i resample everything anyway, no midi what so ever. midi might be handy come to think of it...
You don't Midi up your Hardware to your Hosts Clock?
I assume you only make short riffs... non Midied riffs come out of time and don't sound right.
If you're sampling a single hit, no problem, but riffs and beats won't sound right.
My suggestion for the OP would be to start with either an Electribe EA MKII or an Electribe ER MKII. One rocks as hard or harder than a real 303 (imho) and the other is amazing for making synthesized Drums.
Both are fairly cheap used and, very easy to program, and once midied up to your Host, will yield years of fun and quality noises.
http://www.synthesisers.co.uk/eaMKII.htm
She's a bad lil mamajamma! ^
When paired up with the ER MKII - you can make Electro at any BPM for the rest of your life.
Pair both of those up with an EMX and it's on like Donkey Kong.
The EMX is an amazing tool, the sequencer is twice as long as the ER and EA... but the major difference is that the EMX is essentially a Rompler... it takes sampled waveforms and gives the user a lot of flexibility over the sound whereas the EA and ER are both full fledged digital Synths that create the sound from (math) Algorithms. The Filters on the EA and ER are superior to the EMX... but the EMX has a lot of quality fx built in. All 3 of them are worth every penny imo.
Then, when you've mastered those and you're ready for the big leagues, you can try on this Master of the Drum Machines.
http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/machinedrum.php
Everytime I pull this out ^, I never get anything done, because I get lost in all of the presets... I'll turn it on and sit there for hours tweaking patches and creaming over how amazing it sounds.