I'll tell you now, I use an MPC 2000 studio Plus, and a Roland Fantom
F-76. Granted, you have an XL, and an S-88, basically making the next step up from my rig, but let me assure you, I know how to operate all the stuff in question here. As to the comparison between the Roland and the Akai sequencing: First off, I vote for the mpc sequencer HANDS DOWN.
Roland just doesn't get it with thier sequencers. Thier F'ing metronome starts off jittery, locking to whatever the LAST beat was in an internal clock that's alway running. Conversely, with the MPC, as you already know, it just starts when you hit start. Or you can easly turn your count in on and off; for ease of use when you are creating, theres nothing like the MPC. I will however, say this, not IN FAVOR of the roland, but as a DRAWBACK of the MPC series: thier machines are really not that powerfull in terms of note capacity. They don;t really hold the polyphony of note storage and midi messages that they boast capacity for. For example: Let's say I'm sequencing a drum pattern from the internal sounds, or even an external keyboard riff, and it's fairly compex, so I decide to do a couple of passes. Boom, I record, lay some drums or whatever, and then stop. When I go back and overdub, I realize I want to erase some notes before I do my second pass, so, I do that first. Upon laying the third pass (the second being a pass of note erases), I realize that the MP has **** DROPPED SOME NOTES OUT! Then, when I try to re-record those missing notes agoan, they won't stick. The glitch stays where it happened. Now, this happens OFTEN with MPC 2000s. They really did improve that on your excell, but you will notice it from time to time if you are playing any really intense stuff into your machine. That being said, the Roland quantizing SUCKS!! If your REALLY nice with unquantized playing, you can get away with just having the s-88 w/ no external sequencer, but then you still have alot less tracks than the MPC. I will also go on record that it is obviouse that the arpegios in the s-88 are way better than using roll button stutters in the MPC to trigger home0-made arpegios into your synth. I mean, it's apples and oranges there, because you can get intricate patterns with the Fantom preset and custom arpegios. Great thing is, you can easily sequence those into the MPC, as long as you let off the keys "precisely" when the loop comes back around. Hope you dig my long-ass opinions, holla back if you need to. One...