Fairlight-CMI

> Right, I've no idea what the different specs are. Can anyone enlighten 
> me? Which is THE daddy to get?
> 
> Did they simply advance like the Fairlight did (Series i, II, IIx, 
> III)?

Running the risk of offending those who've already replied on this:

Synclavier 1 basically a research and development system developed out
of work undertaken at Dartmouth (ISTR) College into digital sound
production using FM (licence sold to Yamaha - the rest is history) -
very few sold and only (AFAIK) to other educational establishments.

Synclavier II is an FM machine only - several revisions of the main
processor enabled such luxuries as 'Super Floppies' and hard disc
drives - a 'Mono Sampling' option enabled audio samples to be
re-synthesised as FM sounds which is great fun to play with but slow
and laborious to actually do!

Synclavier PSMT (Poly Sampling) is a transitional machine - although
is barely related to the original Sync II - while these machines
retain their FM, this is held in a different' bin' or backplane to the
'PolySampling' voices (with fun features like 60 second refresh memory
- turn the power off, turn it back on again 58 seconds later and the
samples still there 8-)) and a multichannel bin brings the audio
together - the computer bin evolved substantially to the later
processors with graphics controllers and local disc controllers
supporting SCSI and fun things like opticals (Maxtor T2's a speciality!).

The later 9600 generation machines are still basically the same in
function and run basically the same software - however there is a huge
difference in the reliability (later components), heat output!!! (no
need for a seperate memory bin!) and sound of these machines (if
anything the PSMT's sound 'warmer' than a later 9600) is stunning and
accurate 100% of the time.

Common features of the PSMT and the 9600 series are the stunning noise
floor and standard 100khz sample rate - I'm not exagerating when I say
that a sample from an Emu EIV / Akai (and as I write 'Fairlight Series
III', I'm ducking to avoid low flying flames!) etc will sound even
better when recorded into the Synclaiver and played back - I still
don't understand why - it just does :-)

They are still VERY expensive machines.  An early FM machine with 16
or 32 voices which will do as much as a well programmed DX7 (although
it's a LOT quieter) will sell for around £2,000 (do a £1 = $1
assumption for this), with mono-sampling, SCSI and a hard drive upto
about £4,500. FWIW and IMHO I think the eBay system is overpriced
unless you're in the UK and can enjoy the current exchange rate benefit!

A PSMT should start, with a hard drive, optical, 16mb memory and 16
poly / 16 FM voices at around £4,500 to £6,000 - if you can find one
that still works properly and still boots - the drives are not a
strong point.

There are four keyboard variants that I know of - the AWK (or is it
ORK?) - the wooden smaller, non velocity keyboard of the Synclavier
II, for the Poly sampling machines onwards, the VPK Mk1 - piano finish
and weighted action with velocity, the VPK Mk2 - superior keyboard
action and a refined 'piano lacquer' finish and the 'Tripp' (named
after it's designer Jeff Tripp) which has superb piano action which is
wonderful to play.

After NED's crash Demas Inc developed the PCI host interface for the
Poly Sampling machines which enables a Mac to host the user interface
and run a local iteration of the Synclavier software so there's no
'serial terminal delay' - current revision is 5.2 and provides
(through the Interchange and Powerpants applications) the ability to
share samples with other formats (throuth .wav export / import).

Another cool feature of the PCI system is the ability to scrap the
local storage on the Synclavier and use a SCSI drive running inside
the Mac, formatted for the Synclavier and exclusively for it's use.

To answer your question 'which is the daddy' - it would be a 9600
configured with the 64mbyte upgrade (which requires the later computer
bin), 16 FM voices and 64 polysampling voices, PCI interface running
5.2 with a local 10gb drive (the Sync can only see upto 9gb) and a
Tripp keyboard - your's for around £15,000 to £20,000 - and they
*very* rarely come up in the condition where they don't need any work!

Hope this answers your question, is forgiven for being off topic and
apologies for the spelling mishtakes :-)

If anyone has any more questiones, I'd refer them first to Steve
Hills' excellent www.500sound.com website - Steve runs Synclaiver
Services Europe and looks after the handful of comitted users in the
UK and Europe and www.synclavier.com which is Demas Inc's site - not
so useful but shows that these things are being supported and
developed for.


Philip