Failed Muso

More Improved Kontakt Libraries from Hollow Sun

Hollow Sun Newtron Bomb

Blimey, when Steve get’s stuck in, he gets stuck in! Hot on the heels of the String Synth package comes updated Kontakt versions of two of my all time favourite HS libraries, Vintage Samplers & Newtron Bomb.

Hollow Sun Vintage Samplers

Vintage Samplers

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Tron Boys Choir

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Tron Brass

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Tron Choir

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Tron Flute

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Tron Mixed Strings

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Tron Violins

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Tron Watcher

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Featuring the same seamlessly looped samples as the originals, Steve has created some really great programs in Kontakt, utilising it’s scripting features and powerful FX. These samples have never sounded better!

But don’t just take my word for it, try listening to the demos and then go buy these babies at next to nothing prices

Vintage Samplers $25

Newtron Bomb $60

Get your hands on Fairlight Sounds for your Reason rack NOW!

As mentioned in my last post, Patrick Fridh was planning on releasing a free Refill to demo his Fairlight Legacy Refill Library as well as add to the already extensive package that the Legacy Refill provides. This Refill is called Fairlight Supremacy and is available NOW!!

This contains a good selection of demo patches as well as showing you what you would get for your £45/$69 when you buy the Legacy Refill. There are also so brilliant and superb Subtractor patches and a demo song or two. I’ll let Patrick explain himself….

The Fairlight CMI Legacy Refill series

Refills (sound banks) made with and for Propellerhead’s Reason software, version 4 and up.
Documentation update: Version 0.1 alpha. Published March 23, 2010

The Fairlight CMI Legacy Refill

The Fairlight CMI Legacy refill contains 644 Mb of samples recorded by Jerker Lindborg and Patrick Fridh. We have sampled a mint condition Fairlight CMI IIx workstation from the early 1980s. The refill attempts to fully recreate the working environment given every Fairlight CMI user during the days of the early 80s.
Inspiration for the sound design comes from all the classic pop records of those days that were made with the legendary Fairlight CMI. We have been inspired by the likes of China Crisis, The Art Of Noise, Scritti Politti, Howard Jones (who actually used a Fairlight III system), Peter Gabriel and many others. Additional sampling has been made recording live audio material such as flute, recorder flute, a friend singing “La!” and pristine recordings of Yamaha DX7, Roland JX8P, Roland TR-808, Roland TR-909, Casio VZ-8m, Sequential Tom and LinnDrum. These are instruments we feel add to the true 80’s. Making combinations of these sounds together with the Fairlight also creates new sounds way beyond that.

Patch sound development for the Legacy refill was done by Patrick Fridh aka bitley™ with additional help from Jörgen Larsson aka DrLoop representing his music project ThinkingMachine.

The Fairlight CMI Supremacy Refill

The Fairlight CMI Supremacy refill contains an additional 50 Mb sample library also for users of the Fairlight CMI Legacy refill. These new samples do not only true to their source demonstrate the Legacy refill; they also add on to that refill. In addition, all Reason patches have been updated. It is therefore strongly recommended that all users of the Fairlight CMI Legacy refill also downloads the free Supremacy refill.
Naturally, for users of the Supremacy refill, it is strongly recommended purchasing the full Fairlight CMI Legacy refill in order to get complete access to all of the sounds, but this refill is also a fully operational free demo refill.

One thing this refill will do is convince you to buy the Legacy library.

So, you want the link do you?? LOL

Ok, here it is… fill your boots

Fairlight Supremacy Free Refill

More news on The Fairlight Legacy Refill!

Ok, as some of you may have seen, the creator of the Fairlight Legacy Refill posted a comment on my original post about his work and so I took the opportunity to get in touch

Patrick Fridh is a very nice man indeed and we had a brief conversation about his plans for the library. Coming soon will be a supplementary Refill called Fairlight Supremacy, which will contain, in the main, more programs for the Legacy collection of samples, plus a bunch of demo patches for you to try, and there are plans to keep updating this particular refill, including the addition of user patches, so that the overall life of your Fairlight refill will be much longer and much more fulfilling.

After this conversation, Patrick very kindly let me have a play with some patches and I have to say that on these initial first plays, this stuff is top notch!!

And after flicking through a list of all the stuff available in the Legacy collection, I can barely contain myself. This has to be bought and bought VERY soon!!

Regular readers of this blog will know my obsession on all things Fairlight. You will know how long I have craved for a properly representative library to appear. You will know that until now, all we have had are some collections of sounds on a couple of VSTi’s (Cult Sampler & Nostalgia) and the infamous Digital Domain/Pro-Rec audio sample CD. Save for a few patches here and there, that’s all we’ve ever really had. But this library, and the 5 months of work Patrick has put in, is the answer to all our Fairlight geeky prayers!

At last, we have a definitive collection of a world changing library & instrument. The Fairlight isn’t just a primitive synth/sampler. It is a classic instrument, equal to a Stradivarius or Bosendorfer. Sure, there are other violins, other piano’s, but some are so unique, so individual and so prized. The Fairlight is such an instrument. It is rare. It’s sounds cannot and have not ever been matched. Yes, modern technology can give us more bits and MHz, but the beauty of the Fairlight wasn’t just it’s 8 bit grunginess, or the happy accidents of software programming. It was also in what it did and when it did it when nothing else was doing that.

No sample library will EVER fully capture the true sound and essence of the Fairlight, but trust me on this one thing: Patrick Fridh’s Fairlight Legacy Library is the closest anyone has ever come. The only thing that will beat it is Peter Vogel’s forthcoming Fairlight CMI 30A. But that is $18,935 more expensive than this library

Here is a new video, posted by Patrick, with more demos and some background info. It is my intention that upon acquisition of this library, I will run a series of features and articles on it right here on this blog, so bookmark me now! Buy the Refill now HERE.

New Fairlight Instruments website

Hot on the heels of the press release, Peter Vogel has now brought the full website online with much more detail about the forthcoming Fairlight CMI 30A.

Fairlight Instruments

I’m very honoured to have a link on the links page of the site, directing visitors to my Spotify playlist, “All The Fun Of The Fairlight”

Sadly, I don’t think it will warrant me a discount or review version of the new machine! LOL

And that brings me on to the price….

$17,000 for the System & Monitor plus $2,000 for the keyboard. Prices are still an estimate and Peter has always maintained that the CMI 30A was never intended to be price competitive.

So, much like back in 1984, the Fairlight will remain out of the reach of the vast majority of us, which is sad. However, my eternally optimistic side is thinking that this may be the start of something that may lead to other Fairlight things, like really good sample libraries.

Fingers crossed! ;o)

More in depth blogging on this matter to follow soon )

And yet more details about the Fairlight CMI 30A

This email received this morning in to the Fairlight Yahoo Users Group from Peter Vogel…

We’re hoping to have some more detailed specs this week, however I can answer a few questions in general terms.

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.

Peter

More news on the Fairlight CMI 30A Limited Edition

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. All I/O will also be available digitally through MADI.

For an idea of the performance to expect, see attached description of the Crystal Core engine which the new CMI use.

We are builing a run of only 100 units, which will be available early next year. Price is to finalised, it is not intended to be cost competitive with other samplers, but of course much cheaper than the original CMI, even adjusted for inflation!

Fairlight CMI 30A – The 30th Anniversay Edition!!

I just got sent the following link by my good friend, Steve Howell….

http://www.fairlightinstruments.com./

It shows the following….

THE NEXT GENERATION

Peter Vogel with his first baby, the CMI, in 1979

…and his new baby, Jasmine, in 2009.

The Fairlight keyboard, signed by the who’s who of 80s music,
which sold at auction for $100,000 in 2006

Fairlight CMI Series 30A

(Thirtieth Anniversary) Limited Edition

Pre-production mockup

Want to know more?

Email: Peter Vogel

Suffice to say, I just spoofed in my pants!! LOL )

I have, of course, emailed Peter for more info!

Don’t touch that dial!!!

Fairlight CMI IV ?

No, it’s not an early April Fools. No, I’m not going off on one of my crazy “what if…” moments. This was posted on the Fairlight Yahoo Group today by the esteemed co-creator of the Fairlight CMI, Peter Vogel…

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:

November 4th, 2008 | Failed Muso | Tags: CMI, CMI IV, Fairlight.
Categories: Fairlight | Comments: 1 Comment