Fairlight CMI

The Fairlight CMI (short for Computer Musical Instrument) is a digital synthesizer, music sampler, and digital audio workstation (DAW) introduced in 1979 by Fairlight. It was based on a commercial licence of the Qasar M8 developed by Tony Furse of Creative Strategies in Sydney, Australia. It was one of the earliest electronic music workstations with an embedded sampler and is credited for coining the term sampling in music. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed with the Synclavier from New England Digital.