Close up shots of the Fairlight CMI

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Cool pictures of the Fairlight

The 2011 NAMM Show saw the introduction of the Fairlight CMI 30th Anniversary Edition – a new digital keyboard workstation, inspired by the classic Fairlight CMI.

In its initial form, the CMI-30A replicates the functionality of the original Series II and Series III CMIs. The user experience is quite different from that of a conventional PC and mouse and like the original is based on a light pen which interacts directly with a screen.

The iPod touch communicates with the Fairlight using MIDI. This means that you’ll should be able to use a variety of applications that run on iOS to control the Fairlight.

Orders are now being taken for the $20,000 production units. While this is out of our price range, it’s clear that an amazing amount of care and craft is going into the creation of the new Fairlight – and you can expect to see elements of it show up in other products. Vogel has already announced an iOS Fairlight, which will put much of the power of the original Fairlight onto an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

Functional Specification
The original Fairlight CMIs were renowned not only for their superb sound quality, but also their elegant and intuitive software.
The CMI-30A combines the very best features of the Fairlight series IIX and the III, with significant new developments.
Sound quality is continuously variable using the unique “goodness” control which spans from Series I, II, or III quality to “best possible” 36-bit floating point.

The base 30A system offers 24 tracks and channels,which will be optionally expandable to 200 (details to be confirmed). Software upgrades will also be available to provide full post-production, mixing and recording functionality.

Software functionality is being finalised at the time of publication. Please refer to this site for updates as development continues towards the release version, but here is a general outline.

Waveform 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.

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