This video captures a short presentation by Peter Vogel Instruments’ Graeme Renaud on the Fairlight CMI 30-A.
While the focus is on the new CMI 30-A, Renaud also discusses some of the history of the Fairlight CMI and how the technology of the time affected the instruments sound.
There’s no shortage of Fairlight people talking about the 30-A on the web. What’s been missing since the 30-A’s introduction is a solid demonstration of how it sounds. If Fairlight’s implementation of convolution is “revolutionary” and much beloved by sound designers in film and television, let us hear examples. In the few recorded demos – notably with Thomas Dolby – the 30-A has relied on a loop from “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and JJ’s “shoot the moose” stab to demonstrate that in the past sampling was astoundingly revolutionary. And if sampling is again with the 30-A then Fairlight needs to try harder to explain why.
That demo question bugs me, too. Let’s hear a couple of people wring the bugger out with some NEW orchestrated madness that really reveals its muscle. Show us WHY we should be drooling over the prospect. I’m using Logic, so I can drop in any sounds I care to use, but orch-hits from 80s records aren’t among them. Girlfriend, PLEASE! A Fairlight is one of the great tribal elders. Let’s hear it speak.
Convolution? Metasynth has had it for more than a decade. What is Fairlight doing that’s so special?
The worst “demo” ever…..it was a 6.57min lecture. Play the damn thing will yah !!!
yeah but the sounds he described were incredible..
Some interesting history – but I’d second Steveo & Scott’s comments on wanting to see and hear more about what this thing can do.
Most synthesists probably see the new Fairlight CMI-30A as an expensive ‘retro’ synth – sort of the rich guy’s version of the Korg MS-20 mini.
Is it more than that? It’s not really clear from their marketing videos. And, if Fairlight does have new create synth applications, it seems like they should be focusing on those things and also putting them into their iPad app or into desktop apps, so that more musicians could use them.
Great if that fairchild in the background is real / vintage
$25,000 can easily buy between three and five decently appointed project studios. Although I feel sure that a certain number of people will buy these happily, how many studios are now Synclavier-based? How many are ProTools-only? The wide diversity of gear now means that you can mix-&-match easily and less expensively, with no sacrifice of sound quality. How many people will want to set that aside and completely rely on just one mega-system? Its not a question of quality; oi, its a fookin’ Fairlight in a modern suit and clearly ready for showtime. My interest lies more in how it will sell over time when the financial and production capability landscape has changed so radically since Series I & II.
The new Fairlight would probably make a lot of sense for heavy-duty CMI users, like Peter Gabriel or Jan Hammer, who have a bunch of time invested in the system.
For anybody without that investment of time, though, why would you want to get a Fairlight now?
What he talks, sound possible with Absynth 5. Im not sure if it will work 100% the same way but you can draw all enveopes and waveform too!
I echo the comments above. What passes nowadays for ‘demonstration’ videos is a guy sitting in front of some expensive wundermaschine – TALKING about it.
6.57 min demo and he played that great instrument just 5 sec… Disappointed!
holy shit, this is silly.
(@ 4:00) Convolution synthesis has been around for some time as a retooling of convo reverb.
There is a mass of parameters that are just hidden in the box when you do convolution reverb.
Usually you have some kind of filtering on the reverb tail, and maybe stretching, but that’s it.
So it’s surely open for new applications where you give users interfaces for more detailed manipulation.
I’m mos def’ly gonna check out how they present that.
Will I be able to use my voice files, page c files, and page r files that I have saved on 8 inch floppies?