i'm curious... what level do you leave output from the sp at? I sample in real time sometimes straight from my turntable through the sp to my mpc at 12db, jus cuz i can the loudest signal with the softest background noise. can that be too much, or does it not matter as long as it's not clipping?

As long as there's no clipping, go nuts. I do.

yeah i guess it doesn't hurt to just keep everything loud. so is it pointless in general to record in at a lower volume than close-to-max in order to preserve 'headroom?'

If your recording the SP for mixdown then you definitely want the best signal to noise ratio possible. I'm sure someone somewhere will disagree but my answer is, with proper mixing and EQing headroom isn't issue. All headroom is really are empty frequencies, if your samples are EQed to fit in their particular frequency range then technically there's always headroom. Just my $0.02645292739999

when im making beats with heapphones. sampler is always maxed out.

when im mixing down i adjust it to sound good to tape .

I always record at the highest input level I can. The way I see it is, you can always decrease the volume of a sample afterwards and it'll sound fine, but when you amplify stuff it's easy for it to get distorted.

at the current dollar value globally that's only like $0.01676667948392, but i mean it'll change tomorrow.