Fairlight’s Peter Vogel shared more information on his 30th Anniversary Fairlight CMI 30A with Sonic State. From the sound of it, the new Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument is going to be expensive, hard to get and awesome.

According to Vogel:

The 30A will look like and perform like the original CMI, although the mainframe will be much lighter for portability. The look and feel of the user interface will also be similar to the original, with retro green on black graphics like the original. A replica of the original music keyboard will also be available as an option, or you can use your own MIDI keyboard.

The software will combine the very best of the early series II and III features, with a multitude of additional features. Sound quality of 8-bit, 16-bit, or “best quality” 36-bit floating point can be selected, and existing Fairlight users can import their entire sample libraries. Even better, non-Fairlight sounds, such as WAV files can be imported and specified to play back with the classic Fairlight sound.

Internally it will be all digital, but will use FPGA technology to provide “virtual hardware” emulation which will exactly model the original analog circuitry. There will be 16 analog outputs and a stereo sampling input.

Vogel plans a run of 100 units, which he expects to be available next year. Pricing is to be determined, but Vogel does not expect the cost to be competitive with other samplers.