WiiM Mini Review (Streamer)

[ENG]

Well, all the reviews finished with if he "Personally" recommend a product. No need to clarify this, the conclusion is always is personal recommendation, we are not talking FDA approving a Drug we are tslking about Amir thinking if it's a good or bad product. The idea is this is questionable. It's not like he said, If you are a Roon user, I reccomend you look elsewhere, which is also just common sense, but no he said I can't recommend the product, whoever you are, because it's not a Roon end point. This is heavily biased toward a specific App company and his personal needs to a point it's almost absurd. To refuse to give recommendation for this reason considering maybe 1% at most of music listener would need this "feature" toward a company who's business model is if you ask me questionable, hooking you for a lifegime of giving them 120$ a year just to use a player that don't comes with any content, just a piece of software that is already developped and paid for, that just have to sit there and collect your money, and to ask audio manufacturer to addapt to them, instead of them adapting to audio devices. instead he would chose to bring down a manufacturer that propose a set of feature never achieved for so little money before performing close to perfection in certain aspect and obvectively more than decent on others. Yes. Personal opinion, that's all reviewers can only do, based on his knowledge and measurement, tell people his "personal" opinion if it's a product worth purchasing, and influence the buyers because they trust his opinion on stuff. The idea beind this is. A reviewer gain the people to trust his oopinion because we think that his opinion would be objective enough, not because his elitist piece of software was not meant to be used on a 89$ product.

Jes, we all know that Amir likes Roon. And so what! What Amir contributes with else is far exceeding this little bias. I can live with it, and I think the majority of ASR members also can. I don't use Roon.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

The optical output door broke off mine as I was putting a cable in for the first time. The door mechanism is very fragile and easily broken, so worth being extra careful.

Yes, mine broke as well. The cheap-ass optical cable provided with the Mini is to blame, I think - it took considerable force to remove it, from the WiiM Mini, as well as from my RME. I quickly discarded the cable and replaced with a nice Amazon Basics cable, which is thicker but more flexible, and is very easy to insert and remove without much force at all.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

5 years old that repository.
Possibly several SSL, services and even network exploitable vulns in this.

View attachment 200729
These devices are all a security nightmare.
Let's better not poke deeper.

Poking deeper...

Here's Allwinner's Tina Linux repo, which was last updated 4 hours ago. We know the WiiM Mini uses an Allwinner CPU.

 

[Library Detective]

Yes, mine broke as well. The cheap-ass optical cable provided with the Mini is to blame, I think - it took considerable force to remove it, from the WiiM Mini, as well as from my RME. I quickly discarded the cable and replaced with a nice Amazon Basics cable, which is thicker but more flexible, and is very easy to insert and remove without much force at all.

How have you kept the optical cable attached to the WiiM without the optical door attached to hold it in? I've used blue tack. Not ideal, but seems to work.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

How have you kept the optical cable attached to the WiiM without the optical door attached to hold it in? I've used blue tack. Not ideal, but seems to work.

Luckily I didn't lose the door, so I have it jammed in the "open" position, which holds the cable in, though it's a bit wonky - I have to position the Mini just right or it will maladjust itself. Maybe @WiiM Support will assist in getting a replacement Mini.

 

[TheBatsEar]

What happened so far:

1) Amir didn't like a device because it didn't support Roon.

2) The ASR community reacts cool, calm and collected, as always:

Poking deeper...
Here's Allwinner's Tina Linux repo, which was last updated 4 hours ago. We know the WiiM Mini uses an Allwinner CPU.

Poke even deeper ... the source you linked is years old (it has some recent commits, but the basics are ancient). Kernel is 4.9.118, longterm supported is 4.9.310, longterm 4 is 4.19.238 and stable is 5.17.3. The repository should be on 4.9.310 at least. The amount of CVEs closed since then is ... a lot. And that's just the kernel. I didn't dare look into libc, libssl or even something as benign as libz.

Again, this is how it is for every device of that kind. Management simply states they don't have the resources to take care and that is that.

Just like they shipped this one with basically unfinished firmware, they fix what the consumers notice immediately after release with updates. This keeps the pressure at neckbreaking levels for the developers, but it's regular management practise.

 

[DonR]

Sadly, that is how it is with these kind of devices.
EU is working on regulation for it, basically a manufacturer would be fined if it keeps a device unpatched during a certain time after purchase. This would also mean that phone manufacturers would have to take security seriously. Can't wait.

EU is just paranoid.

 

[TheBatsEar]

EU is just paranoid.

I say they are not paranoid ... enough.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

Poke even deeper ... the source you linked is years old (it has some recent commits, but the basics are ancient). Kernel is 4.9.118, longterm supported is 4.9.310, longterm 4 is 4.19.238 and stable is 5.17.3. The repository should be on 4.9.310 at least. The amount of CVEs closed since then is ... a lot. And that's just the kernel. I didn't dare look into libc, libssl or even something as benign as libz.

Again, this is how it is for every device of that kind. Management simply states they don't have the resources to take care and that is that.

Hmmmm. Well, I wonder whether the $$$ streamers are any better at this? Even the "lifestyle" companies like Sonos, Bose, Bluesound?

 

[Purité Audio]

Wonder no more,

Bluesound Node Review (Streamer)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the 2021 Bluesound Node wired and wireless streamer and DAC. It is the next generation from Node 2i which I reviewed a while back. The Node costs US $549 and was kindly drop shipped to me by a member. In case you don't know, Bluesound is from the...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Keith

 

[TheBatsEar]

Hmmmm. Well, I wonder whether the $$$ streamers are any better at this? Even the "lifestyle" companies like Sonos, Bose, Bluesound?

I doubt it, would be a huge market disadvantage to take security serious when nobody else is.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

Wonder no more,

Bluesound Node Review (Streamer)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the 2021 Bluesound Node wired and wireless streamer and DAC. It is the next generation from Node 2i which I reviewed a while back. The Node costs US $549 and was kindly drop shipped to me by a member. In case you don't know, Bluesound is from the...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Keith

Oh, I know the WiiM is a MUCH better value than the Bluesound Node. The question was regarding security updates.

 

[poxymoron]

The WiiM mini does everything I want it to do (Tidal connect with bitperfect output) so I'll buy one, or two. For @amirm that's not the case so he probably won't be buying one. No big deal. If I wanted one to use the internal DAC I'd probably look elsewhere. But I'm happy to have a resource that tells me what I want to know. I could read the review and decide for myself.

 

[Triliza]

Well, all the reviews finished with if he "Personally" recommend a product. No need to clarify this, the conclusion is always is personal recommendation, we are not talking FDA approving a Drug we are tslking about Amir thinking if it's a good or bad product. The idea is this is questionable. It's not like he said, If you are a Roon user, I reccomend you look elsewhere, which is also just common sense, but no he said I can't recommend the product, whoever you are, because it's not a Roon end point. This is heavily biased toward a specific App company and his personal needs to a point it's almost absurd. To refuse to give recommendation for this reason considering maybe 1% at most of music listener would need this "feature" toward a company who's business model is if you ask me questionable, hooking you for a lifegime of giving them 120$ a year just to use a player that don't comes with any content, just a piece of software that is already developped and paid for, that just have to sit there and collect your money, and to ask audio manufacturer to addapt to them, instead of them adapting to audio devices. instead he would chose to bring down a manufacturer that propose a set of feature never achieved for so little money before performing close to perfection in certain aspect and obvectively more than decent on others. Yes. Personal opinion, that's all reviewers can only do, based on his knowledge and measurement, tell people his "personal" opinion if it's a product worth purchasing, and influence the buyers because they trust his opinion on stuff. The idea beind this is. A reviewer gain the people to trust his oopinion because we think that his opinion would be objective enough, not because his elitist piece of software was not meant to be used on a 89$ product.

I understand your point of view. I don't use Roon also, I'm not willing to spend that kind of money for it, even if it is worth the money (never tried it). Some are though, and $700 for a lifetime license is not that much to call them elitist. Anyway, what I have seen time and again is him praising cheap products that perform well. Maybe this product deserved a better recommendation for what it offers, I don't know, I use Pi/Moode and don't need it, but surely I'll not ascribe ill intent at him for rating it as he did. He offered his opinion on the featured offered, and from his point of view it didn't offer much/anything to him, regardless of it being cheap or not. And from a hardware point of view it's not anything we can marvel at.

Lets not put in his shoulders the outcome of how his review affects products success/failure in the market, let him express himself as he sees fit, and of course anyone can agree/disagree with him about it.

 

[amper42]

I setup the WiiM on the ADI-2 using Toslink. I could not get the Toslink cable that shipped with the WiiM to lock into the ADI-2 so I used a Monolith Toslink cable which is more robust. I turned the volume all the way up thinking that would be Fixed. The bass was awful with max volume setting. I found the "Fixed volume output" in the Audio settings and checked it. The bass is better.

I have the ADI-2 set to auto play so it automatically selects Toslink (WiiM) or USB (RPi4) when I select the WiiM or the RPi4 with the Audirvana source selector. The feature set WiiM is working on is substantial. Not sure I would use all that but it sure has a lot of options. Menus aren't as bad as ADI-2 but they could easily be laid out better.

I prefer the RPI4 when switching between the two streamers. It sounds crisper/cleaner to me. I don't have EQ setup on either streamer. I'll need to setup a blind AB test and see those results. I'm using 24 bit,192 kHz output setting. "Fixed volume output over UPnP via Audirvana on the MacBook Pro.

So far, no drop outs. Just a bit less clarity with the WiiM to BMR Monitor configuration than when I switch back to the RPi4 streamer.

 

[amper42]

Got a theory as to how that might be possible? Unless you are using Audirvana in upscaling mode there should be no difference.

Differences are many. I don't think it's unexpected the results might be slightly different.
1. WiiM using ADI-2 Optical port. Cheap $2 power adapter to USB3 cable. Different electronics in a tiny puck.
2. RPi4 using ADI-2 USB port. Nirvana SMPS power supply. Tiny capable computer hardware.

 

[Jmudrick]

Differences are many. I don't think it's unexpected the results might be slightly different.
1. WiiM using ADI-2 Optical port. Cheap $2 power adapter to USB3 cable. Different electronics in a tiny puck.
2. RPi4 using ADI-2 USB port. Nirvana SMPS power supply. Tiny capable computer hardware.

Hmm ok. Let us know about the blind test. I also employ both the WiiM and Audirvana.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

I have a Pi Zero WH with a Digi hat, coax out into my RME ADI-2, and the WiiM Mini into the optical input. Both pass the bit-perfect tests provided by RME, up to 24/192.

Queued up Killer Joe by Benny Golson on Tidal from my Pi 4 LMS server to both streamers. Switching back and forth using the RME remote. I notice no difference whatsoever. Not a double-blind test, though I wasn't looking at the buttons on the remote, if that counts, lol.

 

[Library Detective]

Luckily I didn't lose the door, so I have it jammed in the "open" position, which holds the cable in, though it's a bit wonky - I have to position the Mini just right or it will maladjust itself. Maybe @WiiM Support will assist in getting a replacement Mini.

Ok, thanks. Good idea! Btw, I think the product is great, just that one issue.

Hi @WiiM Support , I bought one of your streamers last month and the little optical output hatch just fell off when I inserted an optical cable the first time I used it. I inserted the cable without force and I was being careful as I always am with my audio equipment. I’m holding the cable in with blue tack which works most of the time, but I’ve had to readjust this once already to reconnect the cable properly. Any suggestions? I live in the UK and purchased the WiiM from Amazon US, they wanted me to pay for return and they’d refund that amount later if the return was subsequently fully processed for a refund. Just wasn’t worth the potential additional cost If the refund didn’t go through for some reason.

Apart from that one issue, the streamer has been absolutely brilliant If it wasn’t for the broken optical hatch experience , I’d buy a few more.

 

[TomJ]

would be a huge market disadvantage to take security serious when nobody else is

Good news here: WiiM is serious about security. In addition to following standard industry best practices for internal development, they also passed external security certification tests for their implementation in at least one critical area. For details, see post #96 in the other WiiM Mini thread.