Makes a nice eq & amp for your laptop or ipod. Excellent build quality!
I bought this item with the intent to run it between my stereo and speakers on my mini home system. It didn't work though as this unit can't handle the power of a home stereo. It can however run between an ipod and the aux-in on your home stereo. I think it is really intended as effects for a live musician as the build quality matches other effects pedals I've seen.
The real use for me, as I found out, is as an eq & amp for my laptop. It works nicely for this purpose. I furthered the sound quality by adding expensive headphones and amp($350 Graham Slee Voyager with $500 Grado RS2 headphones). Wow! The GS amp greatly improved the sound. But I'm always trying for more so I hooked up the eq between the amp and headphones. Dude! Even better! Now I chain them both to my Grado's. My laptop music system rocks!
My next purchase will be a portable DAC as my internal laptop DAC is junk. Not many choices for DAC's however.
I give this 5 starts for value and build quality. 3 stars b\c it is not really portable as it requires the AC adapter to run. (I wish it used a battery). Also the bypass light seems backwards. The light comes on when bypass is active. I would rather the light came on when the eq was active. (Not sure why they did it this way).
You may want to also check out the Behringer FBQ800 MiniIFBQ 9-Band Graphic Equalizer. It looks good. But I don't know anyone who has tested it against the Samson S-eq. Please post if you have used both as I'm always interested in upgrading.
-R