LAiV Harmony HP2A Headphone Amp

[WDitters]

Sound Kitchen in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) sells the HP2A …

https://the-soundkitchen.com/?s=Laiv&post_type=product

And Dune Blue is the distributor for the Netherlands. So I guess that there should be similar presence in the UK

 

[CapitalJD]

My HP2A arrived this morning. Already enjoying it quite a bit. My favorite pairing so far is the Caldera Closed but the Meze Poet is great too.

Pardon the mess …

 

[GoldenSound]

My review for the HP2A is up!

 

[]eep]

My review for the HP2A is up!

Nice review, thank you.

I use it mainly as a preamp and in that capacity I find that it's completely transparent. I really like the ergonomics. The LExt is a bit lightweight and gets easily pulled to the side or tilted by the umbellical cord, but the function is outstanding. Again: fully transparent.
What struck me when switching between 2 DACs is that you can't hear anything when switching. The music flows uninterrupted and there's no mechanical click from a relais or anything.

A minor niggle is that I have real trouble seeing from my seating position (3m away) what input is active. So I can do real blind AB testing all on my own

Next up is the GanM. For that one I'm really going to wait for the reviews. As of now I'm already really happy with the Laiv stack as is.

 

[GoldenSound]

For those that have an HP2A just a bit of a note, it definitely does need a reasonable amount of warmup.

This is showing THD over the first hour and a half or so from turning on. It's definitely an amp you'll want to leave on if you can rather than just turning on when you want to go use it

 

[Echo42987]

For those that have an HP2A just a bit of a note, it definitely does need a reasonable amount of warmup.

This is showing THD over the first hour and a half or so from turning on. It's definitely an amp you'll want to leave on if you can rather than just turning on when you want to go use it

Is this in reference to noise levels?

So I've been using the Laiv for a little bit now and I just started throwing some IEM's into the 4.4mm output and I'm getting a good amount of noise from it. Which is surprising. Will that change with the warmup you're showing?

 

[GoldenSound]

Is this in reference to noise levels?

So I've been using the Laiv for a little bit now and I just started throwing some IEM's into the 4.4mm output and I'm getting a good amount of noise from it. Which is surprising. Will that change with the warmup you're showing?

The HP2A will have a higher noise floor on iems. Approx 15-20dB more than. Other amps.

The HP2A is ridiculously powerful (I nearly blew up my dummy load pumping 50W@50ohm through it the other day) but in order to achieve this the noise floor has to be higher unfortunately.

I wouldn't recommend using the HP2A for more sensitive headphones/iems. It's much more geared towards running really demanding stuff like Raals, Susvara, Tungsten etc