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Samson D-2500 (No Longer Available)Item ID: D25001-channel 31-band Digital Equalizer with 100 Presets, 24-bit/96kHz Processing and MIDI Control 
Sorry, the Samson D-2500 is no longer available. We've left this page up for reference only. Check out the great alternatives on this page or call toll-free (800) 222-4700 to speak with a Sweetwater Sales Engineer about similar products. From Our Research Team:Stereo Digital EQ With 1/3-Octave Precision!The beauty of Samson's D-2500 Digital Graphic Equalizer is that it has 31 bands of real hands-on faders for 1/3 octave control frequency control. In addition, the D-2500 has a stereo master gain control with fader, programmable delay, high and low pass filters, noise gate, limiter, and enhancer. You can store up to 100 program settings for instant recall, so when you return to a room, the D-2500 will guarantee you optimum EQ settings at the touch of a button.High-resolution digital processing The D-2500 Digital Graphic Equalizer provides 24-bit audio resolution at sample rates up to 96kHz to ensure ultimate audio quality. MIDI control lets you integrate the D-2500 into your audio system, or you can use Samson's proprietary D•Net System Interface to interconnect with other components. The D-2500 and the other Samson D-Class processors bring you the best digital performance with the function and feel of true analog equipment! Samson D-2500 Digital Graphic Equalizer Features:
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ReviewsBest money I've spent
by David in Baja from Baja, CA, Mexico
I purchased a D-2500 with very high hopes but very little expectation. There were no decent reviews for it anywhere on the internet. I downloaded the PDF user's manual and it too didn't answer my ques... read more [+]tions. So I bought the thing on hope. After all, it is very affordable and it has every feature I was dreaming of, namely: a single set of faders to control both right and left channels simultaneously (I hate the redundancy of adjusting two channels independently), 45mm faders and the option to select gain/cut levels of either +/-3, 6, or 12 db- I was thinking at +/-3 db with 45 mm faders I would have absolute precision for dialing in my sound (more on this later). And I loved the idea of being able to store curves and settings in memory to my heart's content.
I had fears before purchasing the unit, and these are the questions I was combing the reviews to get answers for, and these are the reasons I'm writing this review for the next guy: I was terrified that the unit would introduce noise or distortion into my system. Right now we have a Yamaha 32 channel mixer, Rane 15 band EQ, DBX crossover, 3 good amps (Peavey, QSC), 1 set dual 15" JBLs, 2 sets single 15" Community's, and a set of 18" passive B-52 subs. The system rocks- we play it hard, and it is totally noise free- it's pristine. Our speakers are positioned well and play well together. I wanted to go to a 31 band EQ in hopes of clearing up our house sound more, if possible, and I wanted to free up our 15 band EQ in order to dedicate it to our drum kit. There were no reviews that said weather the unit truly was noise free, or not- though the manufacturer claims that it has "pristine audio quality". So does Behringer about theirs but many reviews say otherwise; so that's where my fears came from.My second concern was: at what db increment does the D-2500 work with and save to? In other words, as I move a fader up does the unit adjust the sound in 10ths of a decibel, 1 decibel, 1/2, or otherwise? I couldn't get an answer to this anywhere. When I adjust the sound on our Rane EQ I can detect the very slightest movement of any fader, even using the +/- 6 db range, so I know I'm sensitive to incremental adjustments finer that 1/2 db cut or gain. A competitor who makes a similar digital 31 band EQ does post such info about their unit and says that theirs saves at 1/2 db increments. I thought this would be totally unacceptable as I was sure I'd end up wanting an adjustment somewhere in between a half and a whole decibel of cut or gain.
So, ok, this is what I found after installing the EQ and dialing in our Venue:I am utterly delighted with the unit! - though I had to overcome some of my first impressions of it- I will explain.Noise free? ABSOLUTELY! As pristine as I could ever hope. Kudos to Samson.Quality? Nearly perfect; every last detail except maybe hairline adjustability/accuracy of the faders. The faders (otherwise), the knob, the overall construction, the LCD, the program, the interface, the performance; perfect.Function? Incredible, but- this is where my first impression wasn't good. First off, it only saves to the 1/2 db increment, whether you use +/-3, 6, or 12 range. It was going back in the box and being sent back! But I decided to try the thing since it was already hooked up in my system.This is a legitimate complaint about the unit: at +/- 3 db range with 45mm faders working in increments of 1/2 db you have a lot of dead space travel in the faders before you get to your next increment of change. You push a fader up for what seems like an eternity (especially if you're used to working with analog units with 20mm faders) before you see that the unit registers your first 1/2 db gain. You keep pushing the fader up and nothing changes- and you push up, and up (mind you this really isn't a lot of travel but just seems like it) and then the unit finally registers the next change to 1 full decibel- and it stays at 1/2 db again until you push it up far enough to get the 1.5 to register. Essentially in my opinion the +/-3 and +/-6 db ranges are useless on this unit- but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater! The +/-12 db range matches the 45mm faders perfectly, and the way the digital/LCD interface works with them it's a dream to dial in with th!is baby!
My second negative observation from my first impression was that the unit was utterly unresponsive. With the Rane 15 band EQ, as I've already said, even the very slightest fader movement was detectible in the change of the sound in the house. Here, with the Samson unit flat across the board, moving faders full range didn't seem to make any real discernable difference. "Into the box!" I thought! But alas my curiosity had me. I started making some pretty brute adjustments in a curve similar to how I had the Rane curved, and then I started to notice the responsiveness improving as I started to get the house flattened out- as things started getting closer to flat overall the unit's responsiveness started becoming very apparent. This is what I figured out: I'm used to 15 bands at 2/3 octave; this unit, at 31 bands and 1/3 octave is only affecting the amount of sound per band as the Rane unit. Duh! Therefore it seems as responsive to the ear. Plus, I figured out that truly, as you adjust bands that are the width of those on a 15 band EQ, the amount of cut or gain needed can be significantly more for any one band to achieve the same effect in the same house as what you used on a 15 band EQ. Where I was cutting or gaining maybe 3 db on any one band (2/3 octave) with the 15 band EQ, now I'm pushing up to +/-8.5 db on some bands (1/3 octave) on the 31 band unit. Like I said, as things flattened out, this unit became perfectly responsive to the ear. (Part of that is due to the fact that it only adjusts in large increments of +/- 1/2 db; once the house is near flat it's pretty easy to hear +/- 1/2 db change on any certain band.)
Another thing that freaked me out is that the first time I moved a fader it's illuminator went out and didn't come back on. I thought their illuminators were crap. Come to realize, it's part of the coolest feature this unit has! I pink (dial in) using a pair of Sennheiser HD-280 headphones. I compare their sound straight from our CD player with the same sound after it comes through our system then out our speakers in the house. The Sennheisers have a flat enough response and isolate well enough that I can hear a fairly pure flat signal from them even with the house playing at the same relative volume. They put out a sound quality that is on the same level as our sound equipment, it's very good (but there's better out there). So I listen to the head phones, then listen to the house, make an adjustment to the EQ and listen to the house again to see if the adjustment was where I wanted it to be- and this is where that non-lit illuminator comes in! It's the!last fader I moved! So many times, even on the 15 band EQ I'd forget which band I just moved, and sometimes which direction. (You know that in order to pink a house by ear you'll be making hundreds or thousands of adjustments before things are flat, and it's easy to get lost in them). This unit makes pinking such a smooth procedure. To get exactly 1/2 db cut or gain with any fader, move it just until its illuminator goes out. With the first detected change (which is 1/2 db) the unit turns off that fader's illuminator and turns back on the illuminator to the fader you moved before that. If you want to know on which band your last move was, look to see which fader isn't lit. Did you forget whether you moved it up or down? Hit the A/B button and the unit lights a LED either above or below that fader to show you which way to move it to get back to where it was. What a dream! Also, as you move any fader up or down its frequency band value and db adjustment level are displayed on the LCD. It's very easy to adjust the faders while watching the LCD. I couldn't imagine a better, more practical or more intuitive interface.So, is the 1/2 db adjustment increment fine enough? For my system? Totally. I haven't found a band yet where I wish I could adjust to somewhere in between a half or a full decibel increment.
Is it worth putting into a system? I have gained a ton of clarity and brilliance in my system with this unit. The audio quality truly is pristine. The Rane I was previously using is a top quality unit with patented "Perfect" technology; I think it is an exceptional product; it definitely wasn't the brand name I was trying to get away from! But by going to 31 bands instead of 15 I have been able to clear up a lot of frequencies I just couldn't reach, pinpoint or isolate with the 2/3 octave swath of the 15 band Rane. Rane makes a 31 band digital EQ with analog interface that's probably superior in fidelity to the Samson, but it's out of my price-range and frankly I like the features and interface of the Samson more. With the Samson I can hear details of music on our system that are only apparent on some very fine home systems. The highs are so clear, flat, defined and crisp., The lows are as flat and present as what I get through the Sennheisers.
So what's the worst thing about the unit? Samson's lack of addressing one certain characteristic in the owner's manual that cost me an hour's worth of adjustment and probably has caused others to believe the unit is defective, as I did: When you save a program it saves each fader value to the nearest 1/2 db. When you recall a program (or curve) the unit displays, through LEDs, weather you need to move faders up or down to get the relative position of the fader to match the processor's adjustment value for that fader. You see the faders are simply a relative interface for the processor. That's obvious. The procedure to null out the faders is simple and straight forward and takes very little time. The issue is that if you save a program and then turn the unit off and then on again without moving the faders at all, and recall the same program you were working with, it will tell you that you need to move some of the faders to match the program; which you !know shouldn't be so. It appears (but really it's not defective) that the unit doesn't save the info correctly. I wrote down each value for each band and went to experimenting; what I found is that the unit saves the program perfectly. The issue is that the faders don't hold their exact relative value from when you power the unit down or switch between stored programs. The manual doesn't cover this and anyone that owns this unit needs to know it. When you power the unit on or load a saved program you need to load the program and null out the unit at least a couple of times in a row. I think I must be overshooting the null spot when I null things out. When I load a program and null the unit out then reload the program it shows me bands that I have to adjust again- I re-null it out then reload the program- and there are fewer bands now to null out. By the third or fourth time I load and re-null the program my fader adjustments are matching the program values exactly and then I can proceed with using the unit.
Don't let this sound too complicated for you; it's simple and the whole thing takes way less than a minute, and I don't consider it a drawback at all- not compared with the fact that you can store curves in the thing and recall them instantly! To reload and re-null a program that you're already working with, or the last one you were using before you turned the unit off the last time, you just hit the load button twice, null out a few faders, and hit the load button twice again, null out a couple more faders, hit the load button twice again... until no null LEDs show up. I don't know why the faders don't hold their exact position; I don't know what excuse Samson would give for the situation (maybe temperature variance?), but the solution is painless and it does the trick; you just need to realize what you're working with. I wish Samson would have covered this in their manual.What's the best thing about this unit? Owning it. It was the perfect solution to my needs, and has every feature I was looking for and then about 12 more! I haven't tried all the other features, I don't have a need for them; if they work as nice as the rest of the basic features they'll work fantastic.If your method of pinking your system is more sophisticated than using a decent set of headphones to compare to how your house speakers play your favorite CDs then maybe you'll find shortcomings with this unit. I have a very discerning ear and cannot find any shortcomings with the performance of this unit at all. Quite the contrary, I am totally impressed with its performance. I couldn't imagine $200 going farther on the purchase of any other single piece of equipment.A couple notes on pinking with headphones- 1) Use good headphones. 2) It's vitally important that the volume on your headphones matches the volume of your house. 3) ALWAYS double check to see that your system is sending a flat signal (or your desired enhanced signal) to your headphones and EQ!Bottom line, this would be the first thing I bought if I was putting together my dream system. I love the features, the interface and the performance. It's a great value and a great piece of professional quality equipment.Follow up comments after owning and using the unit for a couple of months: I still love the unit. After dialing in our sound the first round I have adjusted this unit very little. Our house sounds fantastic no matter what we throw at it. There were two bands out of the 31 that had extreme gains on them to bring those frequencies out enough to match what I was hearing on the Sennheisers; one was at 100hz. This ended up giving me problems with low end feedback so I had to drop that adjustment to a 1/2 db under flat which is still higher than the faders around it. I don't miss it in the house and I have no feedback issues whatsoever.The input/output LED level meter seems errant. It indicates peak or overload at very low levels; however I haven't noticed any audible clipping whatsoever. I just ignore the meter, as trying to work within its ranges leaves me with very little signal coming out. Like I say, running the unit fully in the red, full time, doesn't cause any negative effect to the sound at all, and there is no smoke coming from the unit (in other words it doesn't appear to be hard on the unit at all). Where I have it adjusted the volume in the house is similar whether the unit is in bypass or online.Two great benefits: My master fader on the soundboard works now! What I mean is that before our house was dialed in flat we had a lot of low frequencies resounding throughout the house. At a set volume you could get a performance to easily sound how you wanted it but it would be dependent on those levels of resounding bass. If you lowered the master fader and dropped the overall volume in the house you'd lose a significant amount of the resounding bass- and now your highs would stand out like a sore thumb! You'd have to remix the whole thing to get it to sound right again. With the house playing flat there is much less resounding bass involved; volume adjustments don't affect my mix anywhere near what they used to. This is nice. I can get my mix at a loud level during practice so I can hear the details of what I'm adjusting, then just drop my master volume for the service without a lot rework on the mix.The second benefit is that I can adjust channels on my mixer using the Sennheisers and that same isolated solo signal I'm listening to and adjusting sounds the same as it does in the house. My work on voices has flourished through this. close [-]
March 31, 2009 Music Background: Live Sound Engineer 
Samson D-2500
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