Yeah it's the same thing, but they are marketed towards different sections of the population. They're just trying to expand their market with the same product, cheap tricks if you ask me.

that is hilarious!!

trying to pull the wool over our eyes...pffft

Damn, it seems like akai is trying to go into different shit. I would like to see them make an descent quality akai version of the asr-10. I aint getting my hopes up though

Yeah, a new version of an asr with multiple different A/D converters so you can get that real oldschool sound. From what I understand the Linn Drum has different sampling freq's but probably just one A/D converter, so all the lower sample grades are most likely audio processed to that bitrate rather than actually being converted by a lower bitrate chip.