After the first 10 minutes it was easy to create beats and load pre-made samples, even apply effects. But it was not till a few days later when i sat down with the manual did i really begin to love the ES-1. The sampling system is great! After about 40 minutes of tinkering i had erased all of the (reallllly shitty) pre-set samples and had created a 40 samples of my own drums and another 10 of random stuff from my gameboy to counter-strike. The sample editor is really easy to use and the machine has enugh memory (especially if you buy an extra card) for alot of music.

The actual pattern making and song construction was easy to use as well, alowwing basic patterns from 1 16 part step to 4 16part steps and much more space for linking patterns together than you would ever need. Effects can be applied like Distortion, Reverb, Flange, Decimator, Pitch Shift, Iscolator etc. Also there is a seperate secion for delay, both have sync'ing options with the song. The samples all have a basic pitch, level, filter and pan options, all with roll buttons and a slicing system which i have yet to experiment with.

My only complaints are these: 1)When put into a pattern the sound is weak compared to when you just listen to the sample by pressing the preview button, but this can be fixed by amplification meathods or the filters on the actual face of the electribe 2)The edit section (filters the samples) can only be put to one setting per pattern, meaning only distortion for all the noises, or only phase for all the noises etc.

I have yet to experiment with seperate midi-controllers connected to the ES but i hear its great. Overall its many features and simple learning curve definatley make it worth the 180$ i paid for it (ebay). With the right stereo to 1/4 jack converters you can sample anything with a headphone jack, an audio out jack, and thats not counting buying the smart card USB connecting for your computer and doing straight computer to card samples.