Truth or dare, dare to bare. As Stereophile's Alex Halberstadt recently discovered quite late to this particular party, magnetic volume controls of multi-tapped autoformers can beat active preamps to the punch especially where beaucoup attenuation is needed. That's because such parts convert voltage to current. The more signal voltage we cut, the more current they generate. That's excellent for low-level signal and listening; two points where my first upstairs sessions had left just a bit to be desired vis-à-vis the Sonnet DAC. However, I soon grew suspicious that moi was the culprit by having 'fixed' Laiv's missing volume control in the digital domain not off 64-bit code. Even ESS as champions of lossless digital volume confess that upward of 30dB cut, bit stripping remains a reality. I was listening at -30dB to -45dB. What's more, most DACs simply perform better under full-scale signal. It's precisely why Cees Ruijtenberg of Sonnet/Metrum splits our signal's bits and processes the lower half at full amplitude subsequently corrected in the analog domain. His scheme improves low-level linearity with confirmed measurements to prove it.

I²S over HDMI off the Soundaware D300Ref, NOS mode, 24/96 source material. Black-out leaves a single blue pin-prick LED which turns red in standby.

What minimalist standalone volume control did my upstairs hifi storage of boiler room stock for emergencies? A Lifesaver Audio icOn 4Pro autoformer passive. It runs the very same Slageformers that had challenged Alex's active-wins mind. Et voilà, transformation. A few things happened simultaneously. Stage depth rolled out like a VIP's red carpet. Layering improved. And very demonstrably, so did top-end extension and illumination. Harmony could do airiness after all. Augmented by an attenuation method equal to Pasithea's variable reference voltage via add-on box and extra interconnect to far more than double Harmony's ask, our Laiv turned out to be another hifi whisperer par excellence. Whilst on-chip 32-bit digital volume has its place and can certainly serve as stop gap particularly with low overall gain to invoke a just modest amount of signal cut, to hear the full potential of today's converter requires better. From what I've heard going all the way back to Bent Audio's original Tap-X, nothing beats an excellent autoformer passive 'preamp' if we do not wish to alter a DAC's innate tonality or personality profile. EM/IA, Lifesaver and Townshend all make AVC. Bespoke use transformers instead. In this system, Laiv + Lifesaver netted me resolution and whisper chops very close to Pasithea plus that pentode penchant I adore. Note to self: don't ever cheat with standard digital volume again; unless it's Leedh.

Let's take a mini segue into spec worship. Nobody can hear digital without converting it to analog first. During R&D, digital circuits can only be measured. It's why this component category in particular can invite shopping on shiny specs alone. To get the lowest S/NR and THD, a few hundred quid on a Topping DAC secures perfection. That there's rather more to it requires listening; both by the designer and his/her customer. Speaker designers don't stand a snowflake's chance in hell against digital distortion specs. Their electrical-to-mechanical transducers suffer far worse specs well before the room throws its monster wrench into the party. It's why speaker designers don't get similarly hung up on raw measurements. They equally account for the art of voicing. If distortion is unavoidable due to limitations in parts and tech, massage unavoidable distortion into desirable behaviour that's musically congruent not dissonant. Given Harmony's tonality, it's crystal that its engineering team didn't just measure but listened most astutely. This type sound doesn't happen by chance; or by chasing the most zeros past the decimal point. Reality is messier. Neither microphones nor spectrum analyzers work like the human ear/brain. For us in the vast majority, the latter remains mysterious. If you belong to the tiny minority, you work in advanced cognitive research; or perhaps audio. The rest of us only have our ears without much grasp on their workings or how our brain interpolates different forms of electronic distortion. But if not how, we can still describe what we hear. End of detour.

Cascaded LHY Audio network switches ⇒ Audirvana Studio ⇒ Singxer SU-6 ⇒ Laiv/Denafrips T+ ⇒ Vinnie Rossi L2 ⇒ Kinki THR-1 ⇒ HifiMan Susvara

Laiv x Denafrips. For many years I enjoyed listening to the original Terminator then T+ then T+ with '12th' firmware. Even Arnie the first Terminator had multiple heart surgeries by now. So I can't in good conscience kick big T for coming up against a younger more lethal version and clear second on resolving power, liveliness, Blues tonality and upper-harmonic energies. Despite strategic missteps into seemingly endless revisions and half-baked streamers, Denafrips enjoy continued success for their take on discrete R2R conversion. Their pursuit of ever more weight and complexity—beefier power supplies in the chassis' lower halves, ever more capacitance, inputs for external non-10MHz clocks, triple I²S, dual AES/EBU—winks at different punters than Laiv's more minimalist concept. Triodes and transistors emulating their THD continue to enjoy admirers. 800kHz-switching Class D of very low THD is making inroads. Pentodes and transistors cloning their profile find happy homes. Like the need for speed in a car, the desire for higher res differs with individuals. And as no woman is an island, no component shy of a streaming active speaker works in isolation. There's room for many different flavours and levels to sum into a system sound its owner enjoys. Suffice to say then that as the Sonnet Pasithea skirmish had essentially previewed, my far heavier bigger and costlier Denafrips found itself eclipsed by Laiv; to my ears, current preferences and overall hardware status.

USB mode, upsampling on, native DSD64 playback.

Final comparator was Cen.Grand's flagship DAC set to DSD1'024 resampling of all PCM. These sessions used our best speakers, Qualio's hybrid dipole IQ actively crossed over at 100Hz/4th-order to a 2 x 15-inch cardioid sound|kaos sub. Speaker amps were Kinki Studio's EX-B7 monos, sub amps bridged Gold Note PA-10 Evo, the analog crossover a Lifesaver Audio Gradient Box II doubling as precision analog volume control. Audirvana Studio recognized Laiv's USB as PCM 1'536 and DSD 512 capable. USB ⇒ Laiv vs. USB ⇒ Singxer ⇒ I²S ⇒ Laiv had the latter a bit more sonorous. This conformed with and confirmed prior experiments. It's why all three of my hifis use a bridge not direct connection between PC/server and DAC. That's no knock on Harmony's USB transceiver. I've not yet come across a DAC which didn't benefit from an intermediary DDC. The underlying rationale still escapes me. Rather than fancy tech arguments, I simply trust my ears. I must please them not beliefs or sympathies.