Fairlight anyone?

[Strider]

Call me naive.

I know that I own the most powerful editing gear in the world (or do I?), and I have numerous times gone to bat for the company that distributes it against perpetrators from the outside. I've joined in all the bully sessions when we told a guy why PT IS the mainstay of the industry.

I know that I might get rotten cabbages thrown in my direction and told to stick to my day-job. HEY wait a minute--this IS my day-job!

My point:
I've been realizing lately that a lot of post houses (at least in the LA area) are using the Fairlight products right now (mfx3.48, fame, etc.), and are not interested in hiring PT editors. I know that there are probably still more PT post houses than Fairlight houses out there, but anyway, this is what I've been finding lately.

I don't know the Fairlight. [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

I have already made arrangements to learn it, but what do you say? Can it keep up with PT? Are we talking two different animals, or just two different kinds of knife to slice the same cake?

If there's no comparison in functionality, then why would some of these big houses invest in the enemy?

Quick, help me before my PT warp bubble bursts............. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[Brent Hahn]

Strider --

I'm in LA, and have worked on both in a post environment.

In my opinion, PT software beats Fairlight by a mile. But the Fairlight sounds way better.

Historically speaking, I think Fairlight came to the fore, at least in LA, because it was better than the AMS Audiofile (in most ways).

I could go on, but it's Friday night. Email me offlist at [email protected] or call me at 818/503-4494 and we can yak at length.

Brent Hahn

[Renie]

Mark over on www.recording.org in the DAW world - 'Fairlight' section there is a PT / Fairlight discussion which you might find interesting..

Renie [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Mr T]

I had the opportunity to try that Fairlight (the big model which name I don't recall...), I don't like it. Matter of taste: ugly interface, separate program for automation->Supertrue (which I've used along with AMEK mixers in the past=>not really easy to use), not intuitive at all....
What I've noticed is that Fairlight is often bought by Post houses who are working on long programs (52 minutes and more) because of its reliability (less crashes than on computers, PC or Mac, based DAW). As an example, MCM (french equivalent to MTV; now european) has both systems (PT+Fairlight). They use PT for mixing teasers and other short programs (programs that need to be done quickly, programs that will need lots of short edits and FXs) and Fairlight for the long length programs (documentary with fewer edits and FX needed, mostly mixing purposes).
The good thing about Fairlight is that it has its own dedicated OS and thus is pretty stable.
The bad thing about Fairlight is that, as a dedicated DAW, it's not as open to other developpers (plugs, soft compatibility) as PT is, and thus can't be as creative and evolutive as PT is.
Just my (small) personnal experience.

[joy4u]

Digidesign is the opposite of Fairlight.

In fact Digi has:
great User interface, creative options, scalability, portability, structure, layout, price.

Fairlight has the only thing pro tools does not have: THE SOUND

If you are going to buy a DAW ask yourse if you are a sound purist or a mad creative.

The problem is that if you are both... there is no DAW for you

This does not mean anymore that PT sounds bad, now it sounds nice with a great know how and effort and the right choice of plugins.

[Strider]

Thanks for your replys guys. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[MAM]

We had a pretty big discussion here a while back - you may want to track that thread down also.

A few more comments...

First off, both Protools and Fairlight are great products, but they excell at different things. For me, doing both longform and shortform post work (mostly broadcast), I find PT is best for pure sound design and general mangling/creation of new sounds. It is also superior in handling various file formats, and dealing with the outside world without any major upgrades. Great for multimedia work etc.
Fairlight is absoutely the fastest editor out there. If you are doing a ton of editing, in any form, it is by far superior to PT. As others have stated, it does sound better than PT. But from a post standpoint, it also has great built in machine control, the ability to audibly scrub all 24-48 tracks and record all of them to a single hard drive. It is not a music machine, although some use them for music. That's the secret for me - it is not a compromised design. It is for post production and all its functionality is geared as such. You can approach the functionality of PT, with upgrades and addons, but it does get $$$. It all depends on what floats your boat, and what type of work you are doing.

Mark (aka Henchman) where are you?