[HeadphoneAddict]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhy /img/forum/go_quote.gif would all of these be capable to use with an old jvc shelf system i have? i've got it connected to an old 2move using one of these right now (can't remember what these are called): 2move connected via usb to my laptop. i think the 2move underpowers them and there's a little more hiss than i'd like which may or may not be be the amp's issue. not sure about this stuff as i just began this setup. this thread just caught my interest with all the speaker talk. i'm just interested in an amp/dac combo that can drive both headphones and speakers adequately.

Your question is not very clear. When you say "the 2MOVE underpowers them" are you referring to the JVC as "them"?

If the JVC shelf system is "them" and you are feeding the signal from the 2MOVE?, and you now want to switch from feeding the 2MOVE into the JVC and use the Travagans to feed the JVC speakers, then I don't think you will get much of an improvement.

If you are getting hiss, turn up the 2MOVE volume and turn down the JVC volume and see if that helps. The 2MOVE is very quiet, so I suspect the hiss is coming from the JVC shelf system. The lower the volume knob is set on the JVC, the lower the hiss should be.

Now, if you are planning to get the Travagans Green to connect to laptop instead of the 2MOVE, you could connect the speakers to the green directly and the hiss would go away. You would not need to use the 2MOVE or the JVC shelp amp anymore.

 

[rhy]

"underpowered" meaning to be able to keep the JVC volume not more than a few notches i have to turn my 2move all the way up to get the volume i want.

the red/white cord goes from the jvc receiver to the headphone out of the 2move. if i were to purchase a travagans it would be to replace the 2move. i just figured since it was advertised as a speaker amp as well as a headphone amp it would give noticeable improvement over the 2move, at least for my speakers if not for headphones as well. i have no issue spending more than travagans retail, but i did admire the size of it as well. i made a thread yesterday looking for a midsized amp/dac combo that doesn't have to be portable but easily transportable (small enough to comfortably throw in carry on luggage).

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhy /img/forum/go_quote.gif "underpowered" meaning to be able to keep the JVC volume not more than a few notches i have to turn my 2move all the way up to get the volume i want. the red/white cord goes from the jvc receiver to the headphone out of the 2move. if i were to purchase a travagans it would be to replace the 2move. i just figured since it was advertised as a speaker amp as well as a headphone amp it would give noticeable improvement over the 2move, at least for my speakers if not for headphones as well. i have no issue spending more than travagans retail, but i did admire the size of it as well. i made a thread yesterday looking for a midsized amp/dac combo that doesn't have to be portable but easily transportable (small enough to comfortably throw in carry on luggage).

I think the Travagans will do the trick for you, and if the headphone out doesn't provide enough voltage into the JVC Aux input then you could still connect the speakers directly to the Travagans (a speaker switchbox from somewhere like radio shack would allow you to keep the JVC connected for CD and radio but switch between the JVC as the source and the laptop as the source).

A Nuforce Icon desktop would also work like the Green as your USB DAC (replacing the 2MOVE in your rig), with the addition of a Pre-amp out as well as the headphone out and speaker outputs. The pre-amp out could feed the JVC speaker rig, where a headphone out isn't really designed to do that. The Icon will also let you connect two devices with analog output into it, like an iPod and an external CD player.

 

[rhy]

i'm a little confused by the setup when you say i can hook up the speakers directly. you're saying there's a way to connect the speakers directly to the travagens? i don't use the jvc unit for anything but the red/white input on the back to play my mp3s through speakers. i have no need for the unit if there's a way to bypass it completely. i've just never seen any amp that allows the plug in of those red/blue speaker wires.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhy /img/forum/go_quote.gif i'm a little confused by the setup when you say i can hook up the speakers directly. you're saying there's a way to connect the speakers directly to the travagens? i don't use the jvc unit for anything but the red/white input on the back to play my mp3s through speakers. i have no need for the unit if there's a way to bypass it completely. i've just never seen any amp that allows the plug in of those red/blue speaker wires.

Have you read the review!?

BOTH the Green (USB DAC is the only input) and Red (analog input, no DAC so you supply the DAC) have a 5-watt per channel speaker amp built right into them. Just put a $10 set of banana plugs into the end of the speaker cables that you connect to the JVC amp, and plug those banana plugs into the banana jacks on the back of the Red or Green.

 

[rhy]

by jvc amp do you mean the actual unit that i posted? i thought from the idea of plugging the speakers directly into the travagans i could get rid of the jvc except for its speakers. if i'm misunderstanding or misunderstanding a misunderstanding i apologize. i don't really have all the terminology down. i've been here a few years but always stuck with basic usb plug and play stuff.

so the speaker wires would go into something like this?

so do the speaker wires connect somehow in the opening part, and then you plug the gold plated part into the travagans? also how does it work when there's a total of 8 different wires to connect for the 2 speakers?

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhy /img/forum/go_quote.gif by jvc amp do you mean the actual unit that i posted? i thought from the idea of plugging the speakers directly into the travagans i could get rid of the jvc except for its speakers. if i'm misunderstanding or misunderstanding a misunderstanding i apologize. i don't really have all the terminology down. i've been here a few years but always stuck with basic usb plug and play stuff. so the speaker wires would go into something like this? so do the speaker wires connect somehow in the opening part, and then you plug the gold plated part into the travagans? also how does it work when there's a total of 8 different wires to connect for the 2 speakers?

I needed to know more about your "JVC shelf system" and what you wanted to do. I have been making guesses from the beginning, because you don't explain what you want to do with it. As Yoda would say, "Read your mind, I cannot. Explain to us better, you must".

You never said whether you wanted to get rid of everything except for the speakers, so I had to make assumptions. Because of the discussion and photo of the 1/8">RCA cable it seemed like you wanted to leave everything else the same and that you would simply feed the Travagans into the JVC in place of the 2MOVE - basically using the Travagans as a new source that has a higher output level.

I don't even know which Travagans you are interested in. Are you looking at the Green to replace the 2MOVE because the Green has a DAC built in, or are you looking at the Red and if you want the Red what will you use to connect the Red to the computer as your source?

I could see that the JVC speakers can be disconnected from the main unit and that you can power the speakers with something else, but I don't know if the JVC actually has more power than the 5 watt Travagans amps. It's possible the Travagans wont have more power, and you would still be disappointed. But, t I just now zoomed in on the photo and I see that you also have a subwoofer (8 wires instead of the 4 that I expected). The Travagans will only run the two stereo speakers and will only take 4 wires (+L, -L, +R, -R).

If you want the sub to also play you would have to run the subwoofer in series with the stereo speakers, so that you don't drop the impedance load on the Travagans speaker jacks too low. If you don't understand about keeping the impedance above 8 ohms and connecting them in series, then just forget it because there is a 90% chance that if I try to explain here how to connect speakers and sub to the Travagans that something will go wrong and you'll blame me.

 

[rhy]

the speakers i'm using is just a temporary thing. i needed something better than my laptop speakers and actually took a liking to how they sounded with my music. it was my first system. i garaged it as soon as i got into headphones years back.

ideally i'd like to craigslist the whole JVC unit, head-fi the 2move and get a strong but reasonably compact amp/dac combo. for example if the d10 outperforms the travagens (any of them) i'd go for that. i'm not trying to save money. i just figured since i'm not trying to take advantage of d10's size, i should be able to find something superior to it while still keeping size in mind.

now that i've been introduced to banana plugs i'm guessing hooking up standard bookshelf speakers to a computer is slightly easier than i originally thought. so basically the travagens eliminates the need for what's referred to as a receiver? if i pass on travagans are there other options that can handle the speaker side of things? i'm just looking to properly amp/dac both headphones and speakers in as few boxes/connections as possible with my laptop as the sole DAP.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhy /img/forum/go_quote.gif the speakers i'm using is just a temporary thing. i needed something better than my laptop speakers and actually took a liking to how they sounded with my music. it was my first system. i garaged it as soon as i got into headphones years back. ideally i'd like to craigslist the whole JVC unit, head-fi the 2move and get a strong but reasonably compact amp/dac combo. for example if the d10 outperforms the travagens (any of them) i'd go for that. i'm not trying to save money. i just figured since i'm not trying to take advantage of d10's size, i should be able to find something superior to it while still keeping size in mind. now that i've been introduced to banana plugs i'm guessing hooking up standard bookshelf speakers to a computer is slightly easier than i originally thought. so basically the travagens eliminates the need for what's referred to as a receiver? if i pass on travagans are there other options that can handle the speaker side of things? i'm just looking to properly amp/dac both headphones and speakers in as few boxes/connections as possible with my laptop as the sole DAP.

The D10 DAC is going to be more detailed and spacious than the DAC in the 2MOVE, Travagans or Nuforce Icon desktop amp, but those others have a DAC that is at least as good as the 2MOVE DAC, so they are still pretty decent. The D10 obviously wont power speakers, but you can feed the line-out signal into another amp that will power speakers. It's not the choice is you want one amp to do it all. Also, the D10 headphone amp section may sound a little better than the Travagans or Nuforce (and about as good as 2MOVE) but the D10 will not have as much power for difficult to drive 300 ohm headphones as the Travagans, Nuforce or 2MOVE. It just a 5V portable after all.

So, if you want one amp to do it all, headphones and speakers, with a DAC built-in, then the Travagans Green and Nuforce Icon desktop are a couple of options. Look in my public profile "about me" for links to my impressions of the Nuforce vs Travagans - basically the Nuforce is better at speakers than the Travagans, but the Travagans is better at headphones than the Nuforce. Both are decent with speakers and headphones, just that one may be better at one thing than the other. And, the Nuforce headphone amp and DAC requires it's own burn-in even after you've burned-in the speaker amp section. The Nuforce uses some funky speaker cables that have an ethernet plug on the amp end and a male banana plug on the other end, so you'd want to look for speakers that have banana jacks on the wire terminals (most of mine have those, Polk, Velodyne, Travagans, etc).

Another benefit of the Nuforce is that is has not just the USB input but also two analog input (one RCA and one 1/8"), while the Green has USB input only. The Nuforce has different outputs as well - (1) speaker, (2) headphone and (3) pre-amp. The Travagans has speaker and headphone out, plus digital spdif optical and coax outputs. So, the Travagans has a USB to optical/coax digital converter built-in that you can use to feed your USB signal into another DAC that doesn't have USB inputs. Such as DVD movies or any audio from a computer to your home theater receiver via optical or coax.

Again, for headphones I prefer the Travagans because it seems more detailed and dynamic than the Nuforce headphone out, which is not bad but not on the same level as the 2MOVE or Travagans headphone output. Some people may not even tell the difference between the Travagans and Nuforce with headphones, it's that close, but I can clearly hear it.

 

[rhy]

thanks for the further insight.

so while it sounds like i'd be content with either of those, there's no amp/dac combo option that can actually perform at desktop quality? i'd like to believe i could find something clearly better in every aspect to the d10 when i'm not taking ultraportability into account. and again there's no real pricecap here as i was ready to spend more than double the retail on a d10. if not both amp and dac contained in the same box, maybe separate from eachother that are still together reasonable in size. something like the microstack, but better as i already previously owned a pair. nothing from headroom.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhy /img/forum/go_quote.gif thanks for the further insight. so while it sounds like i'd be content with either of those, there's no amp/dac combo option that can actually perform at desktop quality? i'd like to believe i could find something clearly better in every aspect to the d10 when i'm not taking ultraportability into account. and again there's no real pricecap here as i was ready to spend more than double the retail on a d10. if not both amp and dac contained in the same box, maybe separate from eachother that are still together reasonable in size. something like the microstack, but better as i already previously owned a pair. nothing from headroom.

Well, audio-gd may have a better desktop dac/amp that would suit you for headphones in your price range, but it wont drive speakers. I'm not familiar with their products, so I don't know which model that is. You could also look at the Peachtree Nova that Sherwood seems to like - it is a very good DAC with 80 watt speaker out, and I think it includes a headphone amp. I would have to look it up. But, that is also somewhere around $1000-1200.

If I were you, I would get the Travagans Red and pair it with the D10 DAC which is more detailed than the Green's DAC, and then you can roll opamps if you want to tune the sound. This will give you desktop quality with the AD743 opamps (PM HiFlight to buy those opamps which have been discontinued). If the Red isn't doing a good enough job with whatever speakers you pick, then you could rethink things and easily sell it for something more powerful than the Red's 5-watt speaker out.

The Nuforce 12 watt speaker amp section is wonderful and seems more powerful than that, and the headphone amp isn't bad with burn-in, but it's just slightly less detailed and dynamic than the Red with headphones. The Nuforce headphone amp still has more power for a 300 ohm HD600 than the D10, but if you aren't using 300-600 ohm headphones then you can use the more detailed D10 headphone out, and feed the D10 line out into the Nuforce for speakers.

I'm about exhausted on the subject, but I hope this helps you.

 

[rhy]

DEL

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhy /img/forum/go_quote.gif i went ahead and ordered a nuforce icon just because i figured it was time to make a push towards something and because amazon makes for a great return policy if there's any issue. i'll try and wrap this up. is the 2move still worth using with the nuforce at work or can it be safely pushed to the side? i'm going to eventually start my search for speakers, but would i be able to drive my current JVC's provided i get those banana plugs we discussed earlier? the speakers themselves are 40 watts each while the subwoofers are 80 each. also while there are 8 wires, 4 are for the subwoofer, and i only use 2 as they're too boomy with both. and lastly, i have read the preference to optical over USB, but can't remember if that applies to amp, dac or both. i only have experience with USB but was planning on doing optical back when i had plans of getting just the D10. does the nuforce have optical or is USB the only option?

This is all off-topic, so I will reply to you in a private message.

 

[critic]

this may be way out of the question but would changing the mini plug to 1/4 be difficult to do?

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Quote:

Originally Posted by critic /img/forum/go_quote.gif this may be way out of the question but would changing the mini plug to 1/4 be difficult to do?

I don't see that it would be easy - I would just get a 1/8" to 1/4" flexible adapter like the Sennheiser adapter that's $6 and comes with HD650 for free. Audiocats built one with silver wire and sold it to me when he was tired of it for about $40, so you could go that route as well and have a DIY'er build you one.