LAIV Harmony

Wig  the pontus 2 my wife has and Iris ddc , my audio buddy 2 towns over has the pontus 12th  the 15th on all their gear is now a generation better with these new engineers ,when Alvin left he took one of Denafrips engineers ,for the harmony  which is a good dac ,  the pontus has non oversampling,and over sampling 

which is good it gives you solid choices  this new dac much better resolution ,then the 12th anniversary which was a bit better, this 15 model is a big jump up  with the Iris 12 ddc added,now  
best inner detail I have heard under $3k instruments have much more depth and dimension ,a drum head you can hear more of the interplay and Macro details 

buying a reclocker is s no brainer  it cleans the signal  before it goes into the dac ,the Hermes better still but $1300.  for $550: for the Newer Iris 12 it is clearly better then my wife’s gen 2 model.  I2S is built into the newer Iris 12 .Wireworld Hdmi uses the same pin out as PS audio  does . Just look inside  on these 15 series dacs vs the previous 12 th. Pretty apparent ,  my unit still needs breakin  ,but my friends has 400 hours ,I bought a older terminator 2 from my brother that is a solid dac , the new one in another league yet to hear it though    Very good technologies in digital are progressing rapidly.

A Pontus with an Iris DDC is a killer combination. I'm still running a 3 year old Pontus II with I2S to an Iris DDC.....total cost just a tad over $2,100 invested. Not the last word in detail, but really really good in most areas. Enjoyable, fun, easy to listen too, great soundstage and imaging.....just no flaws.

I've been really surprised that I've upgraded most everything else (speakers, preamp, solid state amp, tube amp, cables), and I have not felt the need to rush out to replace the Pontus/Iris combo. I of course know that I will, but the Pontus has performed admirably even while moving up into the solid "Mid fi" category....and I still enjoy listening to it daily

Back to the Harmony, the LAiV scales a lot with a high quality source in my case an LHY UIP USB regenerator. By way of reference, a guy over at Headfi compared it to the Iris and found it outperformed it in his setup, preferred UIP USB direct to DAC to even UIP USB > IRIS > I2S > DAC. This corresponds to my experience vs the Gustard U18 and SU6 where I found the same. Lots of different paths to a great sound.

@kereru  I am new to UIP USB Regenerators.  Can you clarify what you are referring to when you say "the LAiV scales a lot..."?  Thanks.

@audiostick Scales a lot.. upwards in performance… = improves or benefits prorportionately from, is quite sensitive to… a high quality source - is all I meant. Experimentation with the quality of power and signal cables for and between the UIP and another USB isolator upstream of the UIP, along with vibrafion damping and better chassis grounding of the UIP, is all very audible in improvements to the Harmony’s sound. So it is far from being source agnostic/indifferent for USB at least, feed it the highest quality USB source you can and it’ll reward you. My use of I2S has been more limited as the DDCs I tried to date didn’t sound as good as USB from the UIP, but same seems to be true from what experimentation I’ve done there.