LAIV Harmony

Although I have tried my Directstream Dac directly to my amp (variable volume control ) . I must agree with Koestner . A great preamp is worth its weight in gold !!

Just my 2 cents worth .

hello @wengfai I really like my Harmony dac!

Waiting for news on your upcoming streamer.

@audiostick regarding fatigue, I never thought of it much but I would get tired of listening to music with my newer dac.  Don't know if its a known issue but with the LAiV I dont get fatigued; just run out of free hours to enjoy music.

Give it a shot, it is a very nice unit.  Even the packaging and presentation is superb.

I received my Laiv Harmony!

Very, very initial first impressions out of the box:

• Very rich, full, detailed and natural sound signature.  Compared to ESS DACs I've tried, the Laiv doesn't have any harshness on the high end (without dulling anything).
• USB connection from a PC registers in sound options at 32bit/384kHz on an AMD-based PC.  (Bit depth isn't documented anywhere.)  I believe this is the max possible on AMD's chipset.
• Vocals are more forward than other sources I've used.  My listening position is very close to my speakers and will take a bit of getting used to.
• I noticed a few audio dropouts with OS up to 768kHz after initial hookup.  Will keep an eye on it, but could be I need to clean out my old drivers or something to solve with a future firmware/driver update.  Played with some settings and haven't noticed it during the past few songs I played.

I don't have a ton of DAC experience, so please don't take my words as gospel, but I have nothing bad to say about the Harmony during first impressions.  My unboxing experience was excellent.  Everything was plug and play, but I had to install the drivers before Windows 11 recognized it.

@pynkfloydd Have you considered adding a dedicated streamer?  Running USB direct from a PC may be significantly limiting your streaming sound quality.  Just a thought FWIW.