Adding a Wiim Ultra to Marantz SR5015?

[jasenj1]

I'm having a touch of upgrade-itis. I have a Marantz SR5015 in a 3.1 configuration, Paradigm Premier 700F fronts, 500C center, and a very old Outlaw LFM-1 Compact 10" down firing subwoofer.

My tiny bit of research indicates the DAC in the SR5015 isn't all that great. Also, I'm kind of tired of the tiny porthole display. It's fine when using the AVR for home theater, but for two channel listening it's rather boring. HEOS gets the job done for streaming, but I hear Wiim has a nice UI. The Wiim Ultra is also reasonably portable and I could take it to the office or home office as a headphone amp. Anyway, lots of little things to justify spending Christmas money on a new toy.

I expect I would connect the Wiim Ultra to the AVR using analog out and run the Marantz in "Pure Direct" mode. In such a configuration, would the subwoofer out and crossover on the Marantz be all done in analog space? I could use the Wiim's room correction and entertain myself by switching between the Wiim and Marantz' streaming to compare the room correction. I don't believe using the sub-out on the Wiim makes sense. I guess I could use a splitter and run the sub-out of both the Marantz & Wiim to the line in of the subwoofer, but that seems suboptimal.

Just looking for a little feedback on integrating a Wiim Ultra into an existing AVR based system. Should I expect to hear any improvement in sound? Does the Marantz have a good enough amp section to bother adding an external DAC?

Any other streamers I should look at? $330 is a good price for a not quite impulse buy. The Node Icon or Cambridge CXN100 are a bit pricey for something I don't really need (and no headphone jack on those).

 

[SoundMagic]

You don’t necessarily need the WiiM Ultra. If you fancy the screen and the other features like the phono input etc. go for it. But your Marantz’s phono would be better and probably has enough analog and digital inputs already.

The DAC wouldn’t make much of a difference. If you want to try a different streaming experience than HEOS, add a WiiM Mini to the receiver via optical input. And the WiiM app is available on some inbuilt TV streamers, Apple TV and Google TV for displaying album art. That will beat the tiny display in WiiM Ultra by a mile.

WiiM’s room correction is no better than Audessey so there won’t be much of a gain there as well. But the WiiM Mini lets you get a taste of it.

For the portable solution, add a dongle DAC to your phone and nothing gets portable than that. And WiiM Mini has headphone out as well.

 

[jasenj1]

You don’t necessarily need the WiiM Ultra.

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, I absolutely don't "need" the Ultra - or anything. This is purely to add a new toy to my setup. I could subscribe to TIDAL or some such with the money, or buy 15 albums.
My question is: If I were to buy this frivolous toy, what's the best way to connect it to maximize any benefit it may have?

 

[SoundMagic]

You could connect the analog out from the WiiM Ultra to Analog Input (or) Connect digital output from WiiM Ultra to Digital Inputs in the Marantz. The former uses the inbuilt DAC in WiiM and the later will use the DAC in Marantz.

Pure Direct mode in Marantz will disable sub management and it is all analog affair. If your subwoofer has stereo LFE inputs then you can connect one channel to Ultra and other to Marantz and you are good to go. If not, you would need a RCA Switch Box (probably triggered with 12v input) to control what Sub out goes into the subwoofer. See it gets complicated . Or use Stereo/Direct (not Pure Direct) mode in Marantz and get subwoofer output always. You cannot use a RCA splitter cable as a signer joiner, that would be a bad idea.