Yeah, thanks to the great customer service, the ‘issue’ has been resolved. I think if anyone else may get confused by the manual, I’ll just post the email reply I recieved:

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“Regarding the bar count reduction problem, from what I gather the 45000 is actually working correctly there’s just one important thing to know: when you start the Electribe to begin recording on the 45000, the 45000 does not immediately begin recording, it first goes through a 1 bar count-in (you should see the TRACK 1 LED blinking during this time) where it is not recording but preparing to record. The 45000 actually starts recording on beat 1 of the following bar, the second bar. So you have to account for this 1 bar before you actually start playing any music and when you decide to end the loop.”
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I understood the manual in a wrong way, making me think that by activating the “quantize” mode in external beat/sync mode, the count-in is switched off. That was my fault.

The issue with the button push delay seems to be the result of a bad formatted SD card, so all is well!

Thanks for the support!