WiiM Mini Streamer

[Music1969]

I don't understand the hype ... I use AirPlay 2 and nothing else. I have a rabperry pi with shairport sync and USB output.

Shairport doesn't support Airplay 2

You might not care about multiroom but theres people that do

Wiim supports official Airplay 2

 

[ccristal]

£76.48 for a limited time: https://www.amazon.co.uk/WiiM-Mini-Multiroom-Preamplifier-Assistants/dp/B09HC5GRKY/

 

[Merifon]

I got this, same release number as before but new date...
It fixes a wrong 48khz output, displayed after resume Tidal hifi playing (44.1khz) from wiim gone in stand by.

 

[Witterings]

Has anyone ever Back to backed one of the Mini's against a Node or any other bit perfect streamer.

I was in a retailers yesterday and the manager who's been in the business for 30 years and seems to know his onions and said there was definitely a difference in sound between them, he hadn't heard of the WiiM but was talking about others such as Node vs Naim Streamer.

He also felt that Coax was noticeably better than Optical, if so that'll go in the WiiM Pro's favour over the mini.

 

[onlyoneme]

Has anyone ever Back to backed one of the Mini's against a Node or any other bit perfect streamer.

I was in a retailers yesterday and the manager who's been in the business for 30 years and seems to know his onions and said there was definitely a difference in sound between them, he hadn't heard of the WiiM but was talking about others such as Node vs Naim Streamer.

He also felt that Coax was noticeably better than Optical, if so that'll go in the WiiM Pro's favour over the mini.

Hadn't heard any difference during whole weekend tests. I've used both coax and toslink outputs for comparison.
No one ever had explained to me how could 2 transports in bit-perfect scenario sound differently over toslink.

 

[Merifon]

He also felt that Coax was noticeably better than Optical

Maybe is a persistent think, since at the beginning, toslink was considered capped at 96KHz but it was a limit of emitters/receiver available at that time only.

 

[Witterings]

Hadn't heard any difference during whole weekend tests. I've used both coax and toslink outputs for comparison.
No one ever had explained to me how could 2 transports in bit-perfect scenario sound differently over toslink.

Maybe is a persistent think, since at the beginning, toslink was considered capped at 96KHz but it was a limit of emitters/receiver available at that time only.

One of the things he was saying is with Optical it converts the digital source to light to send and then converts it back again at the receiving end before then being processed by the DAC ..... personally I don't know how Coax works in comparison and if it sends it in it's digital form i.e. 1's / 0's but in essence he inferred it saved the two conversions.

If that is the case, I get that every time you convert something there's a possibility you may lose or corrupt the data but if it's been tested as "bit perfect" I'm guessing that infers it hasn't.

He aslo mentioned different ones may send the 1's / 0's in a differing order so whilst the exact same number of 1's & 0's was sent they may be in a different sequence which could potentially affect the sound .... but if so I don't know how big a difference it'd make and if you were measuring for "bit perfect" just that just measure the number
of 1's & 0's sent or does it also corroborate their sequence and also that the data's not been corrupted in any way.

 

[onlyoneme]

One of the things he was saying is with Optical it converts the digital source to light to send and then converts it back again at the receiving end before then being processed by the DAC ..... personally I don't know how Coax works in comparison and if it sends it in it's digital form i.e. 1's / 0's but in essence he inferred it saved the two conversions.

If that is the case, I get that every time you convert something there's a possibility you may lose or corrupt the data but if it's been tested as "bit perfect" I'm guessing that infers it hasn't.

He aslo mentioned different ones may send the 1's / 0's in a differing order so whilst the exact same number of 1's & 0's was sent they may be in a different sequence which could potentially affect the sound .... but if so I don't know how big a difference it'd make and if you were measuring for "bit perfect" just that just measure the number
of 1's & 0's sent or does it also corroborate their sequence and also that the data's not been corrupted in any way.

Node sends spdif data the same time on its outputs so I've no idea what he had meant. The same protocol is being used, only transport domain differs.

In bit-perfect scenario order of bits matters as well. So I've meant the same data just before DA conversion as the source data being processed by the transport, it includes jitter, clock drift and all corrections made by DAC over spdif. Misaligned bits will not allow bit-perfect scenario to happen.

 

[Merifon]

One of the things he was saying is with Optical it converts the digital source to light to send and then converts it back again at the receiving end before then being processed by the DAC ..... personally I don't know how Coax works in comparison and if it sends it in it's digital form i.e. 1's / 0's but in essence he inferred it saved the two conversions.

If that is the case, I get that every time you convert something there's a possibility you may lose or corrupt the data but if it's been tested as "bit perfect" I'm guessing that infers it hasn't.

He aslo mentioned different ones may send the 1's / 0's in a differing order so whilst the exact same number of 1's & 0's was sent they may be in a different sequence which could potentially affect the sound .... but if so I don't know how big a difference it'd make and if you were measuring for "bit perfect" just that just measure the number
of 1's & 0's sent or does it also corroborate their sequence and also that the data's not been corrupted in any way.

You could tell him that even in electrical coax connection, voltage comparators are involved, similarly to optical emitter/receiver, they read a given thing and give to the circuits a voltage level. It will be task for the dac, correct and rebuilt a good clock and supply as perfect as possible signal.

 

[onlyoneme]

You could tell him that even in electrical coax connection, voltage comparators are involved, similarly to optical emitter/receiver, they read a given thing and give to the circuits a voltage level. It will be task for the dac, correct and rebuilt a good clock and supply as perfect as possible signal.

Exactly. Data is being sent in analog way in fact, and it doesn't matter if we use voltage levels or light levels to transmit data encoded in spdif.

 

[antcollinet]

One of the things he was saying is with Optical it converts the digital source to light to send and then converts it back again at the receiving end before then being processed by the DAC ..... personally I don't know how Coax works in comparison and if it sends it in it's digital form i.e. 1's / 0's but in essence he inferred it saved the two conversions.

If that is the case, I get that every time you convert something there's a possibility you may lose or corrupt the data but if it's been tested as "bit perfect" I'm guessing that infers it hasn't.

He aslo mentioned different ones may send the 1's / 0's in a differing order so whilst the exact same number of 1's & 0's was sent they may be in a different sequence which could potentially affect the sound .... but if so I don't know how big a difference it'd make and if you were measuring for "bit perfect" just that just measure the number
of 1's & 0's sent or does it also corroborate their sequence and also that the data's not been corrupted in any way.

He is talking out of his ass. Everything he is saying bears zero resemblance to reality.

There is no audible differene between streamers, if they are sending digital data to an external dac. There is no audible difference between digital interfaces - unless there are bit errors - and then the difference is not subtle - it manifests as pops, clicks, dropouts etc.

 

[telemike]

Hadn't heard any difference during whole weekend tests. I've used both coax and toslink outputs for comparison.
No one ever had explained to me how could 2 transports in bit-perfect scenario sound differently over toslink.

magic fairy dust makes the difference

 

[onlyoneme]

He is talking out of his ass. Everything he is saying bears zero resemblance to reality.

There is no audible differene between streamers, if they are sending digital data to an external dac. There is no audible difference between digital interfaces - unless there are bit errors - and then the difference is not subtle - it manifests as pops, clicks, dropouts etc.

I wouldn't go that far...
Mini with EQ on flat sounds differently compared to Mini with EQ disabled.
For transmission error DAC can decide to replace missing sample with the previous one. Result can be subtle.
Jitter effects can be subtle.
Being audible is not so easy to define either.

 

[Jpdelaney.tml]

Over night updated to …7934…moving us all back a version.

 

[Witterings]

He is talking out of his ass. Everything he is saying bears zero resemblance to reality.

There is no audible differene between streamers, if they are sending digital data to an external dac. There is no audible difference between digital interfaces - unless there are bit errors - and then the difference is not subtle - it manifests as pops, clicks, dropouts etc.

I must admit this was why I posted it as everything I've read in the past agrees with you but was interested to see if anyone had actually done a direct comparison.

He said he had some good speaker cable and interconnects as well

Must admit though the system they had playing in the showroom sounded out of this world, Naim streamer and amp into a pair of Spendor A2's.

 

[onlyoneme]

I must admit this was why I posted it as everything I've read in the past agrees with you but was interested to see if anyone had actually done a direct comparison.

He said he had some good speaker cable and interconnects as well

Must admit though the system they had playing in the showroom sounded out of this world, Naim streamer and amp into a pair of Spendor A2's.

My system is kind of a budget one. ADI-2 and Sundaras for headphones listening and it's for bit-perfect scenario. MiniDSP Flex, Rotel RA-04SE and Elacs DBR62 for non bit-perfect scenario with room acoustics correction.
I'm not going to say that differences cannot be heard when I say that I didn't hear them.

 

[Wol-shiver]

One of the things he was saying is with Optical it converts the digital source to light to send and then converts it back again at the receiving end before then being processed by the DAC ..... personally I don't know how Coax works in comparison and if it sends it in it's digital form i.e. 1's / 0's but in essence he inferred it saved the two conversions.

If that is the case, I get that every time you convert something there's a possibility you may lose or corrupt the data but if it's been tested as "bit perfect" I'm guessing that infers it hasn't.

He aslo mentioned different ones may send the 1's / 0's in a differing order so whilst the exact same number of 1's & 0's was sent they may be in a different sequence which could potentially affect the sound .... but if so I don't know how big a difference it'd make and if you were measuring for "bit perfect" just that just measure the number
of 1's & 0's sent or does it also corroborate their sequence and also that the data's not been corrupted in any way.

Everything he said is true about its operation, but has no bearing here. The "conversion" adds latency but no bits.

When comparing fibre transceivers + OM cable to DAC cables (direct attach copper) in networking, there is latency advantage to DAC cable.

However, it is in the sub 2 or 3 ns/nsec +- 20% and has no measurable bearing on workloads/throughput.

In our application the difference has no effect on outcome (digital music).

Edit: In above scenario I'm specifying a normal in room run whether active or passive. Passive DAC through 7m faster than AOC in longer than 7M. Obviously SR transceiver, LR out of scope.

 

[rmsanger]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJDY6D1W/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_ZXK8QQV3YK30YN1147PN?linkCode=ml1&tag=cheapaudioman-20

wiim pro is for sale now.. sorry only link I had

 

[Brantome]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJDY6D1W/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_ZXK8QQV3YK30YN1147PN?linkCode=ml1&tag=cheapaudioman-20

wiim pro is for sale now.. sorry only link I had

All you need is the url up to the / before the ref= part - you’ve included an affiliate tag so cheapaudioman will get commission on the sale…

 

[rcstevensonaz]

Mini with EQ on flat sounds differently compared to Mini with EQ disabled.
For transmission error DAC can decide to replace missing sample with the previous one.

The first point is not relevant. This is about, for example, Mini with EQ ON sent over optical vs. coax S/PDIF; or conversely about Mini with EQ DISABLED over optical vs. coax S/PDIF. Point is: we are talking about when the exact same set of processed bits are sent one vs. the other.

The second point is possible. But generally, that will weigh in favor of *coax* being more accurate. For a lot of the cheap TOSLINK optical cables people buy, they are made out of very cheap plastic and often get are bent with tighter bends than the specifications allow for (bend radius that is too small is bad for the glass and/or plastic). Also, people may try to run the optical TOSLINK cable over a longer distance that it is rated for.

So basically, don't listen the the person.

Oh, and by the way, the issues of jitter, packet loss, and latency are vastly higher on the network-side of the streamer. Provided your optical cable is decent, your cable length isn't too long, and the engineering in the Wiim is solid... then any bit loss or jitter on the optical vs. coax side won't matter.