I have a question re. the BK-9 that the manual didn't clarify much: I know that it can play wav files from a thumb drive, but does it apply time stretching too? The manual is rather confusing and says that you must choose the same tempo as the style and verify that it doesn't go out of synch in time.
I wouldn't want to time stretch too far away, though. In fairness, some of the better software time-stretching apps do a better job, so if you want to go outside 10BPM from a loop's original tempo, you'll probably have fewer artifacts by stretching it in the computer first. It's not that the Roland is bad at this (I've heard PA3x's and S950's time stretching algorithms, and they seem no better), it is simply that good computer software is better...