WiiM Mini Streamer

[edgardcastro]

Amazon music is still too much work in progress and it's app is very annoying.

Amazon Music HD is working fairly well since last firmware. Haven't had an issue (but I don't use multiroom, so...)

Only issues, for my use, that I found so far is no gapless playback.

Old Android phone dedicated as streamer, connected to Wiin Mini using Amazon App, toslink to SU-9n. And yes, the bitrate is switching properly each song.

 

[Brantome]

The timing of this question is most appropriate for me ..... literally 3 minutes ago I received a bigger SD card to put in my phone for storing music so I can use it offline and have a heap of CD's I burnt years ago but I'm not sure what quality I burnt them at.

I'm also going to download a load of my Amazon playlists and whilst when streaming to the WiiM with an internet connection I'd like as high a quaility as possible I'm trying to weigh up what I should download to my phone and whether to do SD, HD or Ultra ... I was just in the Amazon page you linked to me a while back looking at the different file sizes.

Interested to know what others would do for say using their phone in the car offline, I'm tempted just with SD.

The Dutch guy in the video posted earlier about 24/192 resolution said he stuck with MP3 in the car which is probably fine given the quality of a car stereo and the noisy environment (engine, aircon, road) it operates in. One thing to watch with the amazon music app is that the download quality and playback over mobile data quality is the same or it’ll still try and use your mobile data to play stuff if there’s a mismatch.

 

[Brantome]

Amazon Music HD is working fairly well since last firmware. Haven't had an issue (but I don't use multiroom, so...)

Only issues, for my use, that I found so far is no gapless playback.

View attachment 226398

Old Android phone dedicated as streamer, connected to Wiin Mini using Amazon App, toslink to SU-9n. And yes, the bitrate is switching properly each song.

Gapless AMHD casting is under “futures“ on the roadmap, but WiiM have said here that it’ll hopefully be sometime in September

 

[Witterings]

One thing to watch with the amazon music app is that the download quality and playback over mobile data quality is the same or it’ll still try and use your mobile data to play stuff if there’s a mismatch.

I was going to switch it so it doesn't stream at all over mobile data as the phone will only be in the car and I use a table at home but cheers for the heads up ... much appreciated

 

[Merifon]

Amazon Music HD is working fairly well since last firmware. Haven't had an issue (but I don't use multiroom, so...)

Only issues, for my use, that I found so far is no gapless playback.

View attachment 226398

Old Android phone dedicated as streamer, connected to Wiin Mini using Amazon App, toslink to SU-9n. And yes, the bitrate is switching properly each song.

Before wiim, I used an old iPhone 6s as streamer connected via USB to ext dac but only Spotify permitted to control it from another device, have to leave the sofa to make choices was annoying.
Amazon music app always used192khz regardless of real sample rate of songs. With Android, was the same at 96KHz. Don't know if now something has changed.
All other apps gone with the correct sample rate. This is one of the reasons I choosen to try wiim...

 

[edgardcastro]

Before wiim, I used an old iPhone 6s as streamer connected via USB to ext dac but only Spotify permitted to control it from another device, have to leave the sofa to make choices was annoying.
Amazon music app always used192khz regardless of real sample rate of songs. With Android, was the same at 96KHz. Don't know if now something has changed.
All other apps gone with the correct sample rate. This is one of the reasons I choosen to try wiim...

I use it in a similar fashion, the only reason I don't use USB is because of the reason you mentioned, through USB, Amazon app sets output as 192khz all the time, so now everything goes through the Wiim and work properly.

You can actually control the Wiim from multiple phones at the same time, Amazon App allows you that. For example, I have my dedicated mobile playing through Wiim now, if I go into other phone and select to connect to the Wiin through the Amazon app it will ask me if I want to play locally or 'see what is playing'. If you choose to see what the other device is playing, you actually gain control of the session on the new phone as well and can control the playing session from both, at the same time.

Here, did a video using it:

 

[Smartplug]

I’m looking forward to the major features tidal master mqa since I have mqa dac. Mqa core plus dac renderer will complete unfold.

 

[Bamyasi]

Interested to know what others would do for say using their phone in the car offline, I'm tempted just with SD.

Strange issue I've noticed with my WiiM Mini after that previous firmware upgrade (the one before the latest OTA upgrade) is that Amazon Music app on my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S10e) and my tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab S6) started to hang randomly, with tapping on GUI controls in the app having no effect for long periods of time, between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. Like, I tap on the mini player panel at the bottom of the app screen and it takes 1 minute for it to be maximized into full window now playing tab. This happens regardless of whether I am casting to WiiM Mini or playing AMHD locally on the phone. It is immediately cured if I switch phone into airplane mode or if I unplug WiiM Mini USB power. Then the app on the phone recovers withing 2-3 minutes to normal behavior. Basically, the app is virtually unusable as long as WiiM Mini stays connected to my home WiFi network and the phone is connected to the same network.

I believe this is somehow related to Android 12 on my both devices because Amazon Music app on my Fire HD 8 tablet (running Fire OS, based on Android 9) does not have this problem. It is generally rather sluggish compared to Samsung devices but runs smoothly and all GUI controls work as expected without extra delays. Casting to WiiM Mini also works fine on Fire HD 8.

 

[DantonIzzo]

Yes, done it and it works. Plug it in and choose aux in as the source in the app.

Just tried and it works. However, it doesn’t sound very good, so I’m just going to stick with streaming.

 

[Smartplug]

Wiim pro will support chromecast but wondering if they will update it with future play fi.

 

[Music1969]

Wiim pro will support chromecast but wondering if they will update it with future play fi.

DTS Play-Fi?

That is a disaster. There are good reasons why there are few devices popular devices supporting it

I use Amazon Music HD casting, Spotify Connect, Apple Music, Airplay2, Chromecast - these all support my music discovery interests and keep me up to date with the modern world of enjoying music.

But I am not sending feature requests for DTS Play-Fi - and yes I've tried it many times.

That doesn't stop you or anyone else sending feature requests to WiiM though - go for it.

 

[Smartplug]

DTS Play-Fi?

That is a disaster. There are good reasons why there are few devices popular devices supporting it

I use Amazon Music HD casting, Spotify Connect, Apple Music, Airplay2, Chromecast - these all support my music discovery interests and keep me up to date with the modern world of enjoying music.

But I am not sending feature requests for DTS Play-Fi - and yes I've tried it many times.

That doesn't stop you or anyone else sending feature requests to WiiM though - go for it.

What seems the problem? Connection not reliable?

 

[Music1969]

What seems the problem? Connection not reliable?

Do you use DTS Play-Fi at the moment?

Have you ever used it?

 

[onlyoneme]

Httpapi became publicly available, it's similar to the old one but on https port.

https://wiimhome.com/pdf/HTTP%20API%20for%20WiiM%20Mini.pdf

 

[Smartplug]

Do you use DTS Play-Fi at the moment?

Have you ever used it?

I just saw it online and thought was cool as it support 192khz. Maybe you could give us your experience why don’t like it.

 

[telemike]

I just saw it online and thought was cool as it support 192khz. Maybe you could give us your experience why don’t like it.

 

[Raver]

I use it in a similar fashion, the only reason I don't use USB is because of the reason you mentioned, through USB, Amazon app sets output as 192khz all the time, so now everything goes through the Wiim and work properly.

You can actually control the Wiim from multiple phones at the same time, Amazon App allows you that. For example, I have my dedicated mobile playing through Wiim now, if I go into other phone and select to connect to the Wiin through the Amazon app it will ask me if I want to play locally or 'see what is playing'. If you choose to see what the other device is playing, you actually gain control of the session on the new phone as well and can control the playing session from both, at the same time.

Here, did a video using it:

Doing this is extremely buggy. For me it works about 1 in 5 times. It seems after a while the Amazon music app sleeps on Android. It forgets where it was streaming to, if I try to send it to another device or take over the stream in any way via casting it just try's endlessly and does nothing. Alexa though still seems to have control of the stream but cannot change devices. Seems amazon music is just a skin of sorts for alexa, yet alexa lacks the casting options. Overall a pretty poor implementation and user experience.

 

[Raver]

Strange issue I've noticed with my WiiM Mini after that previous firmware upgrade (the one before the latest OTA upgrade) is that Amazon Music app on my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S10e) and my tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab S6) started to hang randomly, with tapping on GUI controls in the app having no effect for long periods of time, between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. Like, I tap on the mini player panel at the bottom of the app screen and it takes 1 minute for it to be maximized into full window now playing tab. This happens regardless of whether I am casting to WiiM Mini or playing AMHD locally on the phone. It is immediately cured if I switch phone into airplane mode or if I unplug WiiM Mini USB power. Then the app on the phone recovers withing 2-3 minutes to normal behavior. Basically, the app is virtually unusable as long as WiiM Mini stays connected to my home WiFi network and the phone is connected to the same network.

I believe this is somehow related to Android 12 on my both devices because Amazon Music app on my Fire HD 8 tablet (running Fire OS, based on Android 9) does not have this problem. It is generally rather sluggish compared to Samsung devices but runs smoothly and all GUI controls work as expected without extra delays. Casting to WiiM Mini also works fine on Fire HD 8.

I have the same issue with a galaxy note 20 and a galaxy tab 7. Experience overall with Amazon music. Seems very buggy. The tablet is marginally better than the phone but both will lose their position on songs, find it hard to forward to the next track, skip back a track and scrolling through a song to track back or forward is near on impossible and broken.

Another way to deal with the Amazon music mess it to select a song on the device that Amazon Music looses control of in the wiim home app. You then get immediate control back of the stream but you are stuck with wiim homes 1990's version of a UI for Amazon music. Overall very poor and maybe the reason I will need to fund qobuz

 

[Brantome]

Doing this is extremely buggy. For me it works about 1 in 5 times. It seems after a while the Amazon music app sleeps on Android. It forgets where it was streaming to, if I try to send it to another device or take over the stream in any way via casting it just try's endlessly and does nothing. Alexa though still seems to have control of the stream but cannot change devices. Seems amazon music is just a skin of sorts for alexa, yet alexa lacks the casting options. Overall a pretty poor implementation and user experience.

You can always try asking Alexa to move the stream e.g. “Alexa, move my music to another-WiiM-mini”, or if you’re asking an echo, “Alexa, move my music here”. You can also use this to move to and from alexa MRM group, and from a device to a group and vice versa.

 

[Raver]

You can always try asking Alexa to move the stream e.g. “Alexa, move my music to another-WiiM-mini”, or if you’re asking an echo, “Alexa, move my music here”. You can also use this to move to and from alexa MRM group, and from a device to a group and vice versa.

Wow that's cool, I will give that a try.