Fairlight-CMI

There were several differences between the I/II/III in
the output filter and envelope side.

A Series I had a "switched capacitor" lowpass filter,
and that contibuted to the B flat Birdies. This
machine also had linear envelopes.  

The Series II cards had resonant VCF chips and a dbx
VCA and exponential (i.e. 'normal') envelopes.

But the way the envelopes worked meant that you always
had more than '8 bits', as the volume control stuff
was an 'additional' 8 bits scaling the sound.  

Other Sampler makers didn't do that, so the sound got
rougher as the envelope made it fade away.

The III had pretty much the same as the III, or the
stuff I was involved with anyway, except the sound Dac
was now 16bits, and the sample rate was way higher, as
there was just so much more memory. And as much as
could fit on the cards, tried to make it low
distortion and noise (not with standing no 'dac cliche
S/H') as we could. 
More Hi-Fi always seems to mean it lacks
'musicality'...  

Would anyone guess to say that the Series I 'sound'
made more ground "breaking music" than the later
machines? 

And that is probably all I'll have to contribute here
again for another 2 years... 8^)

Adrian S. Bruce
www.artandtechnology.com.au 

--- Steve Rance <steve@fairlightus.com> wrote:

> Oh yeah, I remember the B Flat birdies on a series
> I/II/IIX - The series III
> was never the same!
> 
> [Steve] 
> 
>  
> 
>   _____  
> 
> From: Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com]
> On Behalf Of Peter Vogel
> Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 17:49
> To: Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: RE: [Fairlight-CMI] Re: Sound Character
> Comparion between 8bit
> (II/IIx) and 16bit...
> 
>  
> 
> Yes, Adrian's got a good point there. The variable
> sampling is generated by
> "rate multiplier" chips which get the inbetween
> frequencies by stickingin
> extra samples in strange places so that on average
> the freqnacy is exatc but
> it jitters all ovber the place.  This is the cause
> of what we called "the
> birdies" which are apparently random notes that
> appear if you hit a
> frequency that results in artifacts in the audibe
> range.  
> 
>  
> 
> Peter
> 
>  
> 
> 
>   _____  
> 
> 
> From: Megacurve [mailto:megacurve@yahoo.com.au] 
> Sent: Saturday, 11 August 2007 5:15 PM
> To: Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [Fairlight-CMI] Re: Sound Character
> Comparion between 8bit
> (II/IIx) and 16bit...
> 
> Steve,
> 
> It isn't just the tracking filters. The CMI's used a
> variable samplerate, with a huge range. There isn't
> any digital sample interpolation happening. Was it 7
> octaves of shift possible? I don't remember If you
> upshifted the sample you can get harmonics that are
> higher than in the original sample rates 1/2 of the
> input filter cut off frequency. Much Higher.
> 
> A digital version of playing an audio tape faster or
> slower.
> 
> Other samplers, like Roland, used a fixed sample
> rate,
> with only a 2 octave shift range. 
> The method of digital sample interpolation with a
> fixed sample rate also makes a huge difference, and
> will contribute a lot to the resultant sound, but in
> all cases you never got any harmonics above the
> original sample filter cutoff...
> 
> But, it was just a cooler bunch of people that made
> it..
> 
> Adrian S. Bruce
> www.artandtechnology.com.au
> 
> --- Steve Rance <steve@fairlightus.
> <mailto:steve%40fairlightus.com> com>
> wrote:
> 
> > The main differance in sound quality when samples
> > are not played at the 
> > native pitch is due to the design of the tracking
> > filters used in all 
> > versions of the CMI. Other samplers in the era
> used
> > different 
> > (cheaper!) methods to change the pitch of samples.
> > 
> > [Steve]
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
>
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