The second version of the Fairlight CMI, Series II, was released at a price of £30,000 in 1982.
Although it still used 8-bit recordings like the Series I, the sounds produced were of better quality given that the system could handle a sample rate as high as 32 kilohertz and a maximum frequency response of fifteen kilohertz.
The CMI's popularity peaked in 1982 following its appearance on a special of the arts magazine series The South Bank Show that documented the making of Gabriel's fourth self-titled studio album, where he used 64 kilobytes worth of samples of world music instruments and sequenced skippy-rhythm'd percussion.

The Fairlight CMI Series II became widely used in popular music recordings of the early to mid-1980s, and its most commonly used presets included an orchestra stab ("ORCH 5") and a breathy vox ("ARR 1").
The CMI Series II is also credited as helping launch popular musical styles such as hip hop, big beat, techno and drum and bass.

The popularity of Series II was in large part due to a new feature, Page R, their first true music sequencer.
As a replacement for the complicated Music Composition Language (MCL) used by Series I, Page R helped the Fairlight CMI Series II become a commercial juggernaut.
Page R expanded the CMI's audience beyond that of accomplished keyboard players.
Audio Media magazine described it as an echo of the punk rock era: "Page R also gave rise to a flow of quasi-socialist sounding ideology, that hailed the impending democratisation of music creation, making it available to the musically chops-challenged."
Graphically depicting editable notes horizontally from left to right, the music programming profession and the concepts of quantization and cycling patterns of bars where instrument channels could be added or removed were also born out of the Page R sequencer.
CMI user Roger Bolton recalled: "By definition, its sampling limitations and the Page R sequencer forced the composer to make high-quality decisions out of necessity.
The CMI II was a high-level composition tool that not only shaped the sound of the 80s, but the way that music was actually written."
Fairlight kept making updates to the system, such as a 1983 upgrade called the CMI Series IIx which now allowed for MIDI, until the release of Series III in 1985.
The second version of the Fairlight CMI, Series II, was released at a price of £30,000 in 1982. Although it still used 8-bit recordings like the Series I, the sounds produced were of better quality given that the system could handle a sample rate as high as 32 kilohertz and a maximum frequency response of fifteen kilohertz. The CMI's popularity peaked in 1982 following its appearance on a special of the arts magazine series The South Bank Show that documented the making of Gabriel's fourth self-titled studio album, where he used 64 kilobytes worth of samples of world music instruments and sequenced skippy-rhythm'd percussion.
The Fairlight CMI Series II became widely used in popular music recordings of the early to mid-1980s, and its most commonly used presets included an orchestra stab ("ORCH 5") and a breathy vox ("ARR 1"). The CMI Series II is also credited as helping launch popular musical styles such as hip hop, big beat, techno and drum and bass.
The popularity of Series II was in large part due to a new feature, Page R, their first true music sequencer. As a replacement for the complicated Music Composition Language (MCL) used by Series I, Page R helped the Fairlight CMI Series II become a commercial juggernaut. Page R expanded the CMI's audience beyond that of accomplished keyboard players. Audio Media magazine described it as an echo of the punk rock era: "Page R also gave rise to a flow of quasi-socialist sounding ideology, that hailed the impending democratisation of music creation, making it available to the musically chops-challenged." Graphically depicting editable notes horizontally from left to right, the music programming profession and the concepts of quantization and cycling patterns of bars where instrument channels could be added or removed were also born out of the Page R sequencer. CMI user Roger Bolton recalled: "By definition, its sampling limitations and the Page R sequencer forced the composer to make high-quality decisions out of necessity. The CMI II was a high-level composition tool that not only shaped the sound of the 80s, but the way that music was actually written." Fairlight kept making updates to the system, such as a 1983 upgrade called the CMI Series IIx which now allowed for MIDI, until the release of Series III in 1985.
Fairlight CMI