Equipment

Synthesizers : samplers and sampling

One kind of synthesizer starts with a binary digital recording of an existing sound, which is then replayed at a range of pitches. This is called a sampler.

Sampling can also be used in combination with other synthesizer effects. Some popular software synthesizers take a sampled sound and process it with software-based filters, reverbs, ring modulators and the like.

Sampling started out as the purview of academic researchers with access to mainframe computers. The appearance of the Fairlight CMI in 1979, the first well-known digital instrument capable of sampling, started a revolution. The Fairlight was used on scores of popular recordings by artists such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel and Art of Noise. The costly, complex and rare Fairlight (and an equally costly competitor, the New England Digital Synclavier) caused California company E-Mu to introduce their Emulator I in 1981, a lower-cost sampling keyboard which could save sound recordings to floppy disk.

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