Talk:Fairlight CMI

message: I purchased a basic 8 channel CMI III in the mid 1980's for $57,850 AUD, just prior to the price rise to $60,000 AUD.
Tannoy K3838 (talk) 14:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Price of Series 3 

message: I'm looking for songs that used the Fairlight, I make playlists, it would be nice to have a playtlist of all the songs or a selection that used the fairlight, like good demos.. I already 
have a few on my site at http://www.bl3nder.com/music/rhapsody . In return the playlists could be placed anywhere, on wikipedia, at vintage synth.. The idea is to give some context for music in terms of synthesizers (in particular), though I plan to do these for other instruments as well. 
contact me at riseofthethorax at earthlink dot net . It would be good to also place a list here..
I remember hearing on the radio at the time, that the cars album "heartbeat city" was recorded in Australia using the fairlight musical computer.
They also said the icehouse album "primitive man" was done the same way. It could be wrong, but i remember them saying it more than once.''
The Fairlight inspired a subgenre of album.  Would it be appropriate to put the genre here??--Tednor 05:03, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Songs 

message: A few thoughts on the article:
* As I understand it, while the Fairlight II had somewhat better sound than the Fairlight I, it wasn't until the series III that the Fairlight had really good sound.
* You know, I don't think the Mirage ended the reign of the Fairlight.  The 16-bit series III came out soon after the Mirage.  It was understood, in the 1980s, that you were better off with a 16-bit Series III instead of the Mirage, Emulator, or one of the many affordable 12-bit samplers. Listen to the sound track of "Wall Street" to get an idea of the limitations of those 12-bit samplers.  It was the Akai S1000 and Emulator III that came out around 1989 that killed the Fairlight and Synclavs.
Samboy 15:29, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, the Mirage didn't take the Fairlight's market; it was too inferior (although remarkable for what it could do for the price). What it did was upset the Emulator market. Only later samplers from Ensoniq (and others) could challenge the Fairlight by which time the Fairlight was already history. StaticSan (talk) 00:46, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other 

message: and the first commercially released song to use it was Gabriel's Shock the Monkey in September 1982
This is not true. The Fairlight CMI was used previously on Peter Gabriel III (credited on the album as Computer Musical Instrument: Peter Vogel) and several singles were released (at least in the UK) but I don't know if the instrument was used on these particular tracks - "Games Without Frontiers" - February 1980 , "No Self Control" - May 1980 and "Biko" - August 1980. "I Don't Remember" was also released but some time later and after "Shock The Monkey". Perhaps someone who knows more about PG can verify it    Ian Dunster 10:32, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's an early 1980s video on YouTube with Peter Gabriel showing how a Fairlight CMI can sample sounds:   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.40.249.181 (talk) 23:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

text: This frustratingly incomplete Youtube video shows part of his performance on Top of the Pops to promote "No Self Control" - presumably mid-1980 - and it opens with the keyboardist miming with what looks like a Fairlight CMI, with the dual manuals. It doesn't prove that the instrument was actually used on the record though. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 21:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW, that's Kate Bush doing the backing vocals on "No Self Control", as you can probably tell.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 09:24, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: First Commercial Single to Use A Fairlight CMI?

message: The Holmes Fairlight page says the CMI "typically had a price of US$25,000 or more, while the Fairlight Series III (which could be customized with many options) started at around US$40,000 and often exceeded US$100,000" - but the $1M price for a fully spec'ed CMI is a tenfold increase on that. What kind of options would give that price? Cammy 19:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Price 

message: In the early 80's, Geoffrey Downes would use 4-5 CMI's live on stage (only one CMI monitor would be visible on stage). Two playing at once to have the polyphony needed for chords, and the others would be loaded up with other sounds. He credits part of his "wall of sound" effect he used back then to the Fairlight CMI.
Whoever wrote this, what's your source on that? In an interview with Keyboard, he was shown with only one CMI in photos, and told them he was buying another soon to use as a second one on stage. When I asked his tech about this in 1997, he said no, he never had more than one (they weren't cheap), but what he did have was a second Graphics Terminal set up in a custom arrangement so that he could see the display of what his tech was changing backstage, also, I imagine, to have the look of the bright Fairlight green screen on stage. I highly doubt that anyone had more than two identical CMIs in the 80s, as they were very expensive and never sold well.--75.79.150.134 (talk) 22:41, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  ASIA on tour in early 80's 

message: "The Series III model ..was built around Motorola 68000 processors, running Microware's OS-9 Level II operating system (6809 version)". In opposite
"http://www.ghservices.com/gregh/fairligh/images.htm" :
"Series I and Series II use Motorola 6800 processors, with the Series II having better voice cards. The Series IIx uses 6809 processors, while the Series III has 68000 processors".
If so, series III cannot run OS-9 ( 6809 version ), but OS-9 ( 68K version ).
hemmerling 17:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hardware 

message: I remember that one of the "avertising rumours" told by the radio DJs between the songs in the 1980th was, that one of the smash hits of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" if I remember right, was the FIRST which was totally produced "on" a computer.
hemmerling 17:10, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importance of "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" for the fame of Fairlight CMI 

message: Very cool snippet someone put up on youtube
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gn1LW3wyRrc  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.71.201.149 (talk) 06:45, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Herbie Hancock Demonstrates Fairlight on Sesame Street 

message: I've heard that Afrika Bambaataa used the Fairlight fairly regularly, and was one of the first to do so. Surley this would be of note if its true? Does anyone know anything about that?--LeakeyJee (talk) 12:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Afrika Bambaataa 

message: Just listening to Sigue Sigue Sputnik's Flaunt It album, you can hear the classic Fairlight CMI library being used, just like any other album, strikingly similar to that classic Frankie Goes to Hollywood sound. Yet they are not listed in the main article as people who use/used the Fairlight CMI. Just think they need to be included there 
Miyukisan782 (talk) 13:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sigue Sigue Sputnik? 

message: "Fairlight went bankrupt a few years later". Later than what? When did they go bankrupt?
The real Fairlight company (Fairlight Instruments) closed at the end of 1988 and liquidated at auction in early 1989 (January, I think).--75.79.150.134 (talk) 22:41, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

message: Is it actually a light pen or is it a touch screen mocked up to look like a light pen? - Richfife (talk) 01:40, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  30A light pen 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Earlier today I have edited the article, specifically on the causes for the Series I's highly aliased sound. I know for a fact that a low sample rate like that alone can't cause aliasing, it's more down to the way the sound is sampled. I also vaguely remembered reading something about oversampling ADCs not being available until 1989, but didn't remember where I read that. As a result I wrote the claim that the aliasing was a result of the lack of supersampling, without any citation. It was removed within a few hours by @Popcornfud.
Now, I still think this is most likely the case, but I want to use this page for me and others to find sources on the history of ADC development and see if my assumption is right. I did run into some stuff about delta sigma modulation, which appears to line up in terms of when the first musical samplers began using it (earliest I could find is the Ensoniq ASR-10 in 1992), but I'm not sure this is quite it, nor if that was the first use of oversampling in a digital sampler of this sort as a means of anti-aliasing. Tomer 070 (talk) 20:59, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: If you can find this in a reliable secondary source, by all means we can include it, assuming it’s notable information. Have a look at WP:RSINSTRUMENT for a starter list of sources that can be used on Wikipedia. Popcornfud (talk) 21:01, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Though I should also add that this info might just be too arcane and obscure for a general audience and not really appropriate for Wikipedia… Popcornfud (talk) 21:13, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, sampling always, by definition, creates aliasing, and with a sample rate of 8 kHz that would certainly be audible. But sampling rates substantially higher than that were definitely possible by then, it's a matter of what your digital design looks like. Paul Koning (talk) 14:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the early CMIs had so much aliasing 

message: The quote in the article from 1978 that sampling "had never been done before" is certainly not correct, but I don't know if the earlier work has been published in available sources.  To be specific: at the University of Illinois PLATO project, the PLATO Music Group headed up by Sherwin Gooch built a 16-voice digital waveform synthesizer in either 1976 or 1977.  (I did a modest amount of the work on that device.)  It was used either with sampled or with synthesized waveforms, and certainly produced rather realistic sounding musical instruments or ensembles of these. Paul Koning (talk) 14:52, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be a good addition if we can find it in a reliable secondary source... Popcornfud (talk) 14:58, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  First? 

message: It surprises me that Jarre isn't mentioned once in the main text (although highlighted in the media bar), despite having been an early adoptor of the instrument, to have then produced one of the most seminal Fairlight-related albums in the form of "Zoolook" in 1984. 82.28.124.70 (talk) 16:20, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jean Michel Jarre?