As far as this piece of gear goes, its probly the most usefull thing I have in my studio. Being able to sequence everything without hassle and program beats with it make music making very easy. And the built in multiple outs make everything a breeze to record and produce. I had originally purchased an used mpc2000, and traded it in a couple weeks later for the 1000 just because I wanted the multiple outs and the access to 128megs of sample ram.

As far as sound goes, this is great. For a portable studio solution, I couldn't think of anything better.

Because Somtimes people just buy stuff because the way it looks makes them feel better and then pay a whole bunch of money for features you don't think about using (4000 users.

I bought the mpc 1000. I think it can be the best. The file tranfering is the best. The memory is alomst as good as the 4000.

The biggest flaw is sampling. When you are chopping up the sample you have to dial in the # of the spot you want to edit if you don't want to take all day scrolling over with the wheel.

If you've already owned a mpc don't get this one to sample. Because usually you are looking for a better sampler. You may not want to take the time to learn how to sample faster when you are still trying to perfect the sound of your samples.

Since it's you can get it possibly for $700 (i bought new on ebay for $680 including ship) I would use it for storing sounds and drum programming but that's it. Don't think you are going to get a now $800 piece of equipment to sequence 2 keyboards and 3 modules.Uh Uh mm! Not going to happen. Tha't why it costs so cheap and you hear it drops notes and samples.

So in all if you are just going to use the sounds, programming, and doing traveling doing live gigs. then this is the will be BEST MPC ON THE PLANET TO YOU