The Fairlight CMI was one of the earliest digital synthesizer workstations that included sampling, which revolutionized the world of music recording. You’ve heard it from musicians like Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and some of the earliest hip-hop and house music from the 80s.
Blue Cat Audio Destructor is a powerful distortion and amp sim modeling tool that adapts the tone to the dynamics of the signal. It comes with hundreds of presets and predefined models and you can import reference curves measured with Blue Cat’s FreqAnalyst Multi to quickly match existing tones.
In this video Jerry puts the Arturia CMI V through it’s paces and adds Blue Cat Audio Destructor for a bit of distortion inside of PreSonus Studio One.
Arturia CMI V
The CMI V is a spot-on reincarnation of the first commercially available digital sampling system in music history—the sonic powerhouse behind numerous early MTV-era megahits. We even went the extra mile and added new creative features that weren’t possible back in the day.
Features:
- Software replication of Fairlight CMI sampler/synthesizer with MIDI functionality
- 600 presets from the original library (many that were used on classic records) and 361 new presets
- Works in VST, VST3, AU, AAX, and standalone operation
- Interface recreates the original instrument, with keyboard, filter controls, and computer screen
- Computer Screen allows you to control sound sources, sequences, mixers and other controls just like the original Fairlight
- Ten different sounds per source can be controlled and edited individually
- Import your own samples into the synthesizer, edit them, and combine them to make interesting new sounds
- Perfect emulation of analog filter response, as well as the sampling and additive synthesis of the original
- 32-step sequencer based on the Fairlight II’s Page R sequencer
- 24 modulation sources per track
- Additional effects can be added to individual tracks or master output
Blue Cat Audio Destructor
Blue Cat’s Destructor is a powerful distortion and amp sim modeling tool capable of simulating any kind of distortion: from harsh digital destruction to smooth compression or guitar amp simulation (works for clean tones too!), and most importantly, yours!
Features:
- Powerful distortion and amp modeling tool.
- Simulate any kind of distortion: analog or digital, guitar and bass amps, saturation, clipping, compression, bit crushing…
- Works for “clean” sounds too.
- Get started with several hundreds of fully editable presets, inspired by real gear.
- More than 1600 visual styles to customize the user experience.
- Control the dynamics with the input gate and compressor.
- Control the tone with the pre and post filters.
- Exclusive shape dynamics control: adapt the tone to the dynamics of the signal.
- Use the internal or external side chain to trigger the distortion.
- Protect your ears with the output brickwall limiter.
- Comprehensive visual feedback: real time spectrum analysis, dynamic distortion curve display with embedded signal histograms.
- Load reference curves for tone matching.
- No latency.
