When I was a young Scout lad, I collected badges. My arm was full of them, and any chance to earn a new one, I took it. As an adult, I’ve done the same with DAWs: Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Ableton, maxMSP—the list goes on. Naturally, when I started video editing, I opted for DaVinci Resolve, Blackmagic’s powerhouse for editing, colour grading, and, dare I say, sound.

Last week, a production company reached out with an intriguing project: Could we edit all the sound in Fairlight, DaVinci’s built-in audio engine, entirely over Blackmagic Cloud? The goal was to avoid the time-consuming round trip of exporting and transferring AAFs while maintaining full control throughout the editing process.

Fairlight surprised me. Proxy media and full-resolution 48k 24-bit WAV files were transferred quickly through the cloud, cutting at least an hour from my usual workflow. Fairlight’s DAW-like handling of audio was smooth, though with certain video-centric quirks. I especially appreciated features like layered non-destructive edits, which made undoing overzealous noise reduction a breeze.

Admittedly, I ran into a few issues with exporting proxies settings even when only exporting audio bounces, but overall, I was impressed. Could Fairlight in the cloud become the new standard for audio post-production? It’s certainly efficient and cost-effective—two words producers love to hear.

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