WiiM Amp Streaming Amplifier Review

[Atlas B170]

This replaced a NAD D 3045 w/ Chromecast Audio for me; got my unit about a month ago.

The only notable features of the NAD that the WiiM doesn't include are a headphone amp and a phono stage (neither of which I ever used), and pre-out.

The WiiM Amp has built-in streaming with a really solid app, more advanced subwoofer integration/management options, and 4-band PEQ. The build quality of the aluminum case and the remote feels vastly superior to the NAD's plastic case and lousy keychain-size remote.

Just looking at Amir's measurements from his reviews of the respective amps, the WiiM's performance matches or exceeds the NAD's in most relevant categories. The load dependency is a clear shortfall, but I'm not in the camp that's going to bust out the pitchforks over that in this kind of system, especially since there's built-in EQ. I wish I could've done an A/B listening test between the two amps, but my NAD was inoperable for a couple of months before I even decided to purchase the WiiM in the first place. That being said, I'm pleased with how the WiiM sounds and I don't consider it a downgrade at all.

The big kicker is that the WiiM comes in at less than half of the price of the NAD. I really am blown away at how feature-packed this amp is and how well it performs as an all-in-one at this price.

If WiiM ever makes a WiiM Amp Super Deluxe Infinity and Beyond with more power, PFFB, 10-band PEQ, room correction, pre-out, and a big fat display, I'd absolutely shell out NAD D 3045 money for that, no hesitation. Until that day, I'm extremely satisfied with this as my new main system. I would absolutely recommend this to any of my friends who want to get into a 2.1 system without spending a whole lot or getting intimidated by putting together a system of separates.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

FWIW a (refurbished) WiiM Mini and a Fosi V3 will get you more or less the same capabilities (perhaps minus an input/output or two) for a bit more than half the money. However, you end up with all sorts of cables and external power supplies and all that ugliness.

The main differences would be (i) Not as performant a DAC on the Mini, and (ii) it now looks like the Mini is maxed out at 4 bands of PEQ (the other WiiMs look like going up to 8), and there’ll be no room correction on the Mini either (but it still looks like it’s coming in the others).

 

[audioje]

Perhaps, many companies assume load dependency doesn't matter in most cases? I assume most people would buy this instead of $350 one without load dependency.

 

[Mnyb]

That may be to coarse.

What I would do is measure the speaker's high-frequency response (> 1 kHz) close up, and just EQ that as flat as possible. This should take care of any load dependency and it leaves no guesswork open.

I meant in the context of audibility

 

[Mnyb]

Perhaps, many companies assume load dependency doesn't matter in most cases? I assume most people would buy this instead of $350 one without load dependency.

The casual users who’s not an audio nut may not care then your not placing the speakers rigth or sitting in any sweet spot

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

The casual users who’s not an audio nut may not care then your not placing the speakers rigth or sitting in any sweet spot

This is one of those threads that makes you consider how far we’re supposed to push things.

Sweet spot? I wonder what measurements would say about deviating from a sweet spot by 5cm, 10cm, 20cm, etc.? Are we prepared to ban anything other than a single seat listening position?

Room correction. I remember seeing a video of the UK’s premiere room treatment company, and they had a demo room on which they’d spent many tens of thousands of pounds treating, and the boss was happy to concede it still wasn’t perfect.

I know that regularly, when room correction is discussed, we’re told that we’d absolutely hate listening in an anechoic chamber, and that our ears/brains need a ‘real’ room, inevitably with errors. So where do you draw the line?

If our hi-fis are never going to be perfect, I wonder what our tolerances of imperfections should be. And to what extent we should happily accept them, or eschew them, with a product like this.

 

[DSJR]

0.5dB at 15kHz? Can many of us even hear this high if over 50? Of course it'd be better if it doesn't do this, but hardly a deal breaker at this money really I reckon.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

0.5dB at 15kHz? Can many of us even hear this high if over 50? Of course it'd be better if it doesn't do this, but hardly a deal breaker at this money really I reckon.

And it’s not just if we can hear 15 kHz. Even for those of us who can, even for those with ‘perfect’ hearing, able to detect 20 Hz to 20 kHz, that’s never going to be dead flat, with a brick wall filter at either end.

By the age of 50, we’re looking at limits of maybe 12 kHz, and again that’s the limit, rolling off way before then.

And that limit is around 16 kHz if you’re in your 30s.

The Human Hearing Range and Hearing Loss | Connect Hearing

Many people experience hearing loss due to ageing or trauma. Here we discuss which parts of the human hearing range may be lost and what effect this can have.

www.connecthearing.com

So I’m not saying the issues we’re discussing are of no importance at all, I just think we maybe need just a little more context.

 

[mikessi]

0.5dB at 15kHz? Can many of us even hear this high if over 50? Of course it'd be better if it doesn't do this, but hardly a deal breaker at this money really I reckon.

It's probably possible to perceive the touch of tip up or down at 10kHz because there is usually some musical data there in most recordings but at 20kHz, only young people not hearing damaged by earbuds can even hear it, and there is rarely anything of audible or musical significance up that high.

 

[Bleib]

Perhaps, many companies assume load dependency doesn't matter in most cases? I assume most people would buy this instead of $350 one without load dependency.

They know most people don't even know about it. But it's also that most loudspeakers aren't exactly flat in frequency response

 

[uwotm8]

OK my two cents:
- like the overall concept
- don't like that it's actually dressed-up Fosiyima
- performance wise it's just a typical $80-100 amp so I'd rather get something Infineon-based like Loxjie A30 for ~$150 (and a streaming device if needed)
- pls make HYPE TRAIN a bit slower

 

[Ajax]

I am very glad that the ASR crowd, Amir included, can appreciate what value low budget products like this one can offer. It's obvious that products like this are not the end game dream of anyone on the hobby out there, but they can be the foundation for a decent system for a lot of people that have to work around a low budget, for whatever reasons.

It shows that some care was given during the design of this products to maximize its functionality on the asking price, that alone is commendable.

In other words it's "not all about me".

This is a budget priced piece of kit that exhibits very good performance and will therefore be ideal for those that can't afford SOTA, no matter how much in price that has reduced. With a pair of decent mains and a sub the total system cost will be close to $1k, and for the student or a young family with a mortgage that's enough for a stereo.

If we are sincere in wanting more people to enjoy good music then it is imperative after years of expensive gear and an elitist attitude that the industry starts producing more gear like this.

 

[Mnyb]

This is one of those threads that makes you consider how far we’re supposed to push things.

Sweet spot? I wonder what measurements would say about deviating from a sweet spot by 5cm, 10cm, 20cm, etc.? Are we prepared to ban anything other than a single seat listening position?

Room correction. I remember seeing a video of the UK’s premiere room treatment company, and they had a demo room on which they’d spent many tens of thousands of pounds treating, and the boss was happy to concede it still wasn’t perfect.

I know that regularly, when room correction is discussed, we’re told that we’d absolutely hate listening in an anechoic chamber, and that our ears/brains need a ‘real’ room, inevitably with errors. So where do you draw the line?

If our hi-fis are never going to be perfect, I wonder what our tolerances of imperfections should be. And to what extent we should happily accept them, or eschew them, with a product like this.

I have several music systems for these different occasions and purposes.

But i think stuff matters even in a casual system ? Some speakers handle this much better and the brain is amazing to fix the rest

 

[Sokel]

0.5dB at 15kHz? Can many of us even hear this high if over 50? Of course it'd be better if it doesn't do this, but hardly a deal breaker at this money really I reckon.

Sadly it's not about 15Khz,it's more about the x-over area,2-4Khz where is the great differentiator between a speaker that's listenable and one that can make your ears bleed in 10 minutes or so.

EQ could be a solution if one has a speaker that's EQable (smooth on and off-axis,etc) and has the combined anechoic data of the speaker and amp so to correct properly.
Cause EQing the most sensitive area of a speaker,where our hearing can tell 0.5db deviations and separates actual nice speakers from torture devices is not trivial.At all.


(from Erin's review)

 

[Inertiaman]

Sadly it's not about 15Khz,it's more about the x-over area,2-4Khz where is the great differentiator between a speaker that's listenable and one that can make your ears bleed in 10 minutes or so.

And its about a max 0.6db impact in that region. You seriously think that a half dB wiggle around the crossover point is the difference between pleasure and bleeding ears? In that case, nearly every speaker in the world makes your ears bleed. Virtually every speaker FR curve I've ever seen has >1dB wiggles through the 2-4k region. Even speakers like a Neumann KH 150 have ~ +/- 0.75db wiggles through there, and I don't see anyone complaining about them.

On any given speaker, or room, these slight bumps seems just as likely to improve the crossover/FR behavior as to deteriorate it, given the randomness of its amplitude and freq location resulting from one's load assumption.

Maybe Erin or Amir should overlay that load dependency plot on the same scale as a typical speaker plot, and it will be easy to see how quickly its lost in the other system variances.

 

[Sokel]

And its about a max 0.6db impact in that region. You seriously think that a half dB wiggle around the crossover point is the difference between pleasure and bleeding ears? In that case, nearly every speaker in the world makes your ears bleed. Virtually every speaker FR curve I've ever seen has >1dB wiggles through the 2-4k region. Even speakers like a Neumann KH 150 have ~ +/- 0.75db wiggles through there, and I don't see anyone complaining about them.

On any given speaker, or room, these slight bumps seems just as likely to improve the crossover/FR behavior as to deteriorate it, given the randomness of its amplitude and freq location resulting from one's load assumption.

Maybe Erin or Amir should overly that load dependency plot on the same scale as a typical speaker plot, and it will be easy to see how quickly its lost in the other system variances.

Yep,they do and that's another reason for it if the amp is going to exaggerate this presence area.And it's not a wiggle if the Q is like it looks it is.
Neumann have their anechoic data available (thanks to Amir and others) so their correction (if needed) is dead easy with an amp with no dependencies.

Edit: note that Erin's load is about 20 Ohm,it's not unusual at all to see 50,60 Ohm up there,so...

 

[DSJR]

Sadly it's not about 15Khz,it's more about the x-over area,2-4Khz where is the great differentiator between a speaker that's listenable and one that can make your ears bleed in 10 minutes or so.

EQ could be a solution if one has a speaker that's EQable (smooth on and off-axis,etc) and has the combined anechoic data of the speaker and amp so to correct properly.
Cause EQing the most sensitive area of a speaker,where our hearing can tell 0.5db deviations and separates actual nice speakers from torture devices is not trivial.At all.

View attachment 351343
(from Erin's review)

I agree - Sorry, I was using Amir's review which seems to be a later version than Erin's and only seemed to show errors over 10khz or so. This is where different reviews, no matter how well intended can show differences. It's GREAT to have these reviews though so keep them coming.

 

[staticV3]

I was using Amir's review which seems to be a later version than Erin's

Both Amir and Erin measured hardware revision 5 of the WiiM Amp.

 

[Inertiaman]

And it's not a wiggle if the Q is like it looks it is.

So you're going to argue the semantics of what constitutes a wiggle?
Please help us all out here . . . what range of Q is a wiggle, and what shall the informal terms be for a distorted waveform of greater or lesser Q? A waggle? A woggle?

 

[Inertiaman]

I agree - Sorry, I was using Amir's review which seems to be a later version than Erin's and only seemed to show errors over 10khz or so. This is where different reviews, no matter how well intended can show differences. It's GREAT to have these reviews though so keep them coming.

The difference in Erin's and Amir's plots is not a consequence of older/newer hardware, but of different test conditions: Erin used two reactive load conditions which Amir did not. As @staticV3 noted, they both tested essentially the same board/product rev.