Building a Fairlight CMI: Episode 5 (Part 2)

video by Syntaur

"Cris Blyth is a brave man. He has a dream of taking a Fairlight MFX and upgrading it to a Fairlight CMI Series III. In this episode, Cris breaks a CMI that he has borrowed, gets out of trouble using a 3D printer, then drills and files his way to getting lots of things hooked up."

Building a Fairlight CMI Episodes

A Sampler In Time - The Roland S-50 Digital Sampler

video by Johnny Morgan

"A story on the Roland S-50 Digital Sampler and it's place in the world of sampling during the 80's"

Building a Fairlight CMI: Episode 5 (Part 1)

video by Syntaur

"Cris Blyth is a brave man. He has a dream of taking a Fairlight MFX and upgrading it to a Fairlight CMI Series III. In this episode, Cris has Fairlight pieces scattered everywhere, connected by crazy wiring, and somehow, those pieces start talking to each other."

Building a Fairlight CMI Episodes

Building a Fairlight CMI: Episode 4

video by Syntaur

"Cris Blyth is a brave man. He has a dream of taking a Fairlight MFX and upgrading it to a Fairlight CMI Series III. In this episode, Cris gets booted, sort of - but only after he calls in The Terminator, and experiences The Bad Thing."

Building a Fairlight CMI Episodes

Building a Fairlight CMI: Episode 3

video by Syntaur

"Cris Blyth is a brave man. He has a dream of taking a Fairlight MFX and upgrading it to a Fairlight CMI Series III. In this episode, Chris wins the blue ribbon for ribbon cable mayhem, and he powers up the box. Sort of."

Building a Fairlight CMI Episodes

Building a Fairlight CMI: Episode 2: For the Fans

video by Syntaur

"Cris Blyth is a brave man. He has a dream of taking a Fairlight MFX and upgrading it to a Fairlight CMI Series III. In this episode, he has great success - in getting the fans spinning. And he demonstrates his basic tools of synthesizer repair: power drills, hacksaws, and files. Should we worry?"

Building a Fairlight CMI: Episodes

Building a Fairlight: Episode 1: The Arrival

video by Syntaur

"Cris Blyth is a brave man. He has a dream of taking a Fairlight MFX and upgrading it to a Fairlight CMI Series III. In this episode, a case arrives, and Cris prepares for the guts to be transplanted."

Building a Fairlight: Episodes

Building a Fairlight CMI: Episode 0

video by Syntaur

"Cris Blyth is a brave man. He has a dream of taking a Fairlight MFX and upgrading it to a Fairlight CMI Series III. He's not worried that these machines are tremendously complex, quite rare, have not been made since the 1980s, and cost huge amounts of money back then. He's not worried that the few existing experts on Fairlights strongly recommended that he not attempt this. Will he make mistakes? Absolutely. Will he succeed? We're not sure. But either way, it will be a fun journey."

Building a Fairlight CMI: Episodes

FAIRLIGHT C M I Handmade Miniature 1 6 scale

video by Ronaldo Lopes Teixeira ROLT

Fairlight Intro Cover on the Commodore Music Maker Deluxe

video by MrCaliforniaD



"In this video, I've re-recorded the famous hack intro from Fairlight.

I tried to edit the Commodore 64 patches as close as I could to the original.

I used a C64c with a 6581 R4-AR."

See this post for MrCaliforniaD's DIY C64 Keyboard

Petshop Boys - Heart (Mix) in QasarBeach (Fairlight cmi)

video by

"The 'Boys' loved their Fairlight Fairlight CMI. QasarBeach was captured with no edits, overdub or added effects to create this new mix of Heart.
https://adamstrange.itch.io/qasarbeach
'QasarBeach CMI IIz' is a Fairlight CMI simulator written from the ground up that does an amazing job of recreating the user interface and functionality of the original hardware, while adding many useful improvements that makes workflow faster and more intuitive."

Larry Klein's (Peter Gabriel) Fairlight CMI Series III For Sale

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.
Fairlight CMI Series III - the last restoration in 2020! - DeftAudio

via this auction

"Yes, this is the real deal and your chance to jump onto a completely restored Fairlight CMI Series III system.

Hello. My name is Andrei Kudryavtsev. If you've been tracking Fairlight sales, you probably saw my other restoration work. All systems that I sell are completely restored and refurbished to the original condition, as much as possible. They are also upgraded to modern standards providing better reliability and usability. This system is not the exception. It used to belong to Larry Klein. It was one of the cleanest Fairlight I've ever received, however it required extensive work to get it up to date to Rev 9 standards. It's running OS9.34 with all required hardware changes, with 16 voices 32MB sample memory, with SCSI2SD replacing original hard drive, USB2CMI replacing original Preh keyboard, and a VGA monitor. It has fully repainted the CMI mainframe, music keyboard.

Power supply section is brand new. Old switching PSU has been replaced with three modern PSUs, driving clear power rails and dedicated power rail for fans. Cooling section is brand new, replaced all fans with server grade fans and new fan speed controller with a separate zone management and thermal sensors.

All work is carefully documented and available in my Instagram with all dates it was performed. It took me over 5 months to bring it to the condition you currently see. instagram.com/deftaudio/

This system needs a new home, a person who will be using it to make the music and not being distracted by common failures. All of those have been addressed to make your life easier and bring new life into this wonderful machine. I should say a disclaimer anyway, that as is a vintage gear....it may fail any moment...and obviously no return offered. However, I'm offering you my help in learning this great machine, and so you get 10 hours of my time at no charge. You can use it for whatever you want - set up and install online, learning session, tutorials, technical support etc... I want to make you happy.

What's included into the package:

1. Fairlight CMI Series III mainframe: Rev9.34, 16 voices, 32MB, 100kHz sampling input, SCSI2SD, cooling and PSU upgrades.

2. Fairlight CMI Series III music keyboard

3. USB2CMI keyboard adapter with Apple keyboard and mouse.

4. VGA Monitor, Video scaler, Green color adapter(if you want your fonts to be green)

5. Original Preh alphanumeric keyboard (touchpad doesn't function)

6. Fairlight CMI Series III original green phosphor monitor (faded CRT)

7. All necessary cables.

8. Larry Klein flight cases."

CLICK FOR MORE »

Winter QasarBeach (Fairlight CMI)

QasarBeach

"A short demo of "QasarBeach CMI IIz" 1.29. QasarBeach a complete Fairlight CMI recreation complete with user interface and functionality of the original hardware, while adding many useful improvements making workflow much faster and intuitive. V1.29 add more Series III like functions.

You can download QasarBeach here: https://adamstrange.itch.io/qasarbeach"

FAIRLIGHT SERIES III Sampler Workstation Synthesizer

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"We are experts in most of the items we sell, but this one is an exception and we don't have the time or desire to learn about it as we don't normally deal in them. Its current state is somewhat unknown. A Fairlight expert we were in communication with by email says that the system looks to be in great condition, with no parts missing. He says the fact that the system starts is a good sign. It initially stopped the boot process while loading the main software from the HDD, so he suggested there was a dead or corrupted HDD. At that point, he said it had SW 6.03 installed, but that it seems many components had already been changed to later versions (which makes sense since the person we got it from had it upgraded in recent years). We replaced the HDD with a SCSI2SD adapter with OS 9.34 that the Fairlight expert sold us. He said this included the Fairlight sound library as well. At that point, we ran out of time and space as we had a lot of vintage analog synths in the shop that needed to be restored, so we put the unit back in storage, where it remained until we pulled it out to photograph it just recently. We did not test it otherwise due to lack of knowledge and lack of time to learn how to use this system and we're hoping to sell it as is, with the understanding that it will need to be checked out and serviced by a qualified Fairlight expert. Here's some additional info:

The original monitor does not appear to be working. The seller told us he wasn’t sure if it was the monitor or the monitor card (or both). We believe it’s the monitor, as it was putting out a very annoying high pitched sound. He said most people these days replace the Fairlight monitor board with a newly designed one so that it can be used with a new monitor instead. We confirmed this with another Fairlight expert. If you feel the need to use an original monitor, perhaps this one can be fixed, or maybe someone who upgraded their monitor card for use with a new monitor has an original they'd sell.

The person we got this unit from repainted the monitor, keyboard and QWERTY keyboard. There is also a cracked key on the piano style keyboard that we glued back together."

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Ankor Drone QasarBeach (Fairlight CMI IIx)

QasarBeach

"A short demo of taking a sound and recreating a drone from it..
"QasarBeach CMI IIz" is a Fairlight CMI simulator that recreates the user interface and functionality of the original hardware, while adding many useful improvements making workflow much faster and intuitive.

You can download QasarBeach here: https://adamstrange.itch.io/qasarbeach"

Check out additional QasarBeach posts here.

Synth Rorschach #78: The Crown Teaser

Bendu

"A teaser for a new single, 'The Crown.'"

Spacey retro-vibe teaser from supporting member Bendu, for his upcoming release. Giving this one the Synth Rorschach label for the light pen, monitor intro.

Fairlight II system and qdos disk copy

SynthMania SynthMania

"Finally after ten years I'm getting the Fairlight voice card problems and monitor bubbles repaired and so I backed up a bunch of disks prior. Early and fantastic sampling technology"

Fairlight Newsletter No.8 from August 1986

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

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Fairlight CMI User Profile Sheet from 1981

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

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Fairlight CMI IIX Page R demo and overview - The worlds most important sequencer?

David Morley

"The Fairlight CMI was the worlds first commercial sampler, but in the context of how it changed music, probably the most important part was Page R. This is an awful piece of musical creation on my CMI IIx, but it hopefully shows you how Page R works and I also offer an overview of the other pages available on the CMI system. For nerds only!
My IIx used to belong to Kim Wilde and has been restored by Jean-Bernard Emond in France. An amazing machine and so much fun. The "musical" example here is just that, an example. Hopefully I will post some more musical adventures in the future."