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

Ok, been really, really itching to start playing out live again (and had a 
lot of requests to do so from various promotors), and I'm running out of 
solutions on the best way to get my songs from the computer to the stage 
in the most flexible way possible.  I've been hoping against hope that the 
XX-7's would support direct sample Rom burning, but I can't wait much 
longer.  And truth be told, even if they could do that, the largest ROM 
available is only 32MB, which is probably not enough for me to load up a 
sets worth of 8 measure loops.  Not to mention it's insane price.   So, I 
think the only way to go as of now will be to bite the bullet and get an 
Emu sampler for live use (damn you Emu, you win again! :) ).  Hopefully 
I'd be doing this at the beginning of next month too, so not a whole lot 
of time to research.

Anyone out there with an Emu sampler care to field a few questions?

1. The best buy right now looks to be the E5000, anyone seen any other 
good deals?  I only need 64 voices, so the 128 thing isn't too a big a 
deal to me.

2. I need to make all of this controllable, right from the XL-7 ideally. I 
wan to power up the sampler, laod my samples and forget about it.  I was 
thinking of setting up each track mute button to toggle a loop on or off 
in the sampler.  Is there an easy way to do this?  I'd mute and unmute 
loops in the middle of playback sometimes, so it's not as easy to 
configure as it sounds.  Anyone working this way?

3. Anyone other things I should keep in mind about this set up?  I still 
want to use some patterns with internal sounds, and some with external 
ones, easy to do?  Issues?

rEalm

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