I'm thinking about buying an XP-80 but I have a question I need answered first.
Does it have any knobs or slides that i can tweak the filters with in real-time? I want to be able to use it for trance.

You have 4 Slides - Res/Cutoff/Ataack/Decay
and 2 more for your choice.

Dror is right.. You have 4 sliders for tweeking (and they also work for other things too like editing and so forth.. not just for the sounds...) There are also the 2 assignable ones by the joystick.

Squeak

how do you ise the 4 sliders for editing ???

Dror,
Im not sure what page of the manual it's on, but when I owned the XP-60 I used the sliders for editing sequences too.. Check in the manual about the pallet sliders. It will explain all the different uses for them. I have to admit that the XP60/80 are the easiest synths I've ever used. The XP series has great expansion and the new non stop loop recording is a plus... Also another BIG PLUS for the XP series is when you record a song and you make changes to a performance, you don't have to Store them to user memory.. The disk save function has a nice feature when saving called "SONG+SOUND" This saves the song and performance data as one file (and it's small too)... That's why the Roland techs all say when using a performance always use POP SET 12. Then when you load back your song all you have to do is make sure the pop set 12 performance is selected and when you load the song it will restore all the changes.. I wish my Yamaha EX-7 had this feature
It's very annoying with the EX because you have to save the performance to memory, then you have to insert a blank measure at the begining of the song so it can read the changes, and the you have to assign the performance to the song (A LOT OF BUTTON PUSHING!!!!! BIG PAIN IN THE ASS!!!!)

Squeak