Fairlight: An Iconic Name in Digital Audio

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Matties: Where is Fairlight equipment manufactured?

Mihatov: Australia.

Matties: Are you sending things out to EMS companies, or are you manufacturing your products in-house?

Mihatov: We use a number of contract manufacturers, and we are constantly looking for others

Matties: When you're looking for contract manufacturers, how do you audit them? What's your process for the selection?

Mihatov: First and foremost we choose manufacturers based on the capabilities that we need. Word of mouth is important, and seeing the work that they do and finding out where a particular bit of kit is made. It's reputation basically. We can't afford to make a mistake; we have to go with something that's proven. Although that may be difficult for a smaller company that's just starting out, we look at what they make. If they make something that we like, then we will go with them once we have thoroughly tested it.

Matties: What about the circuit design? Is that in-house?

Mihatov: It's all in-house. We have our own people.

Matties: What drives your technology when you're sitting around with your designers and you guys are looking at the next generation?

Mihatov: A blend of customer requirements and innovation drives our design. We have a number of high-profile customers, big broadcasting corporations for instance. They tell us they want a particular feature and we review its suitability for our range. For instance, here is an EVO which is a post-production editing system. We sold these to post-production editing production facilities all over the world. However, we sold a number of them to a sports broadcaster in the USA. They started using them for live production, which is not what they were built for. They said to us, “Geez, it would be great if you guys could actually make a live console.” So we did. We actually adapted the software and added additional buttons for a live console and added various other functions.

Matties: Did they come in with some concurrent engineering ideas with you guys?

Mihatov: They said, "If you can do all these things, then it would be great and we'll buy a number of them," and that's exactly what we did. We wrote it, designed it and won "Best in Show" at IBC and NAB for the EVO.Live console.

This is a live console for producing a live television production like "The Voice," "The X Factor," "America's Got Talent," or "American Idol," that sort of thing. You do the live production and that will go to air, but you're also recording something like over 150 tracks of audio and two tracks of HD video onto the system while you're doing the live production. At the end of the live production, you press a button, the whole thing flips over, and it becomes a post-production editing system for finessing and fine-tuning for the syndicated version, the catch-up TV version, or the archival video or highlight packages, that sort of thing. You can do all that work on the same console.

You are controlling the lighting cues. You are doing a live recording of audio and video. You're doing a live mix and then you're actually posting and mixing and mastering that on one machine. That's like five different $100,000 units in a single system, at a fraction of the price.

Matties: They came in, you designed it, you built it, and they buy it, and now you have a new product to take out to market.

Mihatov: Exactly. It's been very well received. Our customers inspire our development. They always have.

Matties: You're the designer and the engineering and you're letting the manufacturing happen with capable EMS companies. That's a great strategy for you.

Mihatov: Absolutely. We have our own hardware development in-house, as well as our own software development in-house. We have some board-level capabilities.

Matties: Thank you very much.

Mihatov: No, thank you. It's been nice talking to you.

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