Fairlight Emulation?

Retro · Post by **Retro** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 4:46 am

Hi folks, long time no chat!

Hope all you PZ regulars are keeping well. I've been buried up to my eyeballs in work, but as a result of it all I can happily report that CW gear can certainly pay for itself many times over once you know how to use it! Keep that in mind, skeptics!

Anyway, the point of this message... As an ex-Fairlight CMI user I was wondering if anyone has attempted (or is thinking of attempting) to emulate its sound and functions on the Pulsar/Scope. I understand Fairlight users are probably few and far between (and you probably have to be old like me to remember them!) but those of you who have used the CMI II will recall what a unique "character" it had. I've not seen or heard anything like it in the virtual realm, and was thinking it might be a worthwhile project for some switched-on programmer out there.

Is this even possible or have I been spending too many late nights in front of a mixing desk? Feel free to be honest

Cheers,
Retro

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 7:53 am

The Fairlight is a sampler.
What is it to emulate?
The 8 or 12 bit sound?
There are plug ins that fix that.
I really don't see the point.

Eurocide · Post by **Eurocide** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 8:00 am

I disagree that a sampler ist just a sampler.
Each sampler has its own sound characteristics due to the D/A coverters and filters used.
(That is one reason why I don't like the STS sound.)

The Fairlight II had some kind of "smoky" sound which I didn't hear emulated with modern equipment.
Just adding a 8bit crusher doesn't make the job. So a real emulation/modelling of the singal is necessary.
And I would love it, too.

EC-HQ.

spiderman · Post by **spiderman** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 9:13 am

And what about a synclavier emulator ?

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 11:25 am

Ask and thou shalt receive:
http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... forum=15&1

kimgr · Post by **kimgr** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 2:46 pm

I was actually thinking of creating an Ensoniq Mirage for SFP, but if anyone has a CMI-IIx collecting dust in the corner, I'd be happy to give it a try... ;^)
(Although it'll be much harder than the Mirage.)

... If you can't understand why some of us would want emulations of 8bit samplers, chances are you never worked with a CMI-II ?

Kim.

kimgr · Post by **kimgr** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 2:52 pm

More info @:
http://www.ghservices.com/gregh/fairligh/
(The spelling error isn't mine

Kim.

remixme · Post by **remixme** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 3:46 pm

Okay, the fairlight was made before I was born, but I can sort of see the charm it had, just think people may look back on the pulsar cards with the exact same charm, in a decade or two.

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 4:49 pm

I have'nt used a Fairlight, that is correct.
A friend of mine in Sweden has actually bought one.
Maybe i should go home and see what the fuzz is about.

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 6:24 pm

I used a Fairlight Mark I (blimey) which as I recall had 8 bit mono sampling and I think about 8 seconds of sample time and cost £20,000! I've been looking for Fairlight samples for ages but can't find any free or cheap. Contrary to what jupiter8 said about samplers it had (has) a very distinctive sound which is very easy to spot on records (of very rich musos - Mike Oldfield, Peter Gabriel, Trevor Horn etc. Kate Bush still uses hers). If a sampler is just a sampler then the Mellotron was just a tape playback device (which it was but how distinctive is that sound?). So yes I'd be quite happy to see a Fairlight emulation (but please not that Page R sequencer or whatever it was called - made a TB-303 seem easy to program).

TonyR

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: TonyR on 2002-07-26 19:25 ]</font>

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Sat Jul 27, 2002 5:56 am

Well i do admit that you can spot a Fairlight sample a mile away but i think that has more to do with with the fact it came with a set of really uniqe samples then anything else.

Damn that was a long sentence.

EarlyFirst · Post by **EarlyFirst** » Sat Jul 27, 2002 6:25 am

http://www.kidnepro.com/KN/aif_wav/aif_wav_synths.html

your welcome

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Sat Jul 27, 2002 9:28 am

A good cult movie with a Fairlight soundtrack is Liquid Sky: a story about aliens, sex and heroin.

Retro · Post by **Retro** » Sat Jul 27, 2002 9:16 pm

Sounds like a great one for the kiddies

Thanks for the link to the Fairlight Nostalgia mod... Had a quick play with the Aaah sample. Will be interesting to see what it does when I plug some other old samples into it.

I should clarify that what I'm looking for is an emulator, not a sample bank. Contrary to popular belief the Fairlight was first and foremost a synth, with sampling capability added on. The synth section (I think it was page 4) allowed you to draw a number of harmonic profiles and render them into a waveform. This often produced rubbish but once you got a feel for how it worked you could make some interesting noises with it. I'd like to see this emulated, but I agree with Tony - leave the dodgy page R sequencer out of it!

As for the sampling section, the Fairlight certainly has a unique library of samples, but the reason they sound so unique is because the Fairlight adds its own character to them. Once you dump them into a modern sampler, they lose a lot of that CMI flavour. This would probably be the trickiest aspect of the Fairlight to emulate, but judging by the quality of recent virtual synths, I dare not say impossible.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sun Jul 28, 2002 5:09 pm

hi Retro,

I remember a program called MusicWorks on the old Macs doing 8 bit additive synthesis.
Maybe worth checking it out as that stuff is generally only a few bucks today.
It certainly had some character, though I wouldn't dare to compare it to a Fairlight.
But those Macs were expensive in those days and this was leading edge technology, too.

cheers, Tom

j9k · Post by **j9k** » Mon Jul 29, 2002 11:21 pm

there is one on ebay right now

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... =896367050

j9k

borg · Post by **borg** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 10:17 am

could someone compare the fairlight to the Emax II? would be interesting to know what the value of this dust gathering device of mine is... i'm told that when it was first released it was also one of the top pieces of gear to have, which i find hard to believe now

Post by **garyb** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 11:34 am

if the old drives actually work on that emax,it's worth a little $.(ebay)

it's got a cool sound too.more bit depth is not always better and newer is not always better either.

good sounds are always good....

Neutron · Post by **Neutron** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 2:21 pm

The fairlight is not "just a sampler" it had a very powerful synthesis engine, and could even do resynthesis.

for example there were 128 envelopes across the spectrum each with 128 points.

It would be a pretty cool thing to get, but since there is so much dedicated hardware in it i do not think it could easilly be done in DSP. even if there was enough DSP power.

emulating output expansion and filtering of various old d/a converters would be something interesting to try though.

Retro · Post by **Retro** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 10:43 pm

Here's some interesting news:

One of my contacts put me in touch with a guy at Fairlight who said one of their programmers has just started working on a CMI emulation in his spare time. He couldn't give me any technical details, but apparently there have been a lot of enquiries about the CMI over the past few months. Seeing Fairlight's latest gear uses CW DSP boards, I'm quietly hoping the emulation will work with SFP. I know it's a long shot though!

While Fairlight no longer officially supports the machine, many of their staff members still own CMI's and perform modifications and upgrades to them at home. I'll keep you guys informed as I hear further news. In the meantime, PLEASE don't call Fairlight about this issue! They are very busy people and Fairlight as a company are not interested in developing such a product.