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

As Jonathan mentions, it isn't really a sampler per se.  It's more like a phrase
sampler and can do some really impressive things within an ocatave and a half of
the original solo material.  It can do realtime tempo changes and a good job at
pitch shifting with formant correction to let you make changes to a phrases
pitch realtime with a keyboard including harmonizing.  Pro's, lets you get funky
with solo sounds and drum beats, samples fit nicely on a zip disk so you can
swap out during a performance and make backups etc.  Cons, well you can only
play four different samples at a time and since it's streaming from a zipdisk
you can actually overload it and get it to stutter. You also have to encode
before hand and although you can do it on the box, it's faster to use the roland
software (I believe you ave to pay for it) to batch encode them on your
computer.  Also the pitch changes with formant work best on material within an
octave or two of the original material, and doesn't work very well if it's not a
solo instrument.  So what on earth do people use it for?  Mostly vocal lines,
harmonies, horns, mostly solo instruments.  The timestretching is great but you
can do that with a cheap copy of Acid, and if you have a normal sampler you can
chop it up with BeatSlicer or ReCycle etc and then apply swing to the midi
afterwards.  The pitchshifting can be done basically in Acid or the software
Jonathan mentions.  But the VP9000 lets you play it realtime and it does sound
good within that range, it can be very natural.  Is it overpriced?  Well yes,
but the sucker was originally $2500!!!!  For four samples at a time!  Do you
need one?  It's NOT a sampler, more like a phrase sampler.  If all you want is a
phrase sampler pick up an SP808 and an internal Zip250.  If you want to make
whole instruments and don't give a damn about vocals or making it sound like the
original sample, then get a sampler.  Whoops I seem to be posting a little bit
too much...
Andre