Fairlight-CMI

I was reading some articles to do with Peter Vogel and Fairlight CMI's. One of the links stated that the CMI in 1979 cost anywhere between £30,000 & £120,000.

Is this true? If so, does anyone know what the basic unit consisted of and what the optional extras were to boost the price to £120k?

Cheers,
Peter

Most likely the amount of memory would heavily increase the price.
Probably also diskspace.

In 1979 a megabyte of memory cost 10,528 Dollars (1979 dollars, that is).
Read all about it at http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm

Or search google with 'memory' 'price' '1979'

Regards,
Harald.

> I was reading some articles to do with Peter Vogel and Fairlight CMI's.
> One of the links stated that the CMI in 1979 cost anywhere between £30,000
> & £120,000.
>
> Is this true? If so, does anyone know what the basic unit consisted of and
> what the optional extras were to boost the price to £120k?
>
> Cheers,
> Peter
>

I was reading some articles to do with Peter Vogel and Fairlight CMI's. One of the links stated that the CMI in 1979 cost anywhere between £30,000 & £120,000.

Is this true? If so, does anyone know what the basic unit consisted of and what the optional extras were to boost the price to £120k?

Peter - I dont know about 1979 (too young), however FYI I have 
uploaded a scanned image of an advert which appeared in a well known 
UK Music tech magazine from 1986 (it is on the files page and is 
called SIIIad.jpg).

In this it can be seen that Series III's were being offered from £25k 
to an eye-watering £112k!!.

There are some interesting notes in the text; notably for £25k you 
did not get the music keyboard and that Fairlight clearly intended 
that you would be able to daisy-chain Series III's together to 
increase polyphony and RAM capacity. To my knowledge however this 
never came to market.

Anybody care to comment?

Regards,
Chris H.
 
--- In Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com, "Peter Connelly \(Core Design 
Ltd.\)" <PeterC@C...> wrote:
> I was reading some articles to do with Peter Vogel and Fairlight 
CMI's. One of the links stated that the CMI in 1979 cost anywhere 
between £30,000 & £120,000.
> 
> Is this true? If so, does anyone know what the basic unit consisted 
of and what the optional extras were to boost the price to £120k?

> 
> Cheers,
> Peter

Chris,
long ago, I seem to recall reading about a "voice expansion" chassis
option for the III to increase polyphony.  I never saw an offical
ad for it or photos of such an item.  I believe I read about it in
artist interviews at the time, especially Stewart Copeland.  It may
have simply been another III
chassis MIDI'ed to the main III chassis.  But the RS page only
handles 16 voice channels, so I don't know how it could
have supported another external chassis with another 16 channels.

I suspect any polyphony "expansion" offer at the time
was simply another III chassis with CPU card, monitor, Qwerty
keyboard and a MIDI cable :-)

David



--- In Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com, "chaworth012000"
<christopher.haworth@u...> wrote:

> 
> Peter - I dont know about 1979 (too young), however FYI I have 
> uploaded a scanned image of an advert which appeared in a well known 
> UK Music tech magazine from 1986 (it is on the files page and is 
> called SIIIad.jpg).
> 
> In this it can be seen that Series III's were being offered from £25k 
> to an eye-watering £112k!!.
> 
> There are some interesting notes in the text; notably for £25k you 
> did not get the music keyboard and that Fairlight clearly intended 
> that you would be able to daisy-chain Series III's together to 
> increase polyphony and RAM capacity. To my knowledge however this 
> never came to market.
> 
> Anybody care to comment?
> 
> Regards,
> Chris H.
>  
> --- In Fairlight-CMI@yahoogroups.com, "Peter Connelly \(Core Design 
> Ltd.\)" <PeterC@C...> wrote:
> > I was reading some articles to do with Peter Vogel and Fairlight 
> CMI's. One of the links stated that the CMI in 1979 cost anywhere 
> between £30,000 & £120,000.
> > 
> > Is this true? If so, does anyone know what the basic unit consisted 
> of and what the optional extras were to boost the price to £120k?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Peter