LAIV Harmony

Mine has a little over 100 hours. For the past couple of weeks prior to receiving the Laiv, I was going direct from my streamer to the DAC on my McIntosh 8950 integrated amp. It sounded pretty darn good. Changing to the Laiv, it sounded kind of cold/clinical out of the box, soundstage height was low. I was not all that impressed. I let it play for a couple of days. The cold/clinical sound was gone but something sounded off still. I noticed that instruments you could normally hear really well in a recording, the ones more forward or dominate in the mix, I couldn’t hear them as well but stuff that would normally be buried in the mix was more prominent. In a way I liked it, but also it kind of bothered me at the same time. I thought maybe the weak link was the ICs, but I only had one set on hand (Delund) and I couldn’t swap anything. But I did have a different USB. I pulled the Teknorov (I think that is what it was called) and swamped in a Kimber USB. Much better. I still get the benefit of hearing the background stuff in the recordings the Laiv lets me hear, but also the primary instruments have their prominence and power back. Listening to the Replacements Tim album as I type this. Not a great recording, but very enjoyable nonetheless. 

@ Kclone

Yes, Tchernov is a very good cable but too smooth in my opinion and can smooth over detail and spatial cues, especially if the device is already known to be rich and organic sounding.

Wig

I’ve been listening to the Harmony for several days now, and between burn-in and playback sessions, I probably have well over 100 hours on the DAC.  I like it very much and have little to add to the positive accounts in this thread about the sonics, other than to add that it puts out the best digital sound that I have ever heard in my setup.

But, I have experienced an issue with the “Track Info” display when playing CDs.  While playing some discs, the track information will blink continuously.  On a few other discs, this problem is intermittent.  This does not seem to be a source issue, as it occurs with both my TEAC transport and an old Yamaha CD player that I am using to burn in the DAC.  The great majority of CDs that I have played so far do not produce the problem. 

I wrote to Weng Fai Hoh about this, and he replied that Laiv is working on a solution, that the problem seems to be confined to coax input, and that the blinking display can occasionally be resolved by changing to another track.

The blinking display is not a deal killer for me, the sound is far too enjoyable, and I simply turn off the display with the remote when it occurs.  I tried the track change hack, and it does work sometimes.  I do have to say that it is mildly annoying, and I hope a firmware upgrade will resolve it.

@smweber2,

Does the blinking occur when playing the same CD/ tracks on both disc spinners, or do different CDs blink randomly on each player?  When intermittent, does the blinking reoccur at the same location on the track when replayed?

Yes, the blinking occurs with both spinners.  I have not noticed any differences in the problem between the two.  The display will sometimes normalize if the track is changed with a command from the remote, and sometimes it doesn't.  It can occur midway through the tracks on a CD, and from the first track on a couple of others.  On CDs that produce blinking from the get go, the problem never responds to a track change or spontaneously resolves.   I have not noticed any predictable location points for intermittent blinking.

I need to emphasize that the problem does not occur with the great majority of CDs that I have played.