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:
I have some interest, but really, what is the difference in emulating via CPU, or an FPGA system, or a GPU. I'd say look at some of the GPU acceleration and make it more flexible and attainable.
Also, Fairlight was pretty revolutionary — anything new should not just be an emulation / recreation. It should push the envelope.
If I had suitable R&D funds, I'd invest in taking the Symbolic Sound KYMA architecture to new levels (gritty filters, enhanced capacity, real time convolution / ray tracing, new UI / Visualization paradigms).
Cheers,
P