Many people write off the Fairlight as a viable tool nowadays because they consider it to have been surpassed many times over. A very learned friend and colleague of mine often jokingly says his laptop soundcard has more power than a fully expanded CMI, and to a point, it's true, but the fatal mistake that people make is that they only see the Fairlight as a sampler.
It was WAY more than that. In fact, it's synthesis capabilities were probably far more groundbreaking, although the sampling facility made all the waves (no pun intended
). It was the first real DAW, with on board sequencing, sampling, synthesis and sound processing. And yes, those samples were only 8 bit (or 16 bit in later models) but it was the sonic capabilities that made the Fairlight what it was. It had (has) an amazing sonic bandwidth (100KHz in most cases) and a unique character that many of today's devices severely lack. Ok, so when you sampled a trumpet in to it, there was no fancy multisampling capabilities or clever anti aliasing algo's to sort things out, but the resulting sound was as unique as the original sound itself, and often vastly different.
I have spent many years building a collection of Fairlight samples, but sadly, whilst they retain something of the uniquness of the original, they aren't quite the same as hearing them from the beast itself, which is indeed a joy to behold.
I have never had the pleasure of owning one, but it is my dream to do so one day soon. Yes, it will be for nostalgia for the most part, but Darren Hayes & Justin Shave have proven that it's still a viable, if somewhat expensive, creative tool today.
Funnily enough, I was re-reading that very article this morning whilst having my "first of the morning" dump
