Fran, a Wersi model, now I’m really starting to believe in you.

John C.

At least he forgot it!

Zawinul was an avid Chroma user and rightfully so, it's an amazing synthesizer.

Unfortunately sonically most modern samplers can't compete with the Fairlight. The Fairlight CMI III has fantastic AD/DA converters, a 100 kHz sampling rate, and the most bottom end and raw sound I've ever heard from any sampler to date. Sample an analog synth into the Fairlight and it actually sounds like the original. Drums are spectacular as well. By todays standard there are samplers with much more RAM and polyphony but for sheer raw, organic sound, nothing beats the CMI III.

I sampled many of my own sounds as well as used the Fairlight sound library which is great. FYI.... most modern Korg synthesizers/workstations utilize many of the Fairlight sounds as Korg licensed the CMI sample library a while back. Unfortunately the Korg samples bear little resemblance to the original but still sound good. Other companies also used many of the Fairlight sounds although they chose to "lift" the samples rather than license them. At least Korg saw fit to sample the RAW material rather than steal it.

I quite liked the CS-01 and actually bought the last new stock Yamaha had many years ago. Many saw it as a toy until they heard it piped through my recording console and FX. It didn't have many sound colors or flavors to choose from but it was very nice. Unfortunately a synth collector offered me an insane amount of cash for my new in box CS-01's and I couldn't resist selling them. Today they still seem to fetch a good price but are more of a novelty than a mainstay. Too bad the CS-01 didn't sound like a CS-80 in such a diminutive instrument. Now that would have been one hell of a synthesizer!

100kHz in mono, though. 50kHz for stereo, wasn't it? (Still better than any hardware, though)

Still, AD/DA's on software samplers are as good as the soundcard you are using. Use an Apogee, or Prism, etc., and you ought to have close to Fairlight quality, shouldn't you?

Plus, of course, you never really go D/A... you just render in the digital domain, and it NEVER has to hit the analog domain... that ought to keep things pristine!

It does have a bit of a shock value when heard through bigger speakers...the 32' stop was always good for those deep drones, and the pulse width mod really fattened it up even more.

I run mine through the S900's mic effects including the harmonizer...I can get some pretty cool sounds....mine's a Mk1 with the grey case.

I also had a Jupiter 8a...sold it a while ago...got an offer I couldn't refuse...it was pretty awesome, but I was traveling a lot at the time, and had no room for it.

The "a" had a 14-bit processor as opposed to 12-bit...more stable, and it would tune up far faster.

It's still working and in a friend's studio...for analog, nothing comes close to it, IMO.

You're fortunate to still have yours...does it have the OC8 and MD-8 retrofits? They added, amongst other things like primitive MIDI capability(only note-on note-off information), a floating split point.

I ended up with a Roland JX-10 which I just sold a year or so ago...another cool piece of kit.

Ian