking at creating something far beyond that... sort of a modern equivalent of how revolutionary the Fairlight was when it was at its peak?
PS - Being out of your mind is not a bad thing at all... many would actually mark it as a prerequisite for creativity. ; )
After reading the white paper in full, I think I have a greater idea of the potential. Still, I think the $5000 price point is going to be a problem...
unfortunatly in these days first impressions count.
NAME -> LOOK -> PRICE -> Possibilities....
Look at the linndrum around 1500$.
if they would charge 2500 or even 2000 it would fail.
If you want to succeed in these days you should consider the semi-pro music market with prices not higher than 2000. Some of these people do buy a 3000 converter but that's not something that they do each year.
Getting the fairlight sound + extra stuff for Around 1500-2000 might be a better option but if it can be doable is something else.
If it has a 2500$ tag i might safe for it.
But 5000 this machine might be a new peter gabriel instrument and that's it.
The new mellotrons, look cool etc but the price ... let's use samples 97% of the pottential buyers would say.
There have been excellent great synths but failed due to high cost.
If there would be a PCI card with a stereo (old skool) and stereo (new sound) output and a connection socket for an external device for multiple outputs (for extra price) + midi in that would be great and all that many people need.
What you do with the software is your imagination and also your GO BUY IT ticket once people find it just right to pay.
Yeah, I think an important question is who Vogel sees the audience for this being. If they're looking at selling a relatively small number to high end production facilities, it might work, although it will have to offer more than just processing power for most places to justify the learning curve of an entirely new platform.
What made the Series III great was the separate DAC/filter per voice, and what made the series II cool was the variety of synthesis functions and those warm Curtis filters. Are you proposing to have a separate output per voice (DAC, analog filter/VCA)? If not, this idea has no interest, especially not at that price point.
(I worked for Fairlight at Village Recorders, and owned a Series III)
I think it could be a great idea , personally i think if it could mimik the real fairlight in character 100% and give ' that ' character then it has huge potential.I am an intense samplist . ive tried most and slowly we have gone from fairlights and emulators and lovely chunkyness and character to all to perfect software sampler , i did some a/b the otehr day with an ensoniq asr10 and an akai z4 and kontakt and its frightening.Its really frightening.The whole audio thing is being dumbed down to ' pure ' and perfect and it sounds terrible.I just want character , the ability to tweak sample start time and loop times real time , some modulation matrix , 3 lfo , some adsr and a NICE filter.......but With some character also from the outputs.$5000 is a push and for that money you had better make it possible to load wavs , colour them , convolve them , cross morph them , mytate them and do all the old ensoniq tricks of realtime modulation of sample start and loop points in rtealtime.It needs to granulate also and do some modern techniques....have the fairlight sound and glitch but the reaktor traveliser or particle synth ability to scan samples and do stuff like this.That would sell a bundle......i hope you go for it . . .to be frank i think people will love it.The ojnes who wont get it are the people just into software , hardcore sampler users will love it , especially if it sounds like the fairlights of old do.!There Is huge potential for that sound and character in modern music ,i think actually the fairlight character is more fitting to modern music than people realise.Weve reached a point of blandness with all this software - maybe you can bring back the artifacts that make music so beautifull.A diamond needs flaws so it can refract colours.....
i think, besides having a choice btwn pure and "original" sound i.e. extremely well emulated analog filtering of SSM and CEM (series II and III respectively), analog VCA saturations, and lofi-ieness of converters n PCM engine..
this new machine, for anything over 2.5 - 3K, should offer significantly advanced, deep synthesis capabilities (in real-time of course) compared to most on the market, vsti included.
to put it simply, i'd buy it straight away if it were a bug-free Neuron meets KYMA, plus the choice of accurate modelling of lofi/analog parts of original Fairlight "husky" tone that i adore.
that being said, i'm yet to hear anything in digital modelling realm thats accurate enough to replace analog filtering and saturated VCA stage. and making a hybrid digi/analog instrument today, as much as id like it, just doesnt sound viable. well, for 3K... 16 voices w analog filtering.. maybe, (waldorf pulled it off) but its a stretch.
in any case, if Fairlight goes completely nutz :) and chooses hybrid route, whatever you guys do, please DON'T go back to digital after the analog phase.. it needs to be made the classic way i.e. DAC per voice->FILTER->VCA->Indiv. or Summed OUT. (unlike Q+, Polyevolver etc)
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