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I have owned the XL-7 since the day it came out in canada. I recived the first one to enter Toronto, it was the demo modle for the store.
In the begining the box was buggy, and I mean buggy! But after 2 updates they have it working verry well. It now feels very solid and is much tighter than a computer.
I hated the fact that it did not use a floppy drive for storage at first but now that I have spent some time with the ELoader program that comes with it I am glad that I got used to this new way of dooing things. The Eloader program now works with USB and is very stable.
The sounds are hit and miss with me. I love the kits hole heartedly and have heard them in a club and they kick some serious booty! as for the leeds I don't like em much at all. I am more of a juno, JX-8P kinda guy. But that is just the presets. The waves that make up the sounds are very good and I can get some old skool sounds out of this box but it takes alot of work. The basses are fat and sweet as well as some good bleepy bloopy sounds for that electro/acid type of sound. The hits are good and come in usefull more that i would have ever thought. The bottom line when it comes to the sounds is this (in my opinion) they all fit together well, the box sounds like one box. this is a good thing in the end but it is best to use it with a varity of other sound sources. This is the same with all electronic music. Keep it ritch.
As for the sequencer, I love it. It took a long time for me to get used to using a pattern based sequencer but now that I am it kicks ass. The thing is as close to a computer sequencer as you can get with ought all the crap. It just makes music and thats it, and it does its job well. I mean 32 midi channels and 16 tracks what more do you realy need?
I have heard alot of complaining about the way that the FX sound are layed out. This I dont get at all. Ok first things first. They dont sound like a 1000$ fx unit but for the cost of this unit they sound great. And as for the way they are layed out I dont see any reason to get confued, anyone who has used a mixer with 4 FX sends should not have any problem. There are four sends and two fx and you just set the levle of send for each of your four busses and you send your indevidual sounds through the buss that best suits your needs. Again this box is best used for the heart of a studio.
As for the padds they are also fantastic! I wright almost all of my music now with a 13 note Padboard in stead of my 5 octive synth, I have to laugh but they are great for drums and work fine for entering melody. It only gets stupid when I am trying to play more complex melodies.
When i went to buy this box I said "I want the best external sequencer for making techno" and a long story short I traded in my RM1x in for the first xl that came to toronto.
I am very glad that I held on for the new OS to be finished, it was totaly worth it and I have peace of mind that i have what I asked for. The best external sequencer for making techno.
If you want to make clasical look to the yamaha QY7000.
If you are looking for the way out of the computer then you found it with the XL/MP7 and no they did not pay me to wright this.
Peace
Mike G
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