The 'Mother' of all samplers. The technology that today is used world wide to compose sampled sounds started with the The Fairlight CMI. Featured on the program 'This Week' from ABC-TV Australia (1980) and is demonstrated by one of the designers Pete Vo
The Fairlight CMI (short for Computer Musical Instrument) is a digital synthesizer, sampler and digital audio workstation introduced in 1979 by Fairlight.
It was based on the commercial licence of Qasar M8 dual-MC6800 microprocessor instrument developed by Tony Furse of Creative Strategies in Sydney, Australia.
It was one of the earliest music workstations with an embedded digital sampling synthesizer. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed with the Synclavier from New England Digital.