LAIV Harmony


New company with a new product.  There are several "professional" reviews out there, but not much consumer input here or elsewhere.  Those that have been using now for over a month, what are your thoughts?  What were you using previously and how does it compare?

audiostick

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.

@kereru Thanks for clarifying "scales".  Also, good to know about UIP USB as I have only been targeting Streamers with I2S capabilities for future purchase.

@campo007 I have it running 24/7. Either streaming or a CD on repeat. Will report back in a few days with a 100 hour report. 

Anything for the good of the group?  Thx.