Peter Vogel from Fairlight has just revealed some information regarding the much anticipated Fairlight 30A. Thanks to Failed Muso (http://failedmuso.blogspot.com) who posted Peter's message on his blog, we now have some idea of what the new CMI is gonna be like. Upon the request of individuals from the Fairlight Yahoo User Group, Peter Vogel's response is as follows:

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

Hmm, it seems to be true that when pioneers re-emerge, the future of music technology will be changed. We can imply from his response that the new Fairlight CMI 30A could be the most flexible synth we will see in the very near future.

As you can see, the Fairlight CMI 30A is no mass-market synth as it is anticipated to carry a price around 5,000 USD. Unless you're a famous synth master or previous Fairlight CMI owner who can just auction off a vintage CMI to wealthy collectors, it's time to start scrimping up and saving to have one.

Before I forget, the Fairlight CMI 30A website is bound to announce more news about the limited edition Fairlight CMI 30A by August 12, 2009. It's worth your time if you want to have one for yourself.