Second, I read somewhere that SU700 accepts .wav. Hmm... I could not get my machine to accept wav files. Only aif. Maybe it is a feature you have to select, but I have not come across this in the manual or while experimenting. Maybe a more experienced user knows more about this. But as far as I know it only accepts aiff.

Ok on to the US700. I really don't think it's worth the current $700 retail. $400-$500 is more like it, and you can find it for that price used easy. I haven't dug deep in the programming. The manual is something like 350 pages. So this is based on my preliminary fiddlings. As with most yamaha gear, it favors someone that likes fairly indepth programming, like the RMX1. It's fairly intuitive, but if you wanna get max results, the reading the manual indepth is invaluable. If you're no stranger to sampling, most of the upfront buttons and knobs will be pretty intuitive.

Pros: Most functions are a couple of button pushes away. Effects - Wow! Very professional. You can assign 3 at once. They are very accessible on the fly, even editing the effects themselves. Sampler itself: Rates, etc. - Very professional sound quality sampling!! While it doesn't have a LCD screen, its editing features are very exact, maybe even more so than looking at a wave form with the naked eye. Midi like editing features: The SU700 contains a lot of editing paramters (slicing etc. related to how midi functions. This makes editing samples pretty efficient. Delay: The delay is automatically synced to tempo! Sweet! No fiddling around trying to match the delay to the beat. Yay! Live performance: Once you learn your way around the machine, considering all samps are loaded, weeee!! Hella fun! You can even add effects to sound through the audio in, that's not sampled.

Cons: Upgrades - This is why I said it's not worth $700. Upgrading this won't be cheap. The Simm is not the typical 168 pin PC-100 or PC-133, but the 72 pin EDO, which costs around $90 for a 32 meg stick. 16 megs is around $50. So to max out the Ram will you around $180. Slow loading: Floppy or SCSI upgrade (around $200?) doesn't matter. Either way, loading is very slow going. Midi: The SU700 doesn't seem very midi friendly, despite the midi type editing parameters. I'll have to fiddle with this feature more. But out the box, miding this thing up to other gear doesn't seem easy. Vocals: This is a phrase sampler, so obviously slicing and editing beats is a lot easier than dealing with extended vocals. It handles vocals loopwise very well. But time stretching vocals are a bit of a pain. There are several ways to edit around this, but that will take some digging.

Overall, it's a great machine. The upgrades wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so expensive. While it has some limitations that are glaring, the features it does has, and its programming depth make up for it. It's no MPC3000, but then again, it does a few things that the MPC can't. And the MPC costs about 4x as much. If you are on a budget, (buy it used) and want professional sound and effects, and ease of features (read manual please) this is your machine. I think it's great.