If I missed the answer in my search, I apologize.

I'm really new to the world of DTE recorders and as such I know little about them. I would love to use one in conjunction with my XL2 but from what I see they are offering so much more than what I want and as such I'd be paying for it. So I'm looking for a something that pairs nicely with an XL2 simple solid state recording.

I can't speak for the XL2 but I used a Sony MRC1K on my XL1s.

And you had no issues?

I had no issues. The XH-A1 has a sync issue that is well documented but I didn't encounter that with the XL1s.

There are a couple modes of operation supported by the MRC1K wrt how it follows the start-stop button on the camera. It's been a couple years but I'm 90% positive the XL1s was able to work with the tightest sync mode (least lag between pressing record and the MRC1K recording starting. There's an option in the XL1s for Firewire control that you have to enable.

The cache recording is wonderful. As far as your NLE goes, the Sony plugin for Final Cut Pro nicely stitches the files together.

Well the xl2 is just the next in the xl series and has little to nothing in common with the xh-a1 so i'd assume it would be more like your xl1s experience.
I don't use FCP, I'm all PC dude, Adobe premiere pro CS4 should easily handle the task.