I didn't expect it to be this simple and fast to use for the complexity of features this thing has. Samples can be timestretched or pitch tuned over a beat which surprised me because I was able to keep the beat running and timestretched a guitar in realtime. You can't do that on the Live! Unless its through menus. Chopping can go all types of ways, you can record something and hit the pads in a sequence and it'll continuously sample across as many pads you like or hit Slice button. The sound is beautiful defining many shades of darkness as well as lightness with awesome clarity.
What caught me off-guard, so I'll let you know, is that this machine has a read-only memory and not the traditional read and write ones we have, so whatever you sampled in there will be lost when you power off. No biggie, I installed a 64GB USB stick and problem solved even though I took a trip to Walgreens at 3am to buy one because it does not take SD cards. And my other gripe is that you can't output the song and the external source at the same time through one output, this has two outputs however, so one output is the DJS' output and Output2 can be used for the external source, but both can't be on the same line. Means you gonna need another input on your mixer.
Other than that a dope machine for making beats especially if you coming off an SP505, this will set you free. For production studio, only if you a strictly standalone cat
