Need Fairlight Audio Accelerator Drivers

I received my new Fairlight Audio Accelerator board today. I just installed the board, launched resolve, and enabled the Fairlight Audio Accelerator and restarted resolve.

Setup.png (44.24 KiB) Viewed 9994 times

Now I get a message that the drivers aren't installed. Where do I get the drivers? There are none in the box, none on blackmagic's support site, and none on Fairlight.us. I even tried reinstalling resolve to see if that would install them, Nope.

FairlightWontStart.png (354.95 KiB) Viewed 9994 times

I've gone through the resolve manual and there's no references to the accelerator card other than how to enable it. I'm stuck.

I'm running Davinci resolve studio 14.1.1.005
Windows 10 version 1703 (OS Build 15063.726)
My video card is an Asus 1080Ti.

Was there a resolution for your problem?

[Peter Chamberlain]

Which city are you in Dave?
We can have our Fairlight support engineer assist as we haven’t packaged the driver in the standard installer.

You can contact me via pm with your details I can pass on.

@Peter
Dave's post is from 5 months ago. However, I (and possibly others) want to learn more about this option and how it integrates with Resolve and Decklink hardware.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Ah, didn’t see date in my phone...The decklink supports Audio from Resolve as does the fairlight audio accelerator with the fairlight I/o.
You can select in Resolve preferences to use the decklink or fairlight I/o.
The accelerator also has considerable more audio processing ability for multiple plugins and tracks in real time.

Is there any specific question not covered by above?

I'm interested in the Fairlight Audio Accelerator, but can't find any information on it anywhere. Just saying it offers "considerable more audio processing ability" is not enough. Could you please provide some specifics?

Also, B&H lists a Fairlight Audio Accelerator for $995 and a Fairlight Audio Interface for $2,295. What is the difference?

Thanks!

Ah, didn’t see date in my phone...The decklink supports Audio from Resolve as does the fairlight audio accelerator with the fairlight I/o.
You can select in Resolve preferences to use the decklink or fairlight I/o.
The accelerator also has considerable more audio processing ability for multiple plugins and tracks in real time.

Is there any specific question not covered by above?

Thanks for your response. Yes, there seems to be a dearth of information available for this product (and others like it).

My initial questions are as follows:

1. I am assuming (but not sure) the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator pre-dates the Fairlight acquisition. As I have read that Blackmagic made the decision to use Fairlight’s IP and completely re-write the Fairlight code from scratch (for integration into Resolve), have the performance marketing claims for this product been tested against the current Resolve integration, or are they possibly based on pre-acquisition Fairlight products?


2. I cannot find any specs on this card, anywhere, which leads me to ask the following:

- a) The backplane of the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator has two BNC connectors, and what seems to be a DVI form-factor connector. Can you please share the exact functionality, and signal support, available via these I/O ports?

- b) Does the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator come with a breakout cable that connects to the DVI form-factor connector on its backplane? And, if so, what signal types, levels, and connectors does it provide?

- c) The internal side of the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator (opposite the backplane) has six black multi-pin connectors. Can you please share the functionality of these connectors?

- d) Does the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator require an internal power connection from the host PC, or is it powered entirely off the PCIE bus?


3. What, precisely, is the function of the Blackmagic Design Fairlight Audio Interface?

- a) Is it a breakout box for the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator?

- b) Does it provide any additional signal processing or routing capabilities?

- c) Is it a required component if one wants to enjoy the benefits of the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator?


4. If one uses the Resolve Preferences to select the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator, does that mean that none of the ‘accelerated’ audio is available via a resident Blackmagic IO product, like for example, my DeckLink 4K Extreme 12G card? In other words, does selecting the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator completely bypass the audio I/O on my DeckLink card, thereby making all of its analog and digital audio essentially irrelevant in terms of monitoring, routing, and output?


5. Is the “full real time processing of EQ, expander/gate, compressor and limiter dynamics” of the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator clip-based, track-based, or channel-based (which I assume is a reference to bussed output channels, e.g: 2, 5.1, 7.1 channels)? Clearly there is a need for this functionality to exist for individual clips (or at worst, tracks) – and not just for bussed output channels.

- a) What is the concurrent instance limitation of this feature? In other words, can I have hundreds of clips, tracks, or channels, each having their own simultaneous EQ, expander/gate, compressor and limiter dynamics?


6. Is the “up to 6 real time plug‑ins per channel!” of the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator clip-based, track-based, or channel-based (which, again, I assume is a reference to bussed output channels, e.g: 2, 5.1, 7.1 channels)? I am assuming we are talking about VST plug-ins here. Clearly there is a need for this functionality to exist for individual clips (or at worst, tracks) and not just for bussed output channels.

- a) Since this description uses the language “up to”, is it correct to assume that one or two computationally ‘hungry’ plugins might consume all of the processing bandwidth of the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator?

- b) Does the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator quickly and efficiently ‘release’ real time plugins from its processing queue such that it can proceed to processing the next required plugin – or is there latency or ‘hang’ that might prevent the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator from achieving its maximum of “6 real time plug‑ins” if those required plugin instances appear strung together sequentially on the timeline.


7. Does the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator offer any advantages for rendering or caching? And, similarly, does it have any effect on the functionality of the Delivery page?


8. Is the lack of driver support in the standard Resolve installer symbolic of a potential EOL status for the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator? I realize this is a hard question to answer, but I'd hate to spend this much money on a product that is not going to be supported in the future.


9. What are the mechanical and electrical PCIe slot requirements of the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator? And in a common workstation platform like the HP Z840, is there a recommended installation slot.


10. Lastly, does the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator improve the performance of VSTi(s) that are loaded into Fairlight? And if so, is that improvement significant, or just marginal?


As you can see, there is a lot of missing information regarding the Fairlight PCIE Audio Accelerator that is not satisfied by the one paragraph description on the Fairlight tab of the DaVinci Resolve 15 web page. I have to assume that Blackmagic has a ”Master Plan” regarding future Fairlight product extensions, which hopefully include control surface options. Hopefully, that 'Master Plan" also includes rounding-out information about currently available products, as customers cannot commit to buying that which they don't understand.

Thank you for your assistance, I’m looking forward to learning more.


***EDIT: Added Questions #9 and #10 above.

That's pretty much everything I would like to know too.

Also, I'd like to know if this audio accelerator card is going to be replaced soon with something that is different or better. I'd hate to invest $1000 in this card and find out BMD is actually planning to release a newer version soon.

2. I cannot find any specs on this card, anywhere...

I have to assume that Blackmagic has a ”Master Plan” regarding future Fairlight product extensions, which hopefully include control surface options. Hopefully, that 'Master Plan" also includes rounding-out information about currently available products, as customers cannot commit to buying that which they don't understand.

Thank you for your assistance, I’m looking forward to learning more.

+1000
Nice job. Those are indeed, critically important questions you have for BMD.

I only hope Blackmagic Design is particularly keen on supplying us this information expeditiously, seeing that a thread from a while back, regarding incomplete MCU Pro Universal MIDI Controller support -- and lack of documentation for how to best set up Resolve for use with said MCU Pro audio controller.

Getting that unit working within the EDIT page, with its transport controls, to Master Fader, Plug-ins selection and tweaking, and getting movement in its Timecode display -- all of that is still unaddressed, AFAIK.

Of course, Fairlight Audio Accelerator now being a BMD product, we should have reasonable expectation your questions will be answered in short order, and added to a Knowledge Base/FAQ of some sort, for the benefit of us all.

Meanwhile, Blake, I encourage you to also post your painstakingly, well thought out questions re: Fairlight Audio Accellerator PCIe card, at BandHPhoto's forum.

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[Peter Chamberlain]

I’m traveling ATM so will get back to this question list next chance I can

I’m traveling ATM so will get back to this question list next chance I can

Thank you Peter. I will standby until you are able to address the questions.
Also want to mention that I just added two more questions to the list (Questions #9 and #10)
Thank you

Dave here again. It looks like this has generated some discussion.

@Peter
I did contact support (Davinci) back in December and January. I worked with a couple of people that tried to help, but didn't know about the product / didn't have any training or information. Because they couldn't help me they eventually acted as sales people and refused to help anymore until I purchased the fairlight audio interface. They said the audio accelerator won't work with out it (but it will). Once I purchased the audio interface, the system still didn't have drivers, but they finally agreed to forward me to fairlight support.

The fairlight support person had me running in a 1/2 hour as all I needed was the drivers.

---

Now that I have the fairlight audio accelerator and the fairlight audio interface I may be able to shed a little light on a few of the questions.

@ Mike Halper
"Also, B&H lists a Fairlight Audio Accelerator for $995 and a Fairlight Audio Interface for $2,295. What is the difference?"

The fairlight audio accelerator is a PCIE card. It appears to be the fairlight CC-2 audio engine. I believe it's a big FPGA used to process all the audio tracks and plugins. The accelerator sends audio out of the system. If you use this you need the fairlight audio interface, or a third party MADI solution to break out the audio channels.

The fairlight audio interface is an external 1RU audio interface with several different analog and digital I/O ports. In fairlight branding it is the SX-36. It connects to the fairlight audio accelerator via a DVI cable. If you want multiple analog outs there is a DB-25 port. I was told by the fairlight engineers at NAB that it uses the TASCAM standard rather than the Yamaha standard for wiring the breakout cable.

---

@ Blake LaFarm
2.a - The DVI connector is used to connect to the Fairlight audio interface. The BNC ports are MADI in and out. You get 56 channels in and out. I have mine connected to a MOTU M64 which routes the audio over AVB to a MOTU 828es.

2.b - The fairlight audio interface is used to break out the audio channels, or you can send them over MADI. I haven't been able to find much on the pin outs of the other ports labeled: LTC/GPIO1/DI 3-4/DO 3-8 | DI 5-12 / DO 9-16 | DI 13-20 / DO 17-24

2.c - The ports look to be repurposed SATA ports. When I asked at NAB I was told they are used to add extra MADI pairs.

2.d - The audio accelerator is PCIE bus powered. No extra power needed. It uses a PCIE 4X connector.

3.c - The audio interface is not required, you can send the audio channels over MADI as I've described above, but you do need some type of audio interface to break out the individual signals. On the FL audio interface there are many connectors including MIDI, word clock, 10 analog in, 12 analog out, and 24 channels of Digital in/out out. I believe this was used to talk to a 3D audio processor that fairlight was showing off a few years ago. Not sure if it will be needed for the new 3D audio solution.

---

After talking to the fairlight engineers and Grant Petty at NAB, I'm under the impression that the fairlight people are working as hard as they can to get the full fairlight system out, and they've prioritized getting fairlight working over documentation. I've had my frustrations getting my system going, but I now have 7.1 monitoring and it sounds incredible. I'm looking forward to using the completed system.

I am still hoping Peter will circle back to this thread when he is no longer traveling - as these products are woefully under documented.

@DaveHill
Thank you very much for addressing a couple of my many questions.

Absent a response from Peter, I'd like to ask a couple of follow-up questions:

1. You wrote: "They said the audio accelerator won't work with out it (but it will)."
Yet you also wrote: "The fairlight audio interface is used to break out the audio channels"

Those comments cause me make two assumptions:

- The Accelerator DOES NOT work in conjunction with a BMD I/O product like a DeckLink product, allowing said DeckLink product to incorporate the audio from the Accelerator into its own I/O ports. If true, this is too bad, because if 'hooks' existed to allow for this cross-card functionality, BMD would sell many more Accelerator cards and customer's cabling topologies would be vastly more simplified.

- In spite of comment: "audio accelerator won't work with out it (but it will)" you actually DO NEED the Fairlight Audio Interface, or some other manufacture's BOB (Break-Out Box), because regardless of whether the Accelerator works without it -- there is no practical (or inexpensive) way to access that audio.

Are these assumptions correct?

In your research, did you happen to run across a less expensive way to access the audio signals, such as a simple DVI Break-Out Cable Adapter (like the ones BMD includes with all of their DeckLink cards), or maybe a MADI-based product satisfies the same goals -- but costs less?

Lastly, you did not mention how this product has affected performance in your environment. Are you seeing a dramatic improvement in VST Effects or VSTi Instruments? Are the "up to 6 real time plug‑ins per channel" really channel-based, or are they track- or clip-based? Does the Accelerator offer any advantages for rendering or caching -- or is its functionality limited only to playback?

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts on these questions.

@Blake LaFarm

I don't have any experience with the decklink products, so I'm unable to say definitively. As I understand it, when you select the FL accelerator those channels are available to resolve for patching. Here is a screenshot of my main bus setup:

Sample 7.1 FL bus

Fairlight main bus setup.png (33.46 KiB) Viewed 9500 times

I'm not sure if the decklink channels show up the same way. If they do, I suspect the signals would be routed directly to the decklink out channels rather than through the FL accelerator, then back through PCIE to the decklink card. But we'd need a Blackmagic/fairlight person to say for sure.

My discussions with the engineers have lead me to believe that the use of the DVI port is non-standard and is only intended for the FL Audio Interface. My primary purpose for purchasing the accelerator was to have a 7.1 monitor bus out of Davinci. On DR14 other audio interfaces were not recognized on windows. The least expensive solution I found to a 7.1 setup was: Fairlight Accelerator -> MADI -> MOTU M64 -> AVB -> MOTU 8A -> Analog outs to audio monitors. I'll also add that I was willing to drop some money on the FL hardware because I applaud what BM is doing in bringing us an integrated post-production toolset.

With regards to performance, I wasn't having performance issues to begin with, so I haven't seen a difference. I should say that I'm still new to audio, so I'm only running a few plugings right now. I can tell you when I'm panning in 7.1 space with playback that the sound moves immediately. There is no lag whatsoever.

Decklink channels show up in the output dropdown list in what looks like the same way. My assumption is that if you send audio to those channels it doesn't go through the Fairlight card, but I have no idea.

Yes, DeckLink channels look the same. And I don't think the Accelerator has anything to do with standard 7.1 panning.

@Peter
When your schedule permits, please help us with the product questions listed above.
Thank you very much.

[Peter Chamberlain]

There will be more information on the Fairlight Audio Accelerator and interface in the future as we roll out the Fairlight consoles. But for now here is a little more detail.

DaVinci Resolve 15 supports the Fairlight audio accelerator and interface. The Windows 10 beta driver is available now in the installer and we are working on the MacOS next. The Accelerator, it’s a PCIe Gen1x4 card, supports processing for up to 256 tracks with sub‑millisecond latency, real time concurrent processing of EQ, expander/gate, compressor and limiter dynamics and up to six VST plug‑ins per channel. If you select the Accelerator in your Resolve preferences you will process all audio in the card and monitor the audio from the card, not from the DeckLink/Ultrastudio or system audio.

On the back of the card there are two BNC connectors. One for 64 channels of 48kHz MADI in, one 64 channels of MADI out. On the internal back of the card there are additional MADI expansion ports which can be connected to a MADI expander to provide an additional three MADI I/O ports and a total of 256 I/O channels, again at 48kHz. More on that at a later date.

Also on the back of the Fairlight Audio Accelerator there is a DVI-I connector with a proprietary interconnect via a supplied DVI-I cable to the Fairlight Audio Interface. The Fairlight Audio Interface is a 1RU chassis offering ultra low latency, analog and digital I/O, video and word clock synchronization, GPI I/O, RS422 connections and precise lock to timecode for external transport control.

For I/O, DaVinci Resolve can use either the computers system audio, DeckLink or UltraStudio audio with host based processing, or the Fairlight Audio Interface with the Fairlight Audio Accelerator. In limited cases audio can be monitored on one system and captured concurrently on another but for sync and sample level precision both capture and monitoring should be on the same I/O.

Without a Fairlight Audio Accelerator, DaVinci Resolve processes audio using the CPU and the number of real time processes, plugins and tracks is proportional to the number, speed and type of CPUs and the other tasks being performed. We have seen dozens of tracks and plugins in real time using just the CPU but some processes and plugins are extremely intensive, or you may just have a lot of tracks, and in this case the accelerator helps quite a lot as there is a far greater capacity for real time processing of many more channels.

Consider when building a 7.1 deliverable. You may have 50 or more mono source tracks with plugins, a dozen 7.1 busses with plugins (12x8 tracks in processing requirement) and 7.1, stereo and near field monitoring. In this situation with +150 processing tracks and dozens of plugins we recommend the Fairlight Audio Accelerator and Fairlight Audio Interface for processing and monitoring all in real time. Without the card you should bounce the plugin processes and some buses to new tracks to allow your CPU to process a smaller total number of elements in real time.

Thanks for that description Peter.

Couple of follow-up questions:

The Fairlight Audio Interface is a 1RU chassis offering ultra low latency, analog and digital I/O, video and word clock synchronization, GPI I/O, RS422 connections and precise lock to timecode for external transport control.

From a distance, the Fairlight Audio Interface seems to largely be a BOB (breakout box) designed to be connected to the Fairlight Audio Accelerator via a proprietary DVI terminated cable. If true, the marketing language used to describe this product, namely: “offering ultra low latency”, seems misplaced, as it only seems to be ‘externalizing’ the I/O of the Fairlight Audio Accelerator’s “ultra low latency”. Is the Fairlight Audio Interface simply a BOB for the Fairlight Audio Accelerator – or does it actually perform accelerated signal processing on its own?

…and up to six VST plug‑ins per channel.

Sorry, but I’m still a bit confused regarding the actual number of concurrent VST plugins that can be processed by the Fairlight Audio Accelerator. You described a 7.1 mix and “dozens of plugins”, so I am assuming that the reference to “up to six VST plug‑ins per channel” is based on Output Channels and not Track Channels. For example, in a 7.1 mix, I assume one would hit the VST processing limit at a maximum of 48 concurrent plugins (7.1 mix = 8 channels x 6 plugins per channel = 48). And by extension, this logic suggests that a stereo mix would be limited to a maximum of 12 concurrent plugins (2 x 6 = 12). Is this correct?

There will be more information on the Fairlight Audio Accelerator and interface in the future as we roll out the Fairlight consoles.

Until that time, is the value proposition of the Fairlight Audio Accelerator only based on the real time playout of a timeline – or does it also offer advantages in terms of rendering or caching?

Thanks in advance for your response.

Multiple Edits: Simplification &Clarification

@Peter Chamberlain

When you get a chance, it would be very helpful to get clarification on the three follow-up questions posted directly above.

Thank you.

Now that Resolve 15 is officially released, is there more information regarding the accelerator and audio interface?

The closest thing I could find with an actual hardware photo of the Audio Interface is this: https://www.motionmedia.com/blackmagic- ... gIj4PD_BwE

And apparently the forthcoming BMD product will be based on the SX-36 and will require the CC-2 or "Fairlight Audio Accelerator" as the PCIe component.

Worth mentioning... the SX-36 has MIDI io but as far as we all know, there is no MIDI in Resolve.

Hi all.

Not sure if this is helpful.

C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\audio\Driver. Gave that to device manager with a manual input and theres the driver sorted.

Make sure the SX-36 was connected, then in C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\audio\Tools theres a Flash Utility, run that and it'll flash the card.

Then open resolve and it should then automatically detect the card now it knows what it is and do necessary updates. Now I got it working.

Hope this helps anyone in a similar predicament with trying to get the CC-2 card working with the SX-36 on new version (18) of Resolve Studio.

Any questions happy to answer.

Cheers.

S.