LAIV Harmony

I too have one on order.  My order confirmation on the Laiv webpage gives an expected  shipping date of late June for my order, but the current preorder page says that shipping is expected sometime in July.  We'll see - they already have my money.  A friend of mine bought one about six weeks ago and let me try it for an evening in my home system.  I was blown away; it totally trounced the RME ADI2 that I run off of a TEAC 701T CD transport. I did not try it out with my streaming setup. Not being an audio reviewer, I lack the flowery (BS) vocabulary to describe the performance of the Laiv Harmony DAC, other than to say it imparted a sense of "realism" that I never before experienced from my B&W 802 D3 speakers.  I really liked what I heard that night and went straight to the Laiv website and ordered one.  That was a month ago.   If I ever get one, I will post some further impressions.

@donavabdear  If anyone’s audio setup can demonstrate the good and the bad of the Laiv Harmony, your’s certainly will.  What $9K DAC in your listening room is moving to the garage?

I received mine yesterday and have been breaking it in with SPDIF output from an old Yamaha CD player set on continuous repeat play.  Listening to it tonight connected to my TEAC 701T transport after about 30 hours of burn in, it sounds very "natural" and "present".  In my totally untreated listening room with lots of egregious audiophile violations, the soundstage appears a little more forward, and a bit deeper and wider than what I am used to.    Localization seems better, too.  And the Harmony finds lots of detail in the stuff I have listened to so far.  Recordings of acoustic instruments sound particularly good, and overall the Harmony performs much better than either my RME DAC or my trusty old Ayre CX7eMP.  This thing makes me smile, and I am glad that I bought it.  More later after 100 hours. 

@solarjam You will be impressed by the packaging, both outer and inner.  Mine arrived in the usual brown corrugated cardboard shipping box, but the box was completely sealed with a tough plastic coating.  Never seen that before.  You could have tossed the box in the Mississippi river at StLouis, floated it down to New Orleans, and still enjoy excellent sound from the contents.  

I’ve been listening to the Harmony for several days now, and between burn-in and playback sessions, I probably have well over 100 hours on the DAC.  I like it very much and have little to add to the positive accounts in this thread about the sonics, other than to add that it puts out the best digital sound that I have ever heard in my setup.

But, I have experienced an issue with the “Track Info” display when playing CDs.  While playing some discs, the track information will blink continuously.  On a few other discs, this problem is intermittent.  This does not seem to be a source issue, as it occurs with both my TEAC transport and an old Yamaha CD player that I am using to burn in the DAC.  The great majority of CDs that I have played so far do not produce the problem. 

I wrote to Weng Fai Hoh about this, and he replied that Laiv is working on a solution, that the problem seems to be confined to coax input, and that the blinking display can occasionally be resolved by changing to another track.

The blinking display is not a deal killer for me, the sound is far too enjoyable, and I simply turn off the display with the remote when it occurs.  I tried the track change hack, and it does work sometimes.  I do have to say that it is mildly annoying, and I hope a firmware upgrade will resolve it.

Yes, the blinking occurs with both spinners.  I have not noticed any differences in the problem between the two.  The display will sometimes normalize if the track is changed with a command from the remote, and sometimes it doesn't.  It can occur midway through the tracks on a CD, and from the first track on a couple of others.  On CDs that produce blinking from the get go, the problem never responds to a track change or spontaneously resolves.   I have not noticed any predictable location points for intermittent blinking.

I need to emphasize that the problem does not occur with the great majority of CDs that I have played. 

@audiostick

No, the blinking CDs are all standard redbook.  I have yet to identify a pattern in the incidence of the problem that might shed some light on its origin. But, I'm not grinding my teeth over it.  As you point out, there are only a few of us who still spin CDs, which likely accounts for the absence of comments in numerous audio forums about the blinking display.  I have a streaming set up (Bluesound Node 2i, Tidal subscription) which sounds really good through the Harmony.  I use streaming to find music that I like well enough to buy as CD or LP.  I suppose I am just stubbornly addicted to physical media.

My experience with the Harmony DAC has been quite different from that described by Hans.  I have well over 100 hours of real listening sessions logged in with this device, with a TEAC 701T transport sending redbook CD data to it via coax.  I do not hear enhanced sibilance, brightness, or a mediocre midrange tone.  The sound that I hear is very natural, clear, and fulsome.  I cannot compare it to any of the Holo products that Hans mentions, but I can say that the Harmony puts out a more enjoyable sound than any of the other digital sources that I have had in my home system, including the Ayre CX7eMP, the Marantz SA11S3, and the RME ADI2.

Is anyone using the Denafrips Hermes with the Laiv Harmony over I2S?  I''d like to run a coax output from my TEAC transport to the Hermes, and then connect the Harmony to the Hermes over I2S.

I picked up a Denafrips Hermes DDC about two weeks ago and it's working quite well with the Laiv Harmony.  The Hermes now receives a coax input from a TEAC 701T CD transport and a usb input from a Bluesound Node 130.  The Harmony receives an I2S input from the Hermes.  Previously the Harmony received coax from the transport and usb from the node.  The improvement in CD sound is primarily spatial, with a slightly deeper and wider soundstage, and also better bass extension and definition.  Without resorting to a lot of "reviewer speak", I think CDs with the Hermes in place just sound more enjoyable.  The really big bump up in audio performance comes with streaming from the Bluesound Node: everything sounds better from this very modest streamer with the Hermes in the signal path.  Bass is deep, full, and tight; soundstage is precise with lots of air around the musical sources; and the overall presentation is very natural and smooth.  I'm very happy with the Hermes and the Harmony is too.