Fairlight ESPs' Press Release in Feb 2000 ...
FAIRLIGHT FAME 2: THE MUSIC-MAKERS DREAM SYSTEM
Using the Fairlight FAME2, acclaimed Producer/Keyboardist Andy Richards assembles the first Fairlight complete music system – the template for the future of music production.
FAME2 is the centrepiece of ‘Out Of Eden’, a joint venture between Richards and Eden Studios, one of London’s top independent recording studios. It will create a "one-stop music shop", and the digital core of an entirely new way of composing and recording music. Furthermore, FAME2’s origins allow Richards and others to access new fields of endeavour, from film scoring to television post production.
WEST LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, February X, 2000 – In what is the first all-Fairlight music production system of its kind ever assembled, ‘Out of Eden’ – the working home of renowned Producer/Keyboardist Andy Richards – will open later this month with the new FAME2 digital recording and mixing system as its main engine. The 48-channel FAME2 will be installed in Richards’s new studio, which will be part of the complex at Eden Studios, West London, owned & managed by financial director Philip Love, and technical director Mike Gardner who is also responsible for the design and building of the room. It will give Richards an even broader range in his already highly successful music career, as well as enhancing his creativity and productivity.
"This is simply the most wonderful set-up you could imagine; it’s truly a music-maker’s dream come true," says Richards, whose keyboard work has graced scores of tracks for artists including Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Grace Jones, George Michael, Annie Lennox, Rush, Boyzone, Gary Moore and Charlotte Church, and who has racked up significant production credits with artists including Prefab Sprout, Pet Shop Boys, T’Pau, Dusty Springfield and Alphaville amongst others. "Both the power and sound of FAME2 are quite extraordinary. But what’s just as important is that it has tremendous interface ability with my existing equipment. Where the original FAME system was designed for post production, this new FAME2 has a much larger number and broader array of input interfaces built into it that work perfectly for music applications. I can plug my large Pro Tools system and my keyboards directly into it. The flexibility that gives me is incredible. It is truly a one-stop music shop."
Richards’ set up is in many ways the template of the future of music composition, production, recording and mixing. His new facility is a satellite of the larger studio complex, Eden Studios, which will offer Richards and his clients access to large recording spaces with SSL control rooms and amenities such as residential flats, an in-house restaurant and offices. But ultimately it’s all about music, and the FAME2 will revolutionise how that is done. Using the FAME2 as the central processing engine for digital audio, Richards will have up to 88 discrete tracks of 24 bit digital audio available when it is interfaced with his Pro Tools system, expanding in due course to a staggering 112 later this year.
FAME2 is designed to allow direct interface with Pro Tools, as well as Richards’s array of digital and analogue keyboards. "The sort of specifications that are designed into FAME2 make it much more relevant to music than any Fairlight system that has come before," he explains. "It not only accommodates all of my existing technology, but it enhances it by allowing me to use it in a highly flexible and integrated way. For instance, I can plug all my keyboards into the Pro Tools system via their mixer interface, and have those keyboards and all other signals come directly onto the FAME2’s faders. Then, it really gets good: FAME2 gives me fully automated mixing and recall of the whole control surface."
And speaking of the economics of contemporary music production, Fairlight FAME2 will broaden not only Richards’s musical horizons but his business ones as well. FAME’s heritage as a digital audio post production system gives Richards new capabilities when it comes to scoring and creating sound design for film and television post production, such as flawless lock-to-picture capability. "What’s truly amazing though is that I get a fully digital music production system that can give me access to new markets such as post production, for a price less than many systems on the market that can address only one or the other, music production or post. This is a very competitive business, and you really are only as good as the last thing you’ve done. FAME2 is going to ensure that I’ve got a lot more markets to compete in, in the future."
Fairlight Inc, headquartered in Hollywood, California manufactures and markets digital audio editing and mixing systems for audio post production applications. The company’s products include the MFX3plus digital audio workstation, FAME2 integrated digital audio production system, the DADplus dedicated digital audio dubber, MediaLink, Fairlight’s real-time, multichannel, fast audio networking solution, ViVid, Fairlight’s Nonlinear Digital Recorder and the Merlin Digital Multitrack Recorder.
