Samson Servo 120

Older readers will have heard of the Yamaha NS-10 passive speakers. We're talking about a speaker found in countless studios, but its main virtue is not its linearity. Over the years there have been countless imitations, but experience shows that they are nowhere near the Yamaha originals. However, anyone who buys an antique from somewhere should be aware that if you want uncompromising quality from a speaker, the amplifier you buy will have to be worth several million in Hungarian Forint. Importantly, these speakers do not sound nice! If you just want to listen to music, you may be in for a nasty surprise, The purpose of this speaker is to make it easier for a mixing professional to find any mixing problems in the audio material. In these circumstances, it is perhaps understandable that it makes a difference which amplifier the speaker is connected to. I myself have done a lot of research on the subject and have found an amplifier that is not too expensive, that fits into a Hungarian budget, and that is of the quality you would expect. In the end I came to the conclusion that with a cheaper amplifier you don't get what you want.

So I bought the Samson Servo 120 amplifier. My speaker is one of the older models, so based on the parameters, the 120 version is more than enough. There is simply no need for a higher power amp, the amp will drive the speakers just fine.

One of the advantages of the device, apart from the good sound quality, is that it is only 1U tall and although space is tight, it does not get so hot that it needs to be cooled separately. There is no fan to make noise.

The speaker can be muted with a button, but it also has an extra power-off protection, so when the amplifier is turned off, the speaker doesn't bang, it mutes the channel, protecting the speakers.

The material quality of the unit is definitely good, I don't feel that anything has been cut out.

The amplifier signal-to-noise ratio is 105 dB, which is plenty. What's very important is that the harmonic distortion, the THD, is extremely low. This is essential for good sound quality and this amplifier excels in this respect.

If you have low power speakers, it is recommended to use this amplifier. But the manufacturer also has a 200 Watt version with roughly the same characteristics. I've been using it for three years without any problems and I can say that it sounds very good, despite the low price I don't detect a single drop of compromise.