Fairlight Tips & Tricks #4

by Andrew Somers

Well, it's been a few issues since my last Fairlight tips article. One I missed due to being busy on a film, and the other due to that darn flu thingy. So sorry for the absence, but I'm back with another installment of (hopefully) helpful tips.

First off, in the last article, I failed to mention a very useful aspect of the MDL command. As you may recall, to prepare your project to be sent to a Digital Audio Dubber (DAD), you type the command MDL in the top command line of the screen, and the system then creates a "dubber language" file of your project for DAD playback. But did you know that you can make a DL file of only a selected portion of your project? You can! Here's how: Set a RANGE around the portion of the project you want to be in the DAD file, and select the desired tracks. You'll need to be in an edit mode that supports multiple tracks and range selection, such as EDIT, or BLOCK mode. Then in the command line, type:

MDL -r

This is the same as typing just MDL, except that the "-r" part makes the Fairlight only use the material that's selected within the range, and on selected tracks.

In addition to MDL, there are a few system level commands that you may not need everyday, but can be useful from time to time. (Remember that in the command line, you must press RETURN and not ENTER to execute the command). First off, one of the main questions I get twice a year (at daylight savings time) is "how do you set the clock". This is really easy. Type:

SETIME yy mm dd hh mm ss PM

In other words, if it's January 3rd, 1998 at 4:15 in the afternoon, you'd type:

SETIME 98 1 3 4 15 PM

You don't need leading zeros, and seconds are optional. Just make sure there's a space between each number. You might be interested to note that the Fairlight does not have the dreaded "year 2000" problem that so many computers do. As of now, the operating system will work correctly through the year 2069.

More Neat Commands

Sometimes you might need a test tone, for aligning the outputs of your Fairlight, making a "2pop" or whatever. The Fairlight has a built-in tone generator, in the form of a command called RECDATA. This allows you to generate SINE, SQUARE and TRIANGLE waves, at any level, and at certain specific frequencies. Figure 1 shows a table of available frequencies for a 48Khz project.

Figure 1

Enter the command like this:

RECDATA Level Wave Frequency

Where LEVEL is the volume of the tone. This is entered as a HEX value (HEX is a computer's way of handling data) since HEX is somewhat arcane, I won't bore you with the details, but if you type 101c (one zero one C) you'll make a tone at -18Db, which is the 0Vu reference of most Fairlights here in town. WAVE is the type of waveform that's produced. For a sine wave, type S, while for a square wave type a Q, or enter an R for the triangle wave option.

Like level, setting the frequency is also arcane. Because the waveform is generated digitally, you must set the frequency at certain specific intervals.These intervals are based on the number of audio sample per hertz, and that's how this is entered. If your project is at 48Khz, then the number 64 will produce a waveform at 750 Hz. See Figure 1 for a list of values to enter, and the frequency they produce. Thus if you type:

RECDATA 101c S 32

you will be able to generate a 1500Hz tone at 0Vu. Now simply arm any track or tracks, and press PLAY and REC, and you'll record your tone. To turn the tone generator off so you can record normally, type RECDATA by itself and disarm your tracks.

.WAV Files

Yes, the Fairlight can import and export .WAV files to and from your project. The commands are WAVI for importing and WAVX for exporting. First, let's talk about exporting. To export a clip, just select the clip, type WAVX in the command line and press RETURN. Now, you'll have a .WAV file on the hard drive that the project you exported from is on. It'll be named the same as the clip, with a ".WAV" at the end. This sound can then be sent to a PC or Mac through the Fairlight serial port (I'll explain this in a later issue). If you want, however, you can specify exactly what name the .WAV file should be called, and on what drive and directory it should be located. For example:

WAVX /sc00/pop

This will put a sound called "pop" (without the ".WAV" extension) on your internal hard drive. This is a useful way to store frequently used sounds, like a 2pop. To import a .WAV file, use the WAVI command like this:

WAVI pop

In this example, your 2pop will magically appear right at the cursor, on the selected track.

(Note: if, when using the WAVX command, you didn't specify a name, the .WAV file will be the clip name with a ".WAV" at the end. When you import using WAVI, you'll need to remember to put the .WAV on the file name, so if you WAVX a clip called "roomtone", you'll need to type "WAVI roomtone.wav". To avoid this, when you type WAVX, give the exported clip a specific name. Typing "WAVX roomtone" will prevent ".WAV" from being added to the end of the name).

I'm afraid that's all I have space for this time. Next time, I'll talk about a few more of these "hidden" features. As always, if you have any questions you'd like me to address in this column, send me e-mail Also, this article is available at my Website

All for now, happy cutting!