Fairlight Acquired By Blackmagic Design
For those of you who lamented the fact that the esteemed digital workstation company Fairlight was giving up the ghost, you can take heart in the fact that the company has been acquired by video gear manufacturer Blackmagic Design. Blackmagic has a wide range of high and low-end video products, but really has no audio products so this fills an empty spot within its existing product line.
There was a time when Fairlight provided some powerhouse music creation tools, but the company has been concentrating on the broadcast part of the audio business for a number of years now, manufacturing integrated audio control surfaces and software that are renowned for their speed, flexibility and sonic quality. The products are mostly used for live broadcast event production, film and television post production, and immersive 3D audio mixing and finishing. The company creates everything from compact desktop audio post systems to large format mixing consoles with dedicated controls. Fairlight audio engines can deliver up to 1000 tracks which lets customers create complex productions without premixing, along with a massive 64 channels of monitoring.
Blackmagic Design began as a small company making mostly video interface boxes and adapters, but now provides high quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. It’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984.
It’s good to see Fairlight get a second life and Blackmagic seems like a great home for it.
