Its definately more complicated, but I can still find a sample on my record and get sampled and chopped in moments, then put into the loop. It DOES have a steeper learning curve, but its only because they're are so many more options. As a semi-intelligent human I would never let anything like a steep learning curve stop me from getting something, they normally pay off more in the end. Basically I'm not worried at all, I've spent one day with it and I've already got the basicas down without even reading the manual much.
The lo-fi effect is cool, there are different paramaters on it so I don't know how accurately it EMULATES the sp1200 (capitalized for emphasis, it is just emulating it meaning it will never be the same), but you can route the effect to go through the input so everything you sample will have that lo-fi feel. That's a tough one, you'll have to make up your own opinion on that. I recorded a mixdown from my song i made (a track of different patterns put together with a scratch track of audio over the top) and sat there and tweaked out the lo-fi effect over the top of it as it recorded, made hella strange sounds. i don't understand the MFX yet, there are 4 different auxs to route too, along with the input and masters but I can only seem to use one at a time. Not an issue if you resample but it does seem like i should be able to use more than 1 effect at a time. Manual time.
Workflow seems like it will be better at the mpc for what i want to do. in pattern mode it is pretty much the same as the mpc, but the song mode seems 100 times better than the mpcs. The menus do get deep and you do have to push a lot of buttons to get there, fortunately the color screen is pretty to look at and I don't mind. However the VGA monitor is supposed to make things much smoother by allowing you to right click and bring open shortcuts and shit like that, so once i get one i should be set. Anyway, this thing is a beast, and i don't regret getting it at all. If you do your proper research before you get it so you know what you're buying you should be happy.
As for timing I don't know what people have been talking about. you can either quantize when you record... or after you record... or not at all.
