LAIV Harmony

Anyone pre order the Laiv DDC?

@sim_audio_nerd I did, last week after my willpower to resist the temptation weakened after a few festive beverages. As I posted upthread there’s DDCs and there’s DDCs, they vary a lot in performance. I seem to be collecting DDCs having a U18 and SU6 in storage (need to sell some!) as to my ear my LHY UIP USB regen comfortably bests both, the UIP bettered only by the AudioGd DI-20HE I was loaned for a month, in turn bested by the much pricier Innuos Phoenix USB regen, also on loan.

With the LAiV uDDC, the appeal is a number of things… LAiV’s form to date with the DAC and HP2A both individually and their synergy, its matching aesthetics (a factor if I’m honest if lower weighted), and it’s external power and external clock upgradeability. Noting the latter hasn’t been a silver bullet for the U18 in my system. How well LAiV implemented their clock synthesiser and internal DC regulation circuits in the uDDC, not to mention USB isolation and the circuitry that converts asynchronous USB to synchronous I2S will be key to how it measures up to the competition. Audio-Gd and Denafrips (especially the Gaia and Hermes) are established high performers here, so one is taking a bit of a punt pre-ordering the uDDC.

I emailed Weng at Laiv. What a straight shooter he is..instead of convincing me that the new DDC is the bomb and I should immediately put my money down on it, he told me that using my Innuos Pulse with a Silent Angel Bonn 8 switch into the Harmony DAC is a pretty good chain.

He also added that by adding the DDC I might hear very subtle improvements but not noticeable.

Wow, impressed with Laiv..not many companies will be so straight with their customers.

@sim_audio_nerd , Agree that not only does LAIV reply, but they reply promptly and honestly.

It has been awhile, but based on the online reviews I read and watched last year, the majority preferred i2s to USB, so I am kind of surprised by Weng's reply as well.

Noticed that they have pushed back Streamer release to Q3.  I'm really hoping that they get this right and it is as good as the Harmony.  I think at the $2.7k range, they can be really successful, especially if it features i2s and a good controller.