LAIV Harmony

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. 

What do you expect for $2700, Harmony build quality looks okay at the price. Certainly its not full size enclosure, so everything compressed to some extent.

So, there are a few instances of input board issues, I'd like to know what percentage of Harmony are having this issue. And should we expect more failures over time? Issue may be heat related, compressed physical size of unit is a consideration. Now to the good, input board looks to be pretty easy to replace, modular design,  I'd have no issues diy, but then I'm seasoned in modding,

No doubt reliability a factor in determining ultimate quality of any component, these failures may or may not turn out to be a major issue. I assume Laiv did their due diligence in evaluating reliability, but manufacturer can only test so many units. Also interested to know if it is one particular input causing the issue.

knock on wood. Stand by what I said, hope you are right and I am wrong. Not sure where you are getting your data on ownership and failures. Couple of forums is not a valid comparison. Enjoy your DAC and keep a fire extinguisher close by.

@tkrtrb125 Modern electronic devices have a very low probability of starting fires as the failure modes are designed to be rather uneventful. You have a far higher probability starting a fire with tube gear (just from the tubes producing heat alone) than a device based on modern surface mount components failing. I’ve repaired my share of PCBs following failures to have zero cares about this...

If you’re kept up at night about a DAC causing a fire, might as well remove the stove, furnace and electrical wiring in your home as those are listed as the top causes of residential fires by the National Fire Protection Association.