Travagan's Green & Mini speakers Review 2

Travagan's Green & Mini speakers Review

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Value and Conclusion

  • The Travagan's Green is available from Travagans for $240 and the mini speakers are $100 each.
  • Sound quality
  • Build quality
  • Amazing sound from the headphone out
  • Will drive the most demanding headphones
  • Good integrated DAC
  • Simple and attractive design
  • Well thought out layout
  • Mini speaker amp and headphone amp in one
  • Neutral sounding amp
  • Powerful and aggressive sound, very tight
  • Amazing price / performance ratio of the amp
  • Speakers look great, plus they are available in a large variety of colors
  • Exchangeable op amps
  • Speakers lack bass (2" driver limitation)
  • The amp lacks analogue inputs
  • 1/8" mini jack headphone out
The Travagan's Green provides you with amazing value for your money as a headphone amp. The sound quality is just staggering for an amp that only costs $240 and can drive small speakers as well. The sound is very tight, controlled, and refined and quite analytical in its flavour. There is only one major downside to using the Green as a headphone amp and that is the lack of a 1/4" jack on the front, but that is not too big a deal. Another deficit that the Green has is the lack of analog inputs, the integrated DAC is a very good one, but still I would have liked to be able to hook it up to a CD player every now and then.
Another great thing about the Green is that you can swap out the op amps. It is a relatively simple task of removing the top cover and then taking the small op amps out of their socket and putting some new ones in. This allows you to tailor its sound to your needs. For example if it does not synergize well with a particular set of cans you can always swap the op amps to bring it closer to your desired sound. I found the standard setup to sound great with my Grado and AKG headphones, but not so much with my Sennheiser HD580 which are notoriously hard to drive, much like the AKG K701s.
As far as the speakers go they did sound great compared to their size. If they only had real bass they would be my ideal desktop speakers. The lack of bass is of course due to the fact that they are based around a very small driver that only spans 2" across. Of course this could be correct with a sub woofer, and if there is one made for this setup it will be a serious audiophile desktop system. Their looks are very attractive which is a plus for something intended to go on your desk.
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Nov 28th, 2024 12:51 EST change timezone

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