Samson Technologies Headphones

The S-Phone is made by Samson, it is a 4 channel headphone amplifier that has 3 outputs on each channel. It has 5 input channels and 4 output channels. You can rack this unit up to keep out of the way in the studio. I have used his unit about 10 times in total over the last 2 years. It control has a volume options, panning knob, and high and low filter knobs. You will need to put a stereo signal into the auxiliary port on the front of the S-Phone so you can get full sound out of both sides of your headphones, because otherwise you will only get sound out of one side of your headphones. Mainly we used it in the studio to have volume control over all of the headphone sets that we had at the time. It gave us exactly what we were looking for it and it was very quiet. It didn’t push any hissing or humming through our headphones. Even when messing with the options like panning and high and low pass filters it didn’t push through any clicking or any sounds at all. I have used similar models in the past that any time you messed with an option you could hear some sort of a click or noise through the headphones which could get really irritating for anyone who has the headphones on. The value of this unit for what you get is great, you will get a very quiet unit that will give all of your headphones in the studio a quiet signal with crisp and clean sound quality. I would not purchase this if you don’t have several headphones that need to be listened to at the same time. Otherwise you will just be wasting your money with this unit. If your studio is a decent size and need to have multiple headphones hooked up then this is a must have.

The SR850’s come in at a very low price, for them to be 60 dollars the frequency response is pretty good! They are a pair of semi open studio monitors that have a driver size of 50mm. They come with a ¼ adapter as well. When it comes to price and performance, I would choose these over some of the Sony headphones that cost almost double what these do. Though the SR850’s have a great frequency response and they are affordable you still need to be careful with them, they don’t take much wear and tear and can break on you easily. They also can be a bit heavy when it comes to overall sound. I would not plan on getting a perfect mix with these but if these are all you can afford they will hold you over until you can afford to upgrade and invest into a solid long lasting pair. The Samson SR850’s are comfortable to wear for long periods of time, they can be adjusted to fit your head size and they fit perfectly over my ears. I did not use these long, they became more of a regular set of headphones for me to just listen to music in. The bass sounds solid and it is very clean, the highs are crisp. But the mids are the issue when it comes to mixing in these headphones, they seem to make the overall sound really heavy to me. The SR850’s mid range is a bit shaky and can mess up your whole mix if you try to fully mix in these monitors. But I am happy that I purchased them and wouldn’t take it back for anything because they are affordable and great to have around in case I am going somewhere and want to take a decent pair of monitors with me to listen to some rough drafts of stuff that I have recorded. They do need some changes but what can you expect to get for 60 dollars. This is about as good as it gets for that price range.

Its cheap and it works great, but it seems to color the signal somewhat. When running the cans through the 003 rack and then switching over to the Samson its like something’s missing. It doesn't seem to have the same depth as the 003. I know we are talking about $1200 equipment to $100 equipment, but I use the 003 for headphone monitoring and use the Samson for people are tracking in the studio. Its a great tool for tracking and being able to run 8 headphones off of this thing is great. It's 4 channel, but you got 4 outs on front and 4 on back. There is only one pair of ins so only one mix can be sent to all the cans mono or stereo. They have eight outputs each. If you buy the optional rack mount unit you can fit two of them side by side in one rack space, and they can be daisy-chained indefinitely. That gave me 32 stereo outs in just 2 rack spaces! Doesn't sound AMAZING, but for the price, and what I imagine most people need, it's great. Overall, It can drive any older studio phones (like the AKG 240s) and Wal-Mart Fodder (50 ohm Koss things). Its easy enough for any client to use in a recording booth too. No frills. But good sound. Here is something else that is important too: It can accept the hot levels that the Digidesign 192 IO can spit out. Many headphone amps cannot accept such a hot signal and they distort from the get go (only way around it is to solder 10db pads). So if you're looking for a little addition to your HD setup, this will give you clean volume for days. Once again you wont get 1000 dollar quality if you are only spending 100. But this will get your pretty close to that top quality for a very low price!

Samson Audio's Q5 is a simple, five channel headphone amplifier box to be used in the recording studio. It's a really basic box, but it's definitely nice that it has five channels, as it can be a one stop shop for headphones in a smaller recording studio. We've got one of these in one of the smaller studios in the studio complex where I work, and never even really need to use all five of the channels. On the front panel of the Q5, it's got five channels each with a 1/4" input for your headphones and a volume knob for each. It also has a button to choose either a mono or stereo feed, and an input volume knob. In the back it's got two sets of 1/4" connections - one stereo set for your inputs, and one stereo set for stereo linking. It's also got it's own power supply. The whole box is pretty small as well, and would definitely be easy to move from place to place if you wanted to. While five channels may not be necessary for home studios, if you're looking for a cheap enough option to have some extra channels just in case, this is probably the way to go. It won't change the sound quality at all, or at least it shouldn't in theory. Even if it isn't the cleanest signal, it's fine for monitoring during recording. Again, I'm not sure that five channels is really necessary in a small box like this, but it's nice to have anyway. There are a lot of headphone boxes to choose from, but not too many with five channels at this price. If you're looking for something with more flexibility per channel, this probably isn't the box for you, but if you're looking for quantity in terms of channels in a headphone box at a reasonable price, the Q5 is the perfect choice...