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Okay, I have to amend my earlier criticism of the SU700 and this is my final amandement I swear. I should clarify my last post by saying it was inspired by a moment of sheer frustration. I have nothing to complain about with Yamaha support, who went the extra mile and sent me a brand new replacement. When they sent me the new one, I didn't open it for a while, and considered selling it to buy a Emu Ultra rackmount sampler. In the end I decided to keep the SU700. Here are the reasons why:
1: It's a great live instrument with excellent real time control, with dedicated control knobs for ten tracks at a time and a ribbon controller (the filters sound especially cool using both at once).
2: I cannot live without the onboard effects. There are some very cool effects that you won't find anywhere else (except possibly the A5000). I would pay for them as a stand-alone processor.
3: The sequencer is very easy to use but is surprisingly fully featured.
4: The display is simple and easy to read even in pitch-darkness.
5: I've had great results with it so far (check my mp3s at mp3.com/hooptyheaven: the SU700 is the basis for most of the tracks).
Now for the main drawback: it's not the smoothest machine. It's only crashed on me twice, but trust me it will crash, probably the one time you forget to backup. My SU also has difficulty communicating with it's Zip drive. Sometimes I have to restart the machine up to five or six times to get it to access the Zip. The guys at Yamaha don't seem to have a solution for this.
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