hi hellboy,
to put your mind at ease, i NEVER had any dropouts with drums, even on the most dense file+keyboards, i wouldnt be surprised to find that korg have set it up so that bass and drums are the last to go as far as poly goes...so in my view you will NEVER have a problem with the drums...having a live guitarist overcomes that issue nicely (and remember it was only an issue with me, i dont know about others.....as far as the sampling goes, its a pain but korg didnt develop a way to just add samples on the fly until the ram was taken up, as i said im sure there is a way to load all the samples you need at the one time, its some type of .set file, i know this because when you load the real drums set for example, it loads quite a few drum samples in memory which are then available for use within in any area of the board....this may be addressed with the latest op system due at the end of june, check out the news section at www.korgpa.com but it might just be for the pa800....the other workarounds you want to do, once again in my view, would work really, really well on this board...to be honest if only i could have held off buying a board until after january next year, i would have becasue i reckon korg are coming out with a ripper board at namm 08, just a feeling ive got, but yeah...
anyhoo, i still think you will not be disappointed with the pa, it remains one of the best imo...
dennis