I own an MPC as well.....which I love dearly. Very hard to choose between the two as I use them in completely different ways. The Yamie does all my sequencing and the MPC is primarily my drum sequencer. You are right, the fact that you can sample your own drum hits into the MPC put's it up there in God territory (especially to a Big Beat fanatic like myself who could never find a drum machine that contain all the sounds I wanted). In all honesty though....IF......I had to be stuck on an island with just one machine I'd take the RM1X. It's a creative dream. I think I'd spring for one of those new for $650.....then wait untill the MPCs come down a little further on the second hand market as soon as the XLs become more establised (I got mine with the expansion board and 32 mb Ram and a hard case for $800....if you can find a deal like that go for it).

If you have any other comparison questions post something in the Yammie section of the Gas station and I'll gladly jump in.

5 outta 5.

Best sequencer made under aside from the few thousand dollar doepfer sequencers.

More features, more tracks, better resolution, fairly easy to use (manual sucks but anyone with half a brain should be able to get the basic idea's into their headspace without too much difficulty). Usable drums, knobs transmit over midi, mutable parts, more effects than anyone will ever use -- and they're all programmable, presets are nowhere near as bad as the 303/505 (like I really care about those though) -- but they are pretty good for the most part, great midi implementation. Disk drive records as standard midi. And a for a sequencer a large readable lcd screen!

All in all -- forget the roland 303/505 gb's for sequencing -- if you need a sequencer you'll not only save money with an R1MX but you also get a much much better sequencer/remixer all at $649 you just cant beat it.

Unless you're willing to fork out several K for high end sequencer from the afformentioned Doepfer then this is hands down the best sequencer made now. As a caveat though I've never seen/used an MC-80 yet -- it may well be a very good sequencer too, but who knows -- they're rare as hell.

The sounds as been said before, range from usable to plain ol bad. The analog sounds can be very interesting though when tweaked real-time with the cutoff and res knobs(soo much better than on the 505).

The sequencer is of course what really shines in this product and let me tell you ...it is the bomb!

I've used a lot of gear (mc-505,mpc2000,asr-x,e-synth...) and i can tell you the sequencer on this thing is the best i've ever used, truly outstanding!

The large lcd-display is a huge bonus, i don't think i've ever seen such a detailed lcd display actually. you can see the knobs and faders of all 16 channels move in real-time as you tweak the knobs(this amount of detail has only been achieved on high-end cpu sequencers).

speaking of tweaking, the rm1x does record knob movement.

the groove/swing function is extremely detailed, letting you clock-shift every note up & down to the smallest increment if you want, letting you change the feel of your beats exactly as YOU want. In most sequencers, you are stuck with preset 'swing quantizations'.

I could go on and on about the wonders of the rm1x sequencer...much has been already said below so don't be lazy and read the reviews ;)

This unit hooked up to a sampler (may i recommend it's cousin the A3000) would be a DEADLY combination. add up a sound module (like proteus2000) later on the road and you would truly have an amazing complete setup!

By the way, i don't believe the Rm1x is part of the all-in-one/average-at-everything line of products. if used solely as a sequencer (with maybe just 1 or 2 tracks of internal sounds) you have one of the BEST units in that department.

the mc-505 might have better sounds, but it's sequencer is like comparing a Gameboy to a Sega Dreamcast system. If you want dope sounds, juss get a sound module anywayz.

If your still thinking about getting a 505, i'm sorry but you'll NEVER achieve the pro level of things (thank god i returned mine and got this jewel!). see, no matter how good the sounds are in it, the sequencer will always SUCK and never be on par (8-tracks is RIDICULOUS).