WiiM Mini Review (Streamer)

[analogmusic]

with respect to Amir, I do like his reviews. But I am not a roon user and don't need it.

What the WIIM Mini brings to the table is

1) Tidal connect
2) Spotify connect
3) an app which has access to Deezer, Amazon music, Qobuz, and some others.
4) Airplay 2

the Google chromecast audio (when it was available) connects to Tidal and Spotify using Google Cast.

I like the WIIM Mini a lot, I ended up buying 3 of them and use these into 3 Chord DACS. The optical output into my systems sound very good to me.

 

[DrZingo]

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.

Isn't this more a test of the HTML5 audio implementation in Chrome?

 

[My adventures in stereo]

google chromecast audio, is giving me subpar audio quality with toslink to minitoslink
Also having connectivity issues frequently, hence gave up on it

 

[jaykay77]

google chromecast audio, is giving me subpar audio quality with toslink to minitoslink
Also having connectivity issues frequently, hence gave up on it

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 someone explain to me why i would need to spend more on a streamer?

I run my CCA's optical out to dacs...and as roon endpoints.

 

[MaxBuck]

Not being a newbie, nor particularly budget constrained ,can you explain why I would need to spend more than this $89 on a streamer as streamer (assuming one has a good DAC and DSP downstream)? Spending three times as much might get me an aluminum case and display, and what else exactly?

Can't say why you should spend any more. For me, the Node is a better choice for the following reasons:

1. Software/app. Bluesound is great IMO.

2. I'm able to output digital without having to deal with fussy Toslink.

3. Pretty blue LEDs.

 

[DesertHawk]

Qobuz automatically streams lower resolution music when a phone is used with their application compared to a computer.

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.

 

[sacguy231]

Got one based on the review, it arrived today and I just set it up. It's perfect for my use case. I am not interested in Roon. This WiiM is a nice addition to my home gym where I wanted to add Airplay 2. Now, using Siri, I can access my music hands-free while exercising. I have it connected optical out to the small stereo in the gym. For its price I am very pleased.

 

[mSpot]

Cant figure out, how to get spotify plug in working on my minidsp SHD

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.

Connect2 plugin: I've only made it work reliably if I set Multi-User Device to Off (then enter your Spotify user/password). Depending on your system, you'll probably want to set Initial Volume to 100. When you open Spotify on a computer or mobile connected on the same wifi network, you should see the Volumio instance as an endpoint.

Spotify plugin: Just enter your login account, and Spotify should appear as one of Volumio's music sources. You should be able to navigate through the Spotify catalog and playlists.

 

[mateolo2]

WiiM has support for Spotify see screenshot.

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?

 

[Prana Ferox]

I'd point out that I can (and did) buy this on Amazon, which is somewhat of a prerequisite for quite a big chunk of buyers.

Things I cannot buy (new or remotely near MSRP) on Amazon:
- Raspberry Pi's
- A Topping BC3 (why not, I have no clue)
- A ChromeCast Audio

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

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.

 

[Brantome]

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?

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.
What do you mean/ expect by transparent?

 

[Rebelhifi]

I use 2 WiiM with Apple Music (WIFI). WiiM Toslink out - Paradigm Link (digital in - Toslink out with Arc Room correction) - Topping DAC - Schiit Freya +. Works great and replaced Apple Airport Express. I use another to replace Airport Express in an outdoor system. Apple Music - WiiM Toslink out to Topping Dac to Paradigm Pre (outdoor system). I find the WiiM are a better replacement for the Airport Express compared with the Belkin Soundform Connect (I have two of these). The WiiM have a better app for control and options. If you are looking to move your Apple home system (I have 6 zones) from the Aiport Express, the WiiM look to be a good option.

 

[don'ttrustauthority]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the WiiM Mini Wifi/Bluetooth streamer. It is on kind loan from a member and is on sale on Amazon for US $89.

View attachment 200172

As you can see the former factor is a "hockey puck." An included phone charger needs to be used to power the unit over USB-C. It did not work so when I used my computer USB port.

Initial setup is by connecting using Bluetooth and the available App. I connected using BT but the Android app would not see it. I had to shut off BT and turn it back on for it to recognize it. While this is disappointing, I have had similar issues with other streamers. Once there, the app was reliable and gave me the option of configuring Toslink output for bit exact and its maximum sample rate which I appreciated. It also updated the device on first connection.

WiiM Mini Measurements
My first tests were using Aiplay 2.0 as initiated by my Roon player. As usual, Airplay itself becomes the bottleneck as we see with Toslink digital out:
View attachment 200173

Not sure if Airplay forced the sample rate to change to 48 kHz or the device did it. Using it with analog out we get:
View attachment 200174

While we are beating the company spec, performance is lackluster as is typically the case in this category of product. Noise performance is not great either:

View attachment 200175

There is however good news if you use the App and output over Toslink:

View attachment 200176

This is the best you can do with 24-bit dithered signal. At 141 dB, your limit then will be what your DAC can do as even state of the are units have a SINAD of 123 dB.

Using the same signal but now testing the analog output we get:
View attachment 200177

So just a hair better than using Airplay. The internal DAC as expected, is a mass market product than high performance.

Using the same for jitter we have:
View attachment 200178

Noise floor is fairly high which can hide a lot of sins.

Since my analyzer can't control streaming devices, these are all the tests I can reasonably run. I think we have a good picture though.

Edit: by request, here is the frequency response from the internal DAC:

View attachment 200372

Edit WiiM Mini ADC Analog In Measurements
Feeding the Mini analog input and capturing the same, gives this output:
View attachment 200375

Performance is dominated by distortion. Switching to Toslink out to eliminate effect of the DAC we basically get the same result:

View attachment 200376

So just like the DAC, this is a mass market ADC implementation. Good enough for common uses though but I would not route the clean output of any DAC through it.

Conclusions
If you use the App and Toslink output, you basically have a transparent wireless link to your stereo. Connect it to your favorite DAC and your performance will only be limited by the rest of your system. For me personally lack of Roon support is a big deal. I don't want to use their App to play or stream content. I hope the company looks at supporting Roon endpoint. Analog output of the unit is just OK.

Personally I can't recommend the WiiM Mini due to lack of support for Roon player. That aside, it is great to see bit exact digital output in a budget streamer allowing you to improve its performance to any level you want using your own DAC.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Dude, this is an awful no recommend. Products like this, though imperfect, put great price pressure on the $2000 - $5000 streamers. Roon wants my business, don't allow people to charge so much for a Roon approved product.

 

[Jmudrick]

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 someone explain to me why i would need to spend more on a streamer?

I run my CCA's optical out to dacs...and as roon endpoints.

Roon fixes a lot that's problematic with the CCA (of which I have 3), gapless playback in particular. If I had Roon I might not need the WiiM, but I don't so I do.

 

[WiiM Support]

Thanks for stepping into the blast furnace of ASR discussions. It's a tough crowd, but you'll get used to it. It's always good to see manufacturers participate here to enlighten the ASR user base on their offerings. Hopefully the feedback received here will help WiiM improve their products.

Thanks Sam! All these wonderful feedback from this community helps us a lot. The product is far from perfect and we have a good list of feature and improvement roadmap waiting ahead. Meanwhile, we'll also share our opinion (or even test results) transparently to help our respected users be informed.

 

[WiiM Support]

Do you have proof of this lossy compression? Airplay (both versions) will cause down-sampling to 16/44.1 for hi-res formats with WiFi, but it is said by Apple to be lossless at 16/44.1. Of course, for Bluetooth there is lossy compression.

Hi Blueone, AirPlay uses either AAC (lossy) or ALAC (lossless) for encoding. Besides the possible lossy compression, the entire audio path looks like the follows if you're playing Apple Music on iPhone and stream it to another AirPlay 2 receiver - Apple Music receives the audio data from Apple cloud > demux and decode it into PCM format > iOS re-encode it into one of the formats (AAC or ALAC) > re-packet into streaming format > stream to AirPlay receiver. Thus, it also involves transcoding. That's the reason why we don't recommend using AirPlay 2 for DAC performance evaluation. Hope it helps.

 

[Rottmannash]

I also have a Boss2 that obviously doesn't require a separate DAC and it has the RPi4 inside. You can setup the RPI4 in any configuration you like. Use it with DSP or not, use it with an external DAC or a Hat like the Boss2, use it with Moode for UPnP, Airplay2, Bluetooth or whatever. There really is no limit to the function it can serve. All of this is menu driven in a web browser for Moode. No code needed. It's as easy as it gets. I can't believe how many think the RPi4 is difficult to use. If you can setup your TV you can setup an RPI4 with Moode. It's actually much easier to configure Moode than setup a Denon 4700.

Changing out the guts in the toilet tank is harder than setting up an RPI4 with Moode or cleaning the filters in my pool pump, It's crazy how some people put up a mental road block when they have to configure a device with a web browser. Yet, they are OK doing it on the TV for an AVR or 4K player. If you don't try new things you limit skills and learning.

Qobuz automatically streams lower resolution music when a phone is used with their application compared to a computer. This also occurs with HEOS and Tidal. It will be interesting to see how the WiiM app handles this. I much prefer to use Audirvana as it offers a nice large screen, DSP control (if you want it) and sounds great. If I can't get the WiiM to work over UPnP with Audirvana I will probably return it. Hard to downgrade to a small screen and an iPad/iPhone for me.

? Qobuz does what? I choose what resolution I desire when using wifi and using cellular data. Maybe I don't understand what you're saying though.

 

[DrZingo]

Perhaps he's referring to the Android Qobuz app which (like every other player apart from UAPP as far as I know) resamples to 48kHz? Otherwise I have no idea.

 

[Rottmannash]

Perhaps he's referring to the Android Qobuz app which (like every other player apart from UAPP as far as I know) resamples to 48kHz? Otherwise I have no idea.

Ah, that's probably it. I use UAPP so it's moot for me. I want every tiny bit I pay for