Performance

To properly test the Travagan's Green I started off by letting it burn in for approximately 100 hours. The speakers had about 50 hours on them before I passed judgment on them. As far as testing the headphone out on the Green I used the following headphones: AKG K701, Sennheiser HD580 (mods: HD600 grills, Dowin DW12 cable, foam removed), Grado SR-60 (mods: metal grills, added dampening material on the back of the driver, quarter modded pads), Sleek-Audio SA6. Amps used for comparison include the following: Octavart "The One" DAC & Amp, Ray Samuels Audio Tomahawk. The Green was hooked up to my PC with the USB cable supplied with it.

Travagan's Green surprised me in a pleasant way. The amp is near perfect for driving the current hungry AKG K701s and it adds a lot to the experience compared to the Octavart amp. The bass is much punchier and tighter with the Green and the instrument separation is a tad bit better, the sound stage is more 3D like with much improved horizontal separation. It is not quite as smooth as the Octavart, but it comes close and I definitely feel that the better bass and sound stage more than makes up for it. The Octavart has a very well rounded and warm sound whereas the Green delivers some more details and a more even frequency response, the difference is not night and day, but these changes are noticeable.

The Travagan's sound is more geared towards the analytical than the Octavart, which has a warmer and perhaps more musical presentation. Where the Octavart is laid back, the Green is much more upfront and aggressive and this compliments some music better than others, I really enjoyed listening to rock. It really made some acoustic guitar tunes shine, because the contrast between soft strokes and hard strokes sounds bigger on it.

I found the gain of the Green to be way lower than the Octavarts, but it was plenty high to drive even my HD580s to ear piercing levels without being maxed out. With most headphones you get plenty of volume with the dial set at the number three or at approximately ten o'clock. In order to get the same volume from my Octavart I only had to take it up to around 1/5 of its full volume. One of the things I like about the Travagan's Green is that the volume pot is very quiet, my Octavart has way more static when turning the volume control. In combination with full sized cans the Green is dead quiet with a totally black background even at high volume. With IEMs you can hear a little static in the background, but it is nothing horrible. It is not intended to be used with earphones in any way and not surprisingly it does not perform well with the Sleek-Audio SA6s. In that sense the RSA Tomahawk does a much better job at powering these very sensitive headphones.

In terms of synergy, I really liked it with my AKG K701s and Grado SR-60. The two headphones' sound signatures match well with the amps flat sound. Both headphones sound tighter on the Green compared to the Octavart and the treble is slightly more revealing. Detailing is likewise better with the Travagan's amp, but only marginally. Back when I got the Octavart I had a hard time believing that some amp could take its price / performance crown, but that is just what the Green has done.
Synergy is an important thing and you really got to listen to the amp before you can judge whether it suits your headphones. You cannot generalize over headphones because the market is so diverse. I find the Travagan's amp good with the Sennheisers although nothing spectacular, yet it seems to work wonders with my AKG K701s and my Grado SR-60s.

One thing that bothered me all through my A/Bing and testing of this amp was that the headphone out is a 1/8" jack and not a 1/4". This can be pretty annoying because most high-end headphones designed for home listening have a 1/4" jack, this meant that I had to use a 1/4" to 1/8" converter. While that does not affect the sound quality, it is not all that practical because you have a larger object suspended in the mini jack.

The mini speakers have a good midrange for their size. You really should not expect performance that even comes close to big speakers. Since they are based around a 2" driver there is no real bass. Only the deep mid tones are covered which can severely compromise the listening experience. Bass is an important part of most music and therefore some tracks sound really strange when it is missing while others just sound a bit dull or strange. Some of the tracks that sound really strange are the ones where you hear that there is bass, but only very faint. That being said the low end performance leaves much to be desired. Treble extension is also limited, but again compared to their size they do a good job.

Durability

The Travagan's Green is an extremely durable construction. Everything just feels durable right from the jacks to the enclosure. The volume control is quiet and very smooth to operate. My main objection against the design is the 1/8" jack on the front, even though it is fixed in place nicely you will have a big thing hanging out of it when you are using 1/4" terminated headphones with an adapter. The speakers are as durable as the construction allows them to be, plus the paint job is nice and does not seem to scratch easily, but it will not withstand abuse. The terminals on the back of the speakers are very durable.