E-mu samplers are the best made, Akai's all sound much much more mechanical ie. not organic, their filters are all thin and vitually useless, Where my E-mu sounds rounded and organic, and doesn't lop off half the bass when sampled as my akai used to love to do. All in all, you get a better sampler, more features, american written manual (as opposed to the engrish (spelling wrong on purpose) that you get from Japanese companies). Easy interface, and cheaper too, you make the call, Less features, worse sound, crap manuals, more expensive too, so why do all of you so called pro's keep buying the akai pap?

E-mu is the way to go, and it reads akai samples anyway -- so no reason at all to ever buy more jap-junk.

This sampler is the best I've ever used, bar none.. 5 marks..