What's the coolest music gear brand in the history of the world? OK, Moog and Gibson and Fender, but then... Fairlight. Since their Nick Rhodes-fuelled '80s moment they've been making a lot of boring high-end media gear, but now there's this: the really absurdly awesome Xynergi Controller. Each key has tiny individual LCD display in it - as you can see in this awesome demo video (or this one). Estimated price? $28,000. It's been done before on the equally expensive Euphonix MC, and it does make the Optimus Maximusquerty qwerty (sorry, Joel) keyboard with colour key caps look quite reasonable at $1500. The knobs round the display are also slightly reminiscent of the PPG Realizer or, more prosaically, the Arturia Origin. (via Gearslutz)
Posted by Tom Whitwell.
Comments:
Here's a good way to cope with not being able to afford stuff like this: imagine having this thing in ten years, obsolete and massively depreciated, covered with dust and dried up finger sweat gunk, not working as well as it used to, and saying "remember when we thought this thing was hot shit?"
It is just an electronic gadget after all; I doubt it costs more than a couple hundred to manufacture.
Normally I just bite my tongue and ignore spelling mistakes. But given that a) you criticized Vox's spelling in the previous post, and b) it should be obvious if you spelled "qwerty" wrong as the letters won't all line up on the keyboard if you type it wrong... there's no excuse.
I see a user interface nightmare. This is like a bloated Windows menu tree, except the options are scattered about in two dimensions, rather than in a vertical list.
I understand the value in feeling like the commander of the Starship Enterprise. But otherwise, this seems like a poor design.
But I guess if it can launch Internet Explorer, it truly is awesome.
I'm sorry - but this thing is incredible... completely the answer to a million man/machine interface problems i have. wow. friggin brilliant. (keys should be bigger, tho... )
coolest music gear brand in the history of the world?
Moog maybe, but Fender and Gibson are much too obvious to be cool. Try DeArmond maybe; Fender owned 'em only long enough to pull the plug. Gretsch, Silvertone, Danelectro, Univox, Mosrite, Valco/Supro/National/whatever, they're too obvious these days too. Ampeg Dan Armstrongs, those are kinda cool. But really, nothing's cool in the Age of EBay: Everything's either too obvious, or it's self-consciously arcane boutique stuff at insane prices.
Build your own 5E3 Deluxe? That's cool. But nothing else is.
"It is just an electronic gadget after all; I doubt it costs more than a couple hundred to manufacture."
I beg to differ. Go to the wiki page and look at all the components it contains. The OLEDs (not LCD) for the keys alone would cost several thousand. They are not mass-produced yet, ergo the supply-chain is not anywhere near what you are assuming based on the "couple hundred" comment.
I don't think it's OLED like the Optimus keyboard.
This fairlight really looks like it's got a normal LCD display behind a bunch of spring loaded clear spots.
Perhaps there is a shallow button design on the Fairlight, but if you watch the videos, it doesn't seem that the background LCD moves with the key press, as it seems to do in the Optimus.
The Fairlight Xynergi is a BAD UI on almost all accounts.
By the way, my comment about manufacturing cost was only that. I'm no economics expert but I am aware that R&D, advertising, and other expenses need to be recouped, especially for something that's going to be sold to a higher end (and therefore smaller) market.
If I was loaded, I'd probably grab one just to have it, but an ordinary keyboard and mouse are serving my needs adequately.
May I recommend that everyone read the product info on Fairlight's web site before commenting? This controller is merely the front end of a DAW that can handle 200+ inputs in the maxed-out version. That $20k+ price tag includes I/O, processing and so on -- not just the GUI. It doesn't just kick sand in the Optimus keyboard's face, it kicks sand in the face of every DAW on the market (yes, including Pro Tools). So let's stop nit-picking about OLEDs (which it DOES use -- I just saw it at the AES Convention in NYC).
I love the way that person here said...remember when we bought that thing we thought it was so cool(10 years obsolete???)lol I own a fairlight mfx3+ and it still out preforms so called industry standard equip and its over 12 yrs old.. i lov em.
: 3:50 am