CMI Hardware Overview

Series II card cage

The Fairlight CMIs were designed in a flexible, open-ended fashion, with the core of all systems being based around a "general purpose" computer unit. This contained a digital card cage, which allowed easy expansion of capability with additional plug-in hardware, and also software upgrades.

The first CMI, the Series I, was introduced to the world in 1979. It was an 8-bit, 8 voice sampler, utilising an innovative user interface consisting of a graphics monitor and a lightpen, as well as a conventional alpha-numeric keyboard. Samples and operating software were stored on 8" floppy discs.

CMI Series IIx

In 1983 newer channel (sound producing) cards were introduced, with a better (one octave higher) high frequency performance. This model was called the Series II. Later still, in 1984, there was a further change to upgrade the 6800 processors to 6809s, enabling further capabilities, most notably MIDI (with an optional extra card). The sound quality of the series II, and the IIx, were however, exactly the same.

In 1985, huge technological advances had been made in the computer industry worldwide, and developement began on a 16-bit machine utilising hard disc storage, rather than the twin floppy drives. These units originally had all the new hardware crammed into a series IIx mainframe, and were called IIIL, but this model was quickly superceeded in 1985 by the series III. There were probably only about 10 IIILs made, and most of these were used as development machines in the factory.

CMI Series III

The series III was now 16 channel, 16-bit, with a maximum of 14 megabytes RAM waveform memory. An 85 or 140 MByte hard disc stored the operating software and samples (which could now be stereo), and a 60 MByte tape streamer drive took care of file backup. At the back of the mainframe there was now a second card cage to house the output modules, sampler, SMPTE / MIDI interface, and output mixer.

The software evolved steadily for the series III, until in about 1988 it was decided that a new, more powerful hardware platform was needed for any future advancements. This extra hardware was called the waveform supervisor, a 68020-based card which replaced its 68000-based predecessor, the waveform processor. The advantages this upgrade brought were multifold, and will be described elsewhere in much greater detail, but such is their magnitude, that one can effectively divide series IIIs into "pre" (up to software revision 6), and "post" wavesuper (revision 7.30 to 11.39). An upgraded, or late model, fully featured series III would typically contain 32 MBytes of waveform RAM, digital plus analogue sampling, dynamic voice allocation through a 24 output router, and a SCSI hard disc of up to 4 GBytes capacity.

MFX3 monitor and keyboard

The CMI then took another turn and by adding colour graphics, and a dedicated control surface, evolved into a powerful hard disc-based multitrack recording and editing workstation, firstly called the MFX1 (16 track), which then after the addition of a so-called "turbo-SCSI" card, a new graphics card, and some new software, becoming the MFX2 (24 track). These machines interestingly still had full sampling, waveform editing and music compositional facilities.

At this time, it was thought that the fundemental hardware architecture was a trifle limiting. The MFX2 had evolved from a "two in / sixteen out" sampler, and therefore was not up to the task of recording more than two tracks at once, a prerequsite in a modern working environment. A new machine, the MFX3 was created, being originally up to 24 input / 24 output, now up to 48 inputs / 48 outputs, all from one hard disc. The MFX3 machines are actively supported by Fairlight ESP.