E-mu Emulator

After seeing a Fairlight CMI at a convention in 1979, E-mu founders Scott Wedge and Dave Rossum began working on designing a less expensive sampler. In 1981 the E-mu Emulator debuted with a list price of $7,900, being less than the $30,000 Fairlight.

The Emulator was a floppy disk-based keyboard workstation which enabled the musician to sample sounds, recording them to non-volatile media and allowing the samples to be played back as musical notes on the keyboard. The floppy disk enabled the owner to build a library of samples and share them with others, or buy pre-recorded libraries on disk.

Stevie Wonder, who gave the sampler a glowing review at the 1981 NAMM convention, received the very first unit (serial number "001"). Around 500 Emulators were built. It was later followed by the Emulator II, the Emax and the Emulator III