Alternatively you may find your Phoenix is surplus to requirements… 😉 Certainly all sounds a formidable combo.

I found this too - an audible negative effect of having wifi switched on router - even on low transmit power and after inserting fibre media converters between router and downstream gear and putting copper shielding between (and around) router and audio gear. Pretty inconvenient having wifi off...

Not claiming to be one of the knowledgeable dudes you’re seeking comment from but if it was me I’d go for the LAiV, I know there’s a bit of hype but a few reviewers I rate especially Srbo from IIWI Reviews (and I guess Srajan of 6Moons who bought his review copy) rate it as a decent step up from...

Awesome, great work! 😁👏 Sounds like in several respects (thickness of copper, extent of MuMetal use - I’ve just done my transformers so far) you’ve gone a step beyond me. The low end punch thing in particular ifs pretty satisfying and unexpected eh. For the record the cardboard boxes were a...

Suspect it depends a bit on one’s system, but I found the same with Bubble, Jplay and Roon/HQP (latter best). I also found Roon sounds better with my iPad Air 5th gen rather than a Samsung phone running Roon remote. After observing this I then read about some guys on another forum coincidentally...

Always interesting hearing what directions folk go. Tell ya what has made my mileage vary with the R26 quite a lot of late - feeding it with a ludicrously OTT USB source - the PhoenixUSB. Quite a bit more body, warmth and natural flow. Ditto re the LHY UIP to a lesser extent. But then yesterday...

That sounded a little too good to be true to me - I’m not even from the EU and sure enough a quick google shows it’s not that simple. As soon as the annual supplies from a company/distribution centre in one EU country exceed the threshold of the recipient EU country (typically a mere €10k, which...

But that’s just your standard 20% VAT right - realistically LAiV were never going to take a 20% (or more, or less.. 15% GST here) hit on a globally fixed USD2,700 sales price vs other jurisdictions that have no sales tax/import duties. Free lunches, death and taxes etc. The free shipping though...

You can hear the overall tonality and presentation differences easily enough for yourself (even over YT) here... though to be fair VirtualHifi's comparison vids are up there with Alpha Audio as some of the best mic'd and recorded on YT.

That correct re their oscillator frequencies, I understand the LHY UIP and a similar SoTM USB regenerator use an internal clock sythesiser to convert the 10Mhz reference to the 24Mhz frequency needed for USB. Higher frequency isn’t automatically better but all things equal (incl assuming...

Had noticed same re their FMC.

Here’s some impressions adding the LHYUIP (+OCK2) in front of the Phoenix: cavernous soundstage depth with extended decay, amazing layering and instrument placement.. so much space between soundstage elements Very busy multilayered music sections are a little more coherent, easier to follow the...

Very sorry @m-i-c-k-e-y . Well needless to say I couldn’t resist the temptation to - in Ghostbusters speak - cross the streams and use the LHY UIP to feed the Phoenix, with the UIP both internally and externally clocked. You don’t really need me to tell you what happened.. just plot a mental...

Cheers for the feedback. This one was recently acquired second hand so assume well burned in.

If/once you have an external clock connect it to both. Reason is to give the DAC the benefit of better timing too (but trust your ears as to whether it is in fact better as there’s many potential points of signal degradation with external clocks, cable quality - shielding and terminations, power...