Fairlight CMI Series II

The Fairlight CMI Series II is a sampling synthesizer and digital workstation released in 1982. It had 8-bit sampling technology with a Page R 16-track sequencer featured.

Stewart Copeland used a Fairlight CMI Series II during the mid-1980s, which he first bought around December 1984. He used it very heavily for work on The Rhythmatist and also for scoring the first series of The Equalizer. He usually used a Friend Chip SRC SMPTE Reading Clock to synchronise it with video as well as other instruments, such as the Oberheim DMX drum machine. Sampling-wise, on the Rhythmatist record, Stewart captured a variety of sounds with the Sony PCM-F1 digital recorder while in Africa and on a later date transferred them onto the Fairlight.

He commented the Fairlight was a "a great machine with lousy hardware". It was relatively easy for him to learn how to operate the machine, which he likened to learning the guitar in one interview. He commented that the Synclavier - the Fairlight's competitor in the sampling synth & workstation market, which fellow ex-Police member Sting was associated with - had a better sound and was more powerful, but it wasn't as easy to master and took up lots of time in the studio to achieve something with it. But with the Fairlight, it was "three chords and it's down, [then] you can screw around on it from day one, almost. But at the same time the Fairlight has a lot of depth and you can get better and better at it".