Does the Ketron use sliced audio, or are the loops time-stretched or -squeezed in their entirety?

One thing I used to like was that ReCycle used to only timestretch the tail of the slice automatically, leaving the transient at the beginning usually untouched. Depending on software, of course. But I remember being able to slow loops down quite a bit without smearing the attacks.

Without the full power of a modern computer doing the task, most arrangers that I've listened to that can slowdown loops introduce some pretty obvious artifacts in less than 10bpm of change. Speeding things UP doesn't have as bad an effect, but 20bpm is usually pretty noticeable.

I'm still a big believer in better drumkits rather than audio loops. Once you get a kit with round robins and 16 or more velocity layers, and a decent drum room impulse on it, it gets VERY hard to distinguish from live drums, and you COMPLETELY do away with the main loop problems. Most modern drum VSTi's are hard to tell apart from loops, but the MIDI file playing it can be sped up or slowed down with ZERO artifacts , and different drums can easily be swapped in and out.

Personally, I think we need a couple more generations of CPU's before arrangers can manipulate audio in realtime with the same quality as a Melodyne or Waves Soundshifter. And even those aren't as transparent as an SMF playing a good drum VSTi...