Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Hello all, I've been eyeing the XL-7 for awhile now and I think I'm almost 
ready to make the purchase.  I had a couple of questions though, and 
wanted to run them by you first.  I hope you don't mind and can help me 
out.  Let me give you a quick background first, so you know where I'm 
coming from and can tailor your answers accordingly.

I'm 26, from Chicago, and I've been writing electronic music for about 7 
years (although I've been producing a lot longer than that).  Mostly deep 
trance although lately I've been doing more and more breaks, DnB, and even 
some downtempo tunes.  I started out doing live pa's based on a Korg X2, 
then gradually added mc303, mc505 (I'm a moderator of that eGroups list, 
know that box inside out BTW), sp808, ER-1, CS2x, S3000XL, K2600XS, and 
more.  Through some bad luck I ended up having to sell most of it though, 
and now I'm pretty much doing everything in the computer (1.0gHz AMD, 
Cubase 5.0, Reason, Wavelab, tons of VSTi's and plug ins).  Lately though 
I'm missing creating on the a groovebox, thus my interest in the XL-1.  I 
also gig weekly as a DJ (played a lot of clubs and parties in Chicago) and 
own my own studio geared towards electronic music and DJs.

Ok, on to the questions:

1. When you're creating new patterns, is it easy to make changes to your 
programs (sounds?  Not sure what E-mu speak is for programs) without 
leaving the sequencer environment?  What I mean is, if I'm working on a 
pattern, can I tweak and save sounds as I go, or are they generally two 
seperate processes?  The nice thing about the mc505, was that you didn't 
have to stop your creative flow to save small tweak to a sound.

2. How well does the USB interface work?  Lots of glitches, or is easy to 
transfer SMF's from Cubase for editing and vice versa for example?

3. I know you can mute and unmute parts easily on the XL-7, but is it hard 
to slowly bring in a part?  I'm used to the sliders on the mc505, is tehre 
a dedicated volume knob for each part you can use?

4. How many tones can make up a program?  2, 4, 8 ?

5. Do all the LFO's and delay times sync to external BPM?

6. Honestly, is anyone experiencing any bugs, or features that don't work 
properly?  I'm basically going to be using the drums in Reason, and then 
syncing the XL-7 to that (via ReWire in Cubase, since Reason doesn't 
transmit MIDI) for most of my instrument sounds, anything I should be 
aware of as to why this might not work?

Thanx to everyone that can help me out, it's really appreciated. Hopefully 
I'll be able to get one soon, and be a useful contributor to this lsit 
notlong after that!

rEalm
http://rEalm.iuma.com