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

@audioman58 so you have listened to every DAC under 12K to date?

Bet not, sure glad I never sought advice from you ever! 

A Farrari is a great car  but if it has design,reliabity  issues what good is that ? 
remember Microsoft , great new operating system was great but have to work the bugs out ,That is why is why you run proto types ! if they went with a larger 

case and dual transformers power supplies and regulators  better stability 

but at a higher build cost . I owned a Audio store for over  a decade 

and saw everything including digital from the mid 80s to  today it has come a long way , nothing is perfect ,but some issues are preventable.

I have heard the Harmony dac several times with Holo springs 3 and Lampi Amber  4 .I can say without reservation the New Denafrips 15 punched way above its $2100:price point it was not only musical but had great dynamics and bass control 

more so then the dacs heard above for less monies. ,the Lampi Amber4 was the meatiest having tubes  but lacked slam and a bit of inner detail ,  heard with the Iris12 Ddc  using I2S gave it a added bit of image depth and detail , we tried the older Hermes ddc on the harmony , Holo springs and Pontus 15 I felt naturalness was only better as-well as every aspect of the music, the  new Hermes 12 is much better one guy said That has  one but didnot want to take his out of his system which was not cool. I may buy one now, just make sure the pin out on the I2S - hdmi cable matches,  wireworld I2S  cables seem to be popular and match the pS audio protocol.

@audioman58 the Ferrari comparisons are very old. The Lavi is a Vega at best. Not a Cosworth either. 

What lots of guys greatly overlook is the build quality , from my experiences and through audio clubs I have gone to that take the cover off and look under the hood 

the New Denafrips gear  from what others that own it the New Engineering team 

at Denafrips  is  really good  I heard the new Terminator 15 it sounded great in a Big audio system their best dac to date and was like 45lbs and 2 sections with mu metal separating the power supplies , the little guy 18 lb Pontus 15 also have dual transformers ,they call it a Baby terminator  was very good ,at $2100 nothing was close in its price class and proffered it to the Harmony which is not even close on build quality  the pontus had 2 floors ,bottom for the huge power supplies and big transformers  and a ton of high quality capacitors from Japan .up top dual precision clocks and  FPGA buffers and a few other things I didnot understand .they  are discontinuing the Venus 12, because the pontus is that close ,now a new more expensive Venus 15 coming out soon , that good news for the buyer ,competition.