I think this sums the situation up. If you use the WIIM optical out (bit perfect) to a high quality DAC then surely the end result is as good as the DAC. £89.00 on the WiiM and whatever you can afford for the DAC.
Not saying you should, when you buy something more expensive like a Bluesound Node one gets lifetime curated software with sophisticated GUI, preloaded and BS/provider integrated and curated streaming services a lot connectivity options, higher tech cross-platform integrated devices like streaming amps with Dirac, etc. for example. So I'll agree for $90 and the willingness to integrate outside gear and software the WiiM is hard to beat.
Yeah I find the UI on the apps I use to connect to the WiiM sufficiently sophisticated, and between Qobuz, Spotify, and Tidal I have curation up the wazoo. And as suggested I don't mind using a separate DAC and room correction which require no ecosphere integration with the WiiM other than a Toslink cable connection.
And I said I agreed with that. But others well healed enough and who don't want to mess with gear such as RPi just buy things like Roon with EQ or NAD with BluOS and Dirac built in. That is why, your question, for them, and newbies and budget mined I mentioned previously. Again, agreeing as a simple streamer its great.
Isn't this more a test of the HTML5 audio implementation in Chrome?Good question.
View attachment 200567View attachment 200568There is one big difference, and thats jitter. To be fair - With roon as source the result is much better for chromecast audio than the picture above.
I have 3 CCA's running as roon endpoints. Ocassionaly one of them will need a reset, but these things work like a charm!
Can't say why you should spend any more. For me, the Node is a better choice for the following reasons:
I believe whether you are on wifi or mobile data is what dictates the quality of the stream and regardless of the defaults you can change these settings. I stream 192/24 via Qobuz on the phone app.
I don't have MiniDSP but it runs Volumio which I'm familiar with. There are two plugins available on Volumio — "Volumio Spotify Connect2" for Spotify Connect, and "Spotify" to play Spotify using Volumio's player UI (very basic and kinda primitive). You need a Spotify Premium account. After installing and enabling either or both plugins, go to the Installed Plugins tab and open their settings.
I know. But you saw what happend after clicking that? It show message to open Spotify app and Connect to wiim via Spotify Connect and not wiim mini app. Thats Why i asking what now? Is it transparent or not?
Yes, the transport via WiFi from the Spotify app to the WiiM Mini out the optical port is transparent. However, Spotify currently uses a lossy protocol, so it doesn't matter. Send a lossless stream to it via UPnP, for instance from an LMS server or mConnect, with the volume control disabled, and it's completely transparent out the optical port, at up to 24/192. See my photo of the RME test above that proves this.
You asked this before and I recall someone answering that the use of the actual Spotify app as an interface to a streamer isn’t unusual, indeed it’s probably preferable to use their app than anything a third party might try to emulate thru an API.
