Yep as lampdop said, its different than 16 levels. Theres some other small subtleties like, like on the xl theres a monitor for midi signals, so you can see the chanel thats being transmitted to the mpc, zone edit is easy as cake to use on the classic and I doubt very much different than the xl, although for my money lemme use the data slider and chop that biddy by ear on the asr... The differences are so minor, there is no autochop on the classic, but theres a way to come pretty dang close to it using the 16 levels of velocity of adjusting some params and it chops the sample up for you. It may be a little janky and not as nice as the xl's autochop, but hey we make due.
What up Xabiton! Made it over from FP eh? Your gonna love it, honestly I have seen no overwhelming need for the xl, I can time stretch on the asr, granted its quite a lengthy ordeal. Or I can just timestretch on pc and sample from pc. I use it as a midi controller for Reason with ASR working with it. So I would say considering what I have, I have the best of both worlds going right now.
One thing I did was I kept thinking that I needed a 2500 or 1k because it was newer, When I would jump on one at GuitarCenter, I was way more productive nailing out a beat in like 5 mins and playing and adding after that, it seemed that the 2k would pale in comparison (I refuse to mention or use the word workflow in any context... but the 2500 was intuitive and really familliar so it just breezed on through.) and it had cf cards etc. Nope, what it was that I was not patient, or studious enough to sonI found out that everythign I wanted to do, could be done on the classic, I just needed to learn what my machine could do. So I am trying to do that and I Swear to goodness, I havent felt like I needed anything else other than What I have now and the Delta 66. Oh I would absolutely mug someone for that arp_wav sample from the 2500, it was on the demo unit. I haven't had much luck with that though...
At any rate you will see its a pretty easy machine to do stuff with, and as I can see a bit now, its nearly as capable as the xl.
If this ends up all being jibberish apologoes, tjhe muscle relaxer has kicked in and its now bed time.
Peach chillren.