LAIV Harmony

I have one on order.  It is supposed to ship at the end of June.  Over on headfi, there is a thread with some owners, all positive impressions so far.  

audiostick, if you go to the last couple of pages on that thread, there is user impressions, not much before that.  

smweber2,  I ordered May 31st, confirmation said shipping at the end of June.  If they moved it to later date, I haven't been notified yet.  Anyway, description of your experience with it is very encouraging.  

solarjam, thanks for your impressions.   As an audiophile with tinnitus, it is good to know the Laiv has a smooth and relaxing nature.  

My Laiv came today.  I can't listen to it because the area I'm in is out of wifi service probably until tomorrow night.  Bummer.  

audiostick, I don't have cd player or even a dvd player.  Still no internet so I can't connect to the streamer to play anything.  I guess cable was cut and the army core of engineers apparently won't let them fix it because of flooding.  For those curious, I'm in suburb of Des Moines called Norwalk.  

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. 

I’m at about 220 hours. I love this DAC! The Klipsch Cornwall IVs that I am currently using expose everything bad upstream, so far it ’s all good coming out of the speakers. The Laiv is a SMOOTH operator. Very balanced, extended, detailed, and yet smooth. I do not experience any listening fatigue and I would definitely call it a tinnitus friendly component. I find I am able to turn it up a little and it doesn’t light up my tinnitus. I know many feel the speaker is the most important part of the system, and I’m not going to argue that. But man, do not underestimate how much the source can impact the enjoyment of the system.  

sim_audio_nerd- Yes indeed I noticed it got better after 150 hours.  

I am perplexed by the brightness take.  I'm not experiencing that, at all. 

Lak, in the comments Hans said he burned it in for 168 hours before starting the review.