Fairlight-CMI

I'm not going to add more heat to this discussion than already is, but I 
have a few thoughts....

As a mere hobby-musician (Fairlight-less I may add) I can't help think 
that there might be a distinction between "a Fairlight sound" (an 
instantly recognizable Fairlight preset such as the "Orch5" orchestra 
hit, or that Fairlight voice which I asked about previously) and "that 
Fairlight sound" meaning a particular audio characteristic instantly 
recognizable by those who hear it (regardless of a Fairlight preset 
being used or not).

Having said that, speaking for myself (naturally) I can't say that I've 
been able to know when a Fairlight has been used on a record and when a 
non-Fairlight sampler using a Fairlight preset has been used. I just 
happen to think that some of those legendary presets are quite cool 
(which other here say are crap) and I don't care where they come from as 
long as I like the song.
But who am I to speak -I don't own a Fairlight, I'm not a professional 
musician, don't work in a studio as an engineer/producer, nor have I 
owned every hardware sampler there is, so I can compare ;-)

On a sidenote, I'm very curious about the Fairlight (which is why I 
joined this group) and would like to know what those CMI III sounds are, 
which everybody is talking about here.
I already have the CMI IIx sampling CD (audio-CD which is a pain, as 
opposed to a data CD with ready-to-use AIFF samples), and recognized 
many of them, but I'm not sure if I've heard any CMI III samples (or 
perhaps I have without knowing it).



Hallvard