LAIV Harmony

After a bunch of system troubleshooting and tweaks (unrelated to the Laiv Harmony itself), I feel the Harmony sounds absolutely fantastic and is an excellent value at its price.

In case anyone is curious, I'm running DH Labs' Revelations (XLR) with Analysis Plus' Pure Silver USB cable direct to PC with fantastic results.  I did test DSD512 in JRiver, but preferred the sound of PCM from Amazon Music (with Windows sound settings maxed and OS enabled).  I also noticed a pretty big difference with the Harmony connected to my Furman's balanced outlets rather than not.  In regards to OS/NOS, the only difference to me was a very small difference in OS giving a tiny bit more extension to highs.

After about 50 hours in, my take is that aside from being very balanced, it's transparent and able to present layers and dimensional space very well.  I'm noticing some subtle details that weren't apparent with delta sigma DACs (or perhaps hidden behind a bright edge).  I still stand behind what I mentioned earlier that I don't think it'll necessarily transform someone's system into something it's not, but it will allow it to shine if everything is sorted.  It took me about a week to really dial in everything, but was worth it.

Favorite current demo tracks:

• Bombo Drum by Demfire Creation on Tribal Drums album - (excellent demo of timbre and space)
• Settle by Vera Blue on Fingertips album - (3D presentation)
• Smile (Acoustic) by Gorgon City [featuring Elderbrook] on Smile (Acoustic) album - (layering)

This new review by High Fidelity in Poland may be of interest here:

https://highfidelity.pl/@main-1394&lang=en

audiostick, I don't have cd player or even a dvd player.  Still no internet so I can't connect to the streamer to play anything.  I guess cable was cut and the army core of engineers apparently won't let them fix it because of flooding.  For those curious, I'm in suburb of Des Moines called Norwalk.  

Music Lovers,

Thank you for your impressions on Laiv Harmony Dac; if its sounding this good stock, can't imagine how much better it's going to sound when they release an upgraded power supply for this unit😊

Wig

The Harmony DAC came in finally. My old DAC was Holo May KTE.

25 hours in and I prefer it over the Holo May KTE by a tad bit. Interesting to see if Harmony beats the Holo May by a significant margin.

Qoboz>Innous Pulse>Harmony DAC>preamp>amp>speakers

So far prefer the NOS but not a huge difference between OS and NOS mode.

Packaging and remote is the best I’ve seen in an audio component so far...high end brands giving a dollar store type plastic remotes should be ashamed! LOL