What speakers would you travel with?


It's always amazed me that while we're willing to spend a fortune to get outstanding sound from our home systems, we're left to use our laptop or Ipod speaker as our sound system on the road. Quite a step down in sound quality.

I'm figuring on using my laptop and USB DAC as a source. Not ideal but space and weight considerations have to figure in at some point.

Outside of headphones (I like the mobility and freedom from headgear which speakers afford), what speakers would you or do you travel with when you leave home? We're talking speakers which would fit in hand carried luggage here.
joelha
I have a pair of Visonik Davids for trips. They are a ported design, very small ( the main driver is 100mm in diameter ) and very durable, being made of metal with a metal grille. I drive them with a Rawson chip amp, a box about the size of two standard bricks. I've put Herbie's Grungebuster pads on the speaker bases.

The Rawson has a 120V IEC entry so I can't use it on overseas trips. I am aiming to get a Winsome Mouse ( which has a switching PS and can take any AC voltage ) and then I'll be able to take tunes to Europe. I have considered powered speakers like the Audioengines but these don't appear to be compatible with multiple AC voltages.

Most of the time the Rawson and the Davids stay on the desk in my home office, driven by a M-Audio USB DAC. Perhaps one day I'll be able to afford a FireWire card for my Apogee Mini-DAC. In either case, the whole setup takes up very little space.
Trends 10.1, Scandyna Micropods. Sounds good and really trippy with red Micropods with their little Sputnik feet. Each piece fits into a sock.
An inexpensive solution is to find a clean pair of used Realistic Minimus 7's and do the crossover upgrade with a kit from ebay seller 'litekeys'. They really do sound quite good and are rugged enough that you don't have to worry about them while traveling.
Audioengine A2. I have the A5's on my desktop at home with a Benchmark Dac1 and a pair of A2's on my desktop at work. Phenomenol speakers.., both of them, check out all the great reviews at www.audioengineusa.com as well as the great review on Stereophile.

http://www.stereophile.com/budgetcomponents/1207ae/index.html