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Travagans Colors Portable Headphone Amp |
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Value and Conclusion
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| 8.3 | The Colors is a very special little gadget that can help to provide a much better sound quality in some cases. The major problem as I see it is that it has limited use because if you hook it up to a DAP with a bad headphone output it will still sound bad - it will just be louder. Now if you have a DAP with a good headphone out like some of the old iPod Nano or perhaps a 1st generation Shuffle this is the perfect way to get way better sound out of your headphones without adding that much bulk to your portable rig. There is no doubt that the Colors is very well made from a technical point of view. The Li-Ion battery pack is nice and is probably the sole reason why this amplifier can keep on playing for up to 19 hours before beginning to distort. It is not quite the 24 hours promised by the manufacturer in my case, but I am sure that with a couple of efficient headphones you could achieve that. Even while only giving me 19 hours of play time that is still over twice as much as my other amps. There is a lot to be gained if you have a pair of hard to drive headphones that you want to use with your DAP. However, you should not expect it to drive Sennheiser HD580/600/650s or any other headphone in that class well. I tried it with my modded HD580s and stock AKG K701s and the results were not that good. Then again I have yet to hear a portable headphone amplifier that can drive the HD580s or AKG K701s anywhere near their full potential. |
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