i use only an mpc5000 and thus do all my mix-downs on the machine.
although the audio track editing features are far below a contemporary software DAW, and although the effects are limited, (a total possibility of 10 with two on each of the four effects busses and both the master eq and the master compression)
other than those two limitations, ...you can bounce down audio, or record to the eight audio tracks, and still perform all forms of basic edits, including different forms of fading, cut/copy/paste, silence, gain, etc.
as well as the mixer for the 8 hard disk tracks.
it works, ...really, the way the mpc 5000 is, ...if you had an external mixer, you could use all 4 of the midi outs to control 4 different sound modules, and without recording a single one of those, when you do a mix down, you can set it to record, (through the mixer) all incoming audio, ...so that would give you up to 8 instrument/vocal audio tracks, 4 sound module tracks, and up to 64 midi program/synth tracks.
that's good enough to get you going, ...eventually you might feel like you need more, but that is a very descent basic foundation.
