While the site of a large modular synth, a Roland TB 303 or a Fairlight CMI III is titillation enough for most synth freaks, the 2010 APC calendar goes a step further.

Here’s what APC’s Simon Iddol has to say about their 2010 calendar:

The calendar itself is a limited edition (500 copies) A3 sized wall calendar featuring legendary synths like Fairlight CMI III, Roland TB 303, PPG Wave, EMS AKS or Roland Jupiter 8.

Our aim is to create a calendar like this in every year and to do something for the music world like the Pirelli calendar for the car world.

If every garage has a hot chick VS cool cars calendar, than every studio needs our calendar.

The model is a world famous Hungarian striptease dancer and model Dorothy Black.

The politically correct side of me thinks that they should have balanced out the gear photos featuring the “world famous Hungarian striptease dancer” with some shots with a hunky naked guy – but photos of naked guys with monster synths would probably kill the vintage synth resale market on eBay forever.

The calendars are $30 via PayPal. Details at the APC site.

SFW preview (that’s probably NSFW) here.

Unfortunately, the projected price for the new Fairlight CMI 30A is expected to be approximately US $17,000 and the additional music keyboard option US $2,000.

Here’s what that $17,000 will buy you:

Description:

The CMI-30A will utilise the immense power of the latest Fairlight Crystal Core media processor (CC-1). It will not only faithfully reproduce the original sound but go well beyond the original capabilities in a dramatically smaller and more reliable physical form.

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 classic retro green on black graphics. 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, with a number of significant new 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 from any source, such as WAV files, can be imported and played with the classic Fairlight sound.

The Fairlight 30A will have sixteen analogue and one digital (MADI) output. However, unlike the earlier CMIs, any one physical output could offer dozens of voices.

All the original Fairlight sound libraries from both the CMI-IIX and the III will be included, plus a huge selection of samples collected from the past 30 years.

CMI-30A Provisional Hardware Specifications
(as at 13 August 2009)

System Components:

• Mainframe — free-standing and adaptable to rack mount, includes 750GB SATA hard drive, DVD R/W drive, USB ports.
• Monitor — 15″ with lightpen (passive stylus)
• Alpha-numeric keyboard
• Music keyboard — weighted, velocity sensitive, MIDI, 6 octaves, 73 keys with pitchbend.

Outputs:

• 24 channels analogue, balanced XLR
• 2 channels analogue monitor mix, balanced XLR
• Dynamic range > 100 dB (unweighted)
• THD < 0.002% @ 1kHz, -1dBFS
• Frequency response +0.05 / -0.15 dB, 20 Hz – 20kHz
• Digital output: 64 channel BNC MADI

Inputs:

• 2 balanced mic inputs XLR
• Sample rate: 44.1, 48, 96, 192 kHz
• THD < 0.002% @ 1kHz, -1dBFS
• Frequency response +0.05 / -0.15 dB, 20 Hz – 20kHz
• SPDIF

Other I/O

• MIDI, MIDI Timecode input and output 5 pin DIN
• LTC (Linear time code) input and output
• Word clock (for synchronisation to external sources)

Provisional Software Specification

The original Fairlight CMIs were renowned for not only their superb sound quality, but also their elegant and intuitive software.

The CMI-30A will combine the very best features of the Fairlight series IIX and the III, with considerable new developments. The “page”, and “sub-page” system will be retained, allowing users to easily navigate around a particular set of functions, while “help pages”, effectively the relevant sections of the user manual, will be only a key-click away.

Sound acquisition, whether through sampling or importing, will be as easy as ever, with playback quality switchable between series I, II, or III quality, or “best possible” 36-bit floating point.

Page DWaveform drawing and FFT sound generation will be available, with the ease of use of the earlier systems. There will also be the ever popular “Page D” display page, expanded to vary the viewpoint (such as rotation) of a 3D sample.Many existing CMI users have requested modulation and live performance controls be given particular consideration. Accordingly, there will be provisions to patch many sources to a variety of functions. Sources will include hand-drawable ADSR generators, sample and holds, LFOs, noise and keyboard following will be patchable to any parameter, such as pitch, filter frequency, filter resonance and many more. It will also be possible to cross modulate samples (ring modulation). Of course, external MIDI control of these parameters will also be available.

The classic “Page R” sequencer will be retained, plus some valuable upgrades such as increasing the number of tracks to 80 (to be confirmed).

The CC-1 can perform very complex algorithms and lots of them, with almost no latency. So yes, we are modelling the quirky hardware of the CMI. The sound of each CMI was subtly different, due to their analogue bits, so it won’t sound exactly like any one CMI, but lined up with a few CMIs you won’t be able to tell the difference.

The sound will be user selectable, to be like a series I,II,IIX, III etc. Or you can dig deeper and make it sound like nothing else.

One of the many nice things about the CC-1 is that it has no inherent bit width. “Normal” processors generally offer say 32 or 64 bit operations, where as the CC-1 can be configured to any number of bits. So if something works most effectively as 33 bits, so be it. And the bit widths can be mixed within the one signal path.

The “n” polyphony is achieved by “n” individual circuits set up in the FPGA working in parallel, as opposed to the software emulation model which is necessarily sequential. The channels can have different configurations is required; in any case there will be subtle coefficient differences between channels to reproduce the individuality of outputs that has often been cited.

How much polyphony? All we know at this time are the extremes – it will certainly be at least 16 like the original Series III but given that the Crystal Core when used in a DAW delivers up to 230 channels of mixing ALL of which have full processing (8 bands EQ, 3 stages Dynamics), you can safely assume a lot more than 16 will be possible.

Re pricing: yet to be finalised, but the choice to go with the CC-1 does come at a price. Although the CC-1 is not sold currently as a separate card (it would be no use without the software etc that goes with it), the retail price would be around the $5,000 mark. So you can do the sums, the CMI 30-A is not going to be price competitive with the mass-market synths which abound.

In case you’re wondering why anyone would get excited about a $5,000 recreation of a 25 year old synth, check out this video of Herbie Hancock jamming on the Fairlight CMI.

via Peter Vogel in the Fairlight User Group, via Failed Muso.

Fairlight co-founder Peter Vogel has put up a teaser about a 30th anniversary limited edition version of the Fairlight CMI, a pioneering polyphonic sampling instrument.

Vogel calls this image a pre-production mockup for the Fairlight CMI Series 30A.

If you’ve got more info or other thoughts on the Fairlight CMI Series 30a, leave a comment below!

More info, via Peter Vogel on the Fairlight Yahoo Group (registration required):

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.

To fully appreciate the astounding potential of the CC-1, download the brochure here:

CC-1 Brochure

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

via failedmuso

In this vintage video, from 1983, Herbie Hancock jams on the Fairlight Computer Music Instrument as Quincy Jones looks on.

I had been looking for a t-shirt with the old (Series I/II(x) era) Fairlight logo for a while, but couldn’t find any. I found shirts with Roland, PPG, etc. logos, but no Fairlight. So, I made my own.

OK – you’ve probably never played a Fairlight CMI, let alone owned one, since they listed for £18,000 when they were introduced. The t-shirts are still pretty cool, though.

via RetroThing

This is a pretty cheesy interview with Keith Emerson from 1983 about his use of the Fairlight CMI. 

Lots of very dated hairstyles and even worse predictions for the future of music.