LAIV Harmony

@soix while the Harmony and the May share a beautiful natural timbre, the May is more micro and macro dynamic. The soundstage is much wider and the sound is more robust. 

@campo007 cheers for sharing your impressions. Suspect a few more more hours would have narrowed the gap a bit but how much, fair enough acting swiftly. What source were/are you feeding em both with? Btw not surprised to hear re the macro dynamics delta especially, more expensive DAC with separately housed multiple linear PS, this came across a little in the Virtualhifi comparison vid.

@kereru I’m feeding the DACs with an Auralic Aries S1 with external PSU, and a Shanling ET-3 CD transport. 

@campo007 Thanks - the Aries S1 with ext PS looks pretty sweet indeed - probably the streamer to beat at that price level and above methinks, had been aware of the highly rated G2.2 and G1.1 but hadn’t caught up on the newer S1.. just watched Hans’ review. The ability to act as a DDC for other digital inputs is further - and rare - value add. 

The LAIV is a very good dac but in several respects I feel the Denafrips New 15 

is a bit better in several areas especially low, midBass for it has Large Dual power supplies and much higher end Evos capacitors ,he power supplies not just shared  ,and depth of image a bit better this too maybe do to the power supplies ,leading edge the LAIV is a hair better in imaging  ,but the 15 th has 2 modes  non oversampling and nos, your tweeters character would determine which mode to use .the LAIV being $800 more ,if you throw  in another $400 you can have the Hermes 12  Reclocker which then makes nothing in its price class this good .this  reclocker I find once you put it in your system your dac just is not as clear and defined without it  . The Denafrips Hermes is a bargain at $1200, at our audio gatherings ithe Pontus 15 and Hermes combo beat every dac in its price class and easilly beat the Venus 12 pretty soundly,as well as Holo springs 3. if you have $3200 to spend and use the preferred I2S -hdmi connection .