I was looking for a good quality mixer to connect various synths and grooveboxes to a hardware recorder and allow me to send signals to 3 different places - Hardware recorder, FX Loop or direct to the main output.
This is the smallest unit I could find that had 8 channels as well as alternate/cue out, FX loop and stereo return channel. The only other mixers that offer this are much bigger.
Sound quality is great, EQ is powerful and I have no need for cheezy built in FX. The flexible routing of signals makes this a real swiss army knife of audio.
Sometimes its a little confusing trying to get the FX loop and Alt send working together so you always hear FX when you want to, but thats just a setup and practice issue.
Of course there are a few small things that would be nice extras - level control for the Tape In/Out, stereo Aux send - but for the price and size, this is an amazing piece of gear.