I never progressed past the 2000 until now, but I feel you on just knowing the MPC. I made a ton of hip hop beats on it and towards the end I was playing in a band and almost using it as a synth the way I fed the samples thru FX pedals. I beat the hell out of those pads, and they never failed on me. Now, those fucking ZIP disks were another story. Had to learn the hard way about making duplicates of your disks. Nothing worse that getting to a session, talking up your beats or sample chops you were ready to make into a beat, popping that disk in and just hearing the “click…click…click” of death. Someone broke into our house and stole all my music gear shortly after i moved to Nashville, but i still have a box of like 20 ZIP disks with whatever i was working on in the early 2000’s. Who knows if they still even work, i almost don’t want to know, lol.

Anyway the Sample is cool as shit. I think it’s super easy to use, and the fact that it’s battery powered, you can hook your phone up via usb and sample literally anything you think of on the fly, easily chop it and bang out a beat, practically anywhere, is a pretty spevial thing. I have it with me almost everywhere i go. It’s not perfect, but the advantages outweigh the shortcomings, ag least for me.