2500 or 4000?

hi
i have been considering buying an mpc for a while to use in a couple of different ways. I make dub/roots/hiphop with an Ibook and Mbox and want to take my tracks out live, playing them through separate channels on a desk. the mbox doesn't have enough outputs and I tried a show with my laptop and it crashed midsong! so I want something more reliable onstage. A friend transferred some tracks from my laptop system to his 2000XL, but they sounded very different going from 24-bit to 16-bit on his MPC. I really want to keep the hi-fidelity of ProTools, and was wondering if it was just his machine? Has anyone else experienced significant fidelity loss in this way?
If I can achieve reasonable fidelity with a 2500 or 2000 then I will get one as the 4000 is much more expensive.
Secondly, is there any way to transfer files from an Mbox to an MPC in a quick and easy way? A kind of digital dump or something?

thanks in advance for any help

remember the 4000 is much bigger, not always easy with live shows (transport, weight etc)

but the 4000 is 24 bit capable, but the 2500 is only 16 at its max.......

obviously what you need is multitrack recorder not an mpc

kersey wrote:obviously what you need is multitrack recorder not an mpc

That's what it sounds like, yeah.