Fairlight CMI demonstrated by Greg Sneddon

yer, but lets face it, its near impossible these days to get that kind of sound without direct sampling.
You wouldnt want anything better than a fairlight because its too easy

Told me by Ben Liebrand some years ago via email: "A moder PC with a cheap audio card will do better than a Fairlight CMI" .

What a remarkable piece of technology, even by todays standards.
I want to own one now!

5 stars

Some of the later models could do CD-quality sampling.

I've worked with sound manipulation like this using Vienna but I'd imagine it's much easier on a CMI.

Sounds better than some modern samplers.

those devices were too expensive..!

Back in the day, this was a revolutionary device. To this day, I still think the best Fairlight CMI sounds I've ever heard were done by Geoff Downes on Asia's first album in 1982. He was slagged by some hardcore prog fans because he wasn't as accomplished or as flashy a player as, say, Emerson or Wakeman, but he was a good player and the Fairlight sounds he got on that record were fantastic.

In the right hands, this device could make great sounds. Why it wasn't used more is a mystery to me.

price

I saw this back around 1986, they also had a Kurzweil K250 I think and a Synthaxe on other shows.