LAIV Harmony

@solarjam Interesting that they are sending him a new board with instructions as opposed to having him return under warranty.  Advantage of modular design.  I guess I am ok with that, and definitely ok with their prompt response.  Please keep us posted on your impressions of it in your system compared to your Directstream Jr.

Hi  audiostick I will post that info as soon as I can get it down here to listen to .

My friend lives about an hour away and he is a busy guy .So I have not heard anything yet from him. He did tell me  , initially , that LAiV said that because of the modular boards it should not be a hard thing to do . I guess they were thinking of a quicker repair time if he does it . I agree . If it is kind of easy I would rather handle it myself . They also sent him a shipping sticker so that he can get it back  to them and  they can check it out.

All though I may be disappointed if this kind of thing happened to me . I do think it is being handled in a proper way and I will also keep you all informed of the  ongoing  situation . as best I can .

One more thing --- I should have my Dac in a few weeks . I will try and post a comparison between it and the Directstream Jr.  ( if this thread is still active at the time )

So, I'm the guy with the broken Harmony DAC. The input board went bad. I contacted Laiv the next day, and 4 days later a new board arrived by FedEx from China. Installation was smooth except for a tricky ribbon cable that I had not ever seen a connector like that before. I hooked it up and it's working fine. I have only been able to test the coaxial so far, but I suspect the USB will be working fine as well. I really want to commend Laiv for acting so fast. If I had to ship the unit back to China to have it repaired it would have taken a lot longer (minimum 2 weeks).

@koestner Glad to hear if went smoothly and that Laiv seems to be doing a good job standing by their products.  Love to hear your thoughts once you have some hours on it. 

I have had mine for weeks now (edti, received and put into use on 5/14/24). On my system it competes with my older high end dacs (Theta Gen V; Lexicon, ES) and my newer ChiFi DAC (D90SE).

I really like it. Very quiet and sounds great. Have used in in NOS mode quite a bit and OS for a week or so. Whilst I seem to prefer NOS, in any setting it sounds great, noise is lower than the others and (i know subjective) it sounds more musical than the Topping.

I find myself listening to music longer without fatigue. Also at a higher SPL.

It is a good looking piece also and remote its superb.

I say, give it a try. I could have bought any and my budget for a new DAC was up to $15K. I decided to try the LAiV since I wanted to try a ladder type. No complaints from me. It has become the DAC on input #1 on my PreAmp!