here's the deal...
the Black ASR-X is the center of my world so I know this joint like my mama. I bought mine when it first dropped, that's old school player! LOL! If you take the time to learn it, it can work wonders for your beats. The built in effects are wonderful as are some of the built in sounds as I never have to sample hi-hats or latin percussion, i just use the internal sounds and drop effects on em or detune em to switch em up.
Keep in mind that it has a 2 line display so you will be editing by numbers, so if you are used to visual waveform editing, this is just gonna frustrate you. But I have been doing it so long it's second nature, plus the ASR does it by percentages which is a bit easier than straight numerical style. But I love how the pads are set up like a keyboard vice MPC style.
I would suggest that you buy the RED ASR-X Pro vice the black one because the black one does have some sequencer issues. It slips time when you start to mute tracks on the fly. You have to catch it on the beat when you mute or you will throw that bitch off. The red one supposedly fixed that problem plus it has an updateable Flash OS so you can get the latest OS from the web or some bootleg OS and update it by floppy. Also the red timestretches, the black doesn't although you can do it the old fashion way (change speed and tune up).
Anyway for what they run for on ebay now.. youget more than your money's worth. hope this helps.