An interview from the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas with Bob Caniglia at the Blackmagic Design Booth. Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest 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.

At NAB 2026, Blackmagic Design announced Fairlight Live, a new software-based live audio mixer with spatial audio mixing and SMPTE-2110 broadcast workflows. Fairlight Live easily handles thousands of audio channels, working with standard computer audio or USB audio from ATEM live production switchers. Fully customizable, it has built-in effects and professional features such as a cue player, talkback busses, snapshots and more! Fairlight Live public beta is available immediately from the Blackmagic Design website free of charge.

Fairlight Live makes it easy to design a custom mixer with flexible audio workflows that are perfect for any project from stereo to 5.1 surround or immersive formats. Add, modify or move inputs and busses at any time. Customers can easily change a four host panel show into a remote guest setup, or route a stereo input to an ambisonics bus in seconds. Audio channels can be managed in the tracks index to show, hide or rearrange inputs and busses.

All productions are saved as a complete show including the mixer layout, routing, processing, cue player, snapshots and more. The file menu lets customers quickly open existing shows or create a new one. To accelerate setup, factory templates for common workflows are included plus there are layouts to match supported ATEM live production switchers. Unique productions can be custom built in the new show dialog. Shows also include virtual soundcheck setups and media, plus key system settings such as solo mode.

Fairlight Live supports hundreds and even thousands of input channels across a variety of formats. Each channel has built-in EQ, dynamics and panning options to control input levels, placement and clarity. Versatile format based panning includes 1D, 2D, 3D, and a spherical panner for ambisonics and spatial audio. If their workflows include plug-ins, customers will find four effects slots per channel with ChainFX hosting six-plugins per slot for up to 24 plugins per channel for their favorite native and 3rd party VST and AU effects.

Customers can create a customized bussing structure in Fairlight Live with flexible signal paths in standard formats that can be added, changed or rearranged dynamically as the show evolves. Use the bus management window via the window menu to add main, sub, aux or mix-minus busses, and choose format, name and color. Assign input-to-bus or bus-to-bus routing in the bus assign window or right in the mixer. Save time by assigning multiple mixer channels simultaneously. Built-in intelligence offers automatic up/down bus conversion for cross format compatibility.

Customers can use the output matrix busses for distributing unique mixes to multiple, separate destinations like stage monitors, translation feeds or recording devices without touching the main program mix. Supporting up to eight simultaneous output mixes, Fairlight Live offers quick matrix setup and routing with precise level controls so customers can balance and feed a mix to the live stream, another to the broadcast truck and a third to the remote production teams.

Designed in collaboration with professional sound engineers, Fairlight Live Audio Panels streamline workflow, acting as a natural extension of the software. The intuitive, task based design puts the controls customers need right at their fingertips. There’s a large touchscreen for every group of 10 faders so customers see a graphical display of everything happening on the panel. Customers can see channel strip information, levels, EQ, dynamics processing, plug-in interfaces and more. With three models to choose from, they are ideal for home studios, small suites or large live broadcasts.

“Fairlight Live is the world’s most powerful live audio mixer. Being software-based means it is free from the limitations of traditional hardware systems, the only limitation is the power of your computer,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. "Whether you are a podcaster using a professional audio mixer for the first time or a sound engineer used to working with hundreds of channels, Fairlight Live has everything you need. You can even add a professional Fairlight Live Audio Panel. It’s going to be crazy seeing how customers use the power of Fairlight Live!”

For more information please visit: www.BlackmagicDesign.com

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