well, im also new, but yeah, once you have sampled a loop or a single sound, or an intire accapella you can of course play to your hearts content. You can filter it, run effects on it, shorten it, change the pitch, lengthen it, play it backwards, you name it, you can do it. You should be able to take one sound, and completely transform it to make your own sound. you could then say copy it onto different pads and the change the pitch on each pad to play back different samples at different pitchs, like a bassline for example.

As for which sampler, I dont really know mate. I bought a Yamaha SU700, which I got for £549 from digital village. When I looked at the cheaper samplers, the spec seemed to be a bit limiting, so I had deicided to get a RM1-x instead as I wanted an "all in one" box really. But then I saw the SU700 at that price and had to have it :-) Admittidly, once you have bought it, you WILL buy the addon scsi unit and a hrard disk, and also a memory upgrade, but at least you can spread the cost over a few months, and get started straight away. The problem with the cheaper samplers is that they didnt seem to offer as much as computer based programs, so I didnt want to down grade as it were, i just wanted a hands on experince that doesnt limit me to my computer, and the SU definitly fits the bill.

It all depends on what you want to do with it, if you cant afford the yam, then I'd probably go for the Korg, as that looks to be more powerfull then the cheap su200/dr202 (whatever the roland one is) although not as powerfull as the su700. Or you could go second hand, I bought the freeads, and there was a su700 in there for £600, thats more then mine was new :-) But they had some cheap kit that looked quite nice

THope this helps, like i said, im a newbie aswell, but seeing as no-one else had replied.....

Tim