Hi Sinclair,

It all depends on what you want. Samplers are great tools, especially for being able to keep your sounds fresh. The nice thing about samplers is that, when you want a new sound, you don't have to go out and buy a whole new synth. With a lot of the sample-playback synths today, that is pretty much what you get.

A big advantage for samplers is for doing drums and orchestral work. I have not heard synths produce the same quality drums or orchestral sounds as samplers with good sampler libraries can. Keep in mind though that orchestral sample CD Roms are expensive. There is one library that costs $3500 US!

Anyway, a sampler is a good option. However, there are some important things to think about. If you don't have time to sample (and edit) your own custom sounds and don't have the extra money to invest in some sample CD Roms after buying your sampler, you may want to look at the option that Seep mentioned and go with an e6400 Ultra instead of an E5000.

One thing that I will note though is that I didn't really like the sounds on the 8 CD's that come with the e6400 Ultra. You may like them though. If you do, then it is a good start since you won't have to buy a library from the get-go. You should plan on investing in an external SCSI CD Rom drive and hard drive (or Zip/Jaz) that is compatible with the E-mu sampler.

This is a big part of why I bought an E5000. They are about $400 difference in price. The biggest differences are really the 4 outputs vs 8 and limitation of 64 voice polyphony on the E5000. However, when I priced it out, to go to 128 voices on a e6400, the expanded e6400 cost just a little bit less than buying 2 E5000's. I went the route of being able to buy 2 E5000's instead. Now, I'll be able to load up 256 MB of samples instead of 128 MB of samples.

Oh well, both samplers are great and well, worth the money. I prefer them over the Akai's as EOS is more stable currently.

Good luck with your decision. Once you've used a sampler, you'll wonder how you ever made music without one. HTH

Fernando