WiiM Mini Streamer

[thomasward00]

769m

At $99 bucks, I don't expect much from the internal DAC and honestly, we shouldn't. I have a good ESS in my Arcam Amp and 2 Schiit Modi 3+'s for my 2 Cambridge Amps.

 

[morillon]

that s just 50% more jitter than the small cca ..2015... not expensive too
;-)
possibility of progress with a new firmware?

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

that s just 50% more jitter than the small cca ..2015... not expensive too
;-)
possibility of progress with a new firmware?

You're worrying about something that's at least an order of magnitude too small to possibly hear.

DEMO / MUSINGS: Let's listen to some jitter simulations with sideband distortions...

A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.

archimago.blogspot.com

As for the real musical samples, for me, the effect is different with each of the tracks... For the "Schubert Strings" track, I notice a slight "nervousness" with the sound of the high frequencies and a "grittiness" starting at 875ns which progressively gets obvious. I found detecting the anomaly more difficult with the "Piano Improvisation" sample on my headphones (a bit more reverb to the track masks the distortion). What I did notice by 1750ns was a gradual deterioration of the piano decay with a "hardness" to the sound and this became very noticeable of course by 17500ns and 35000ns where the "dysphonic" fuzziness exerted themselves strongly!

 

[morillon]

why continue to frequent this forum then?
how sensitive is it then? for you ???
;-)
mesure..not so good... "noisy"..but "not audible at ***"... etc etc
we can read that all the time here...
with make mesure?
;-)
(personally, even if my system will remain for use with only "deezer flac", I find the sound quite hard ... on known dac.
I just took out something to do a few measurements, only to see if I observed differences in measurement, of different types of power supplies "on this modest wiim"...
just for my curiosity...
important topic for many audiophiles..

I have a way, even if a bit boring, to drastically reduce its jitter, around 2ps rms, before attacking this dac, a bit old and therefore not in usb, I will check if I subjectively perceive a few things a stax
;-)
)

 

[imral3]

The statement "When casting music playback to a device, the streaming quality settings on that device are respected" from the Amazon Music help page does hold out some hope - it's just that it's been hard to verify that from the devices that currently can be cast to.

Given that the WiiM Mini looks like a fully fledged echo in the Alexa app but does show bit depth and sample rate in the WiiM app (and hopefully bitrate too at some point in the future), we might have the chance to have that bold assertion proved.

I hope we get there. And someone here can test and confirm true lossless AMHD up to 24/192. Being able to get this capability while casting from the AMHD native app would be a SUPER SIZED bonus... it's light years better than the Wiim Home app.

 

[Brantome]

I hope we get there. And someone here can test and confirm true lossless AMHD up to 24/192. Being able to get this capability while casting from the AMHD native app would be a SUPER SIZED bonus... it's light years better than the Wiim Home app.

I hope they retain access to your own library and playlists like they currently do. The Heos app doesn’t support those for the Amazon Music HD service and while I’ve read that Bluesound does, some other comments I’ve read suggest that it doesn’t.

 

[imral3]

I hope they retain access to your own library and playlists like they currently do. The Heos app doesn’t support those for the Amazon Music HD service and while I’ve read that Bluesound does, some other comments I’ve read suggest that it doesn’t.

Luckily I don't really use/create playlists, other than my list of go-to tracks for auditioning/evaluating new gear, set ups, etc. However, I do like the AMHD UI and the albums/artists suggested works pretty well for me. Fingers crossed. For now it's fire tablet USB out to DAC!

 

[Bamyasi]

The statement "When casting music playback to a device, the streaming quality settings on that device are respected" from the Amazon Music help page does hold out some hope - it's just that it's been hard to verify that from the devices that currently can be cast to.

Except there is no definition of what's "Alexa-enabled device" mentioned on this page means. The page used to link to a generic search page with various Amazon devices listed (e.g. Echo Dot) but that has been removed recently. So far, I have not encountered any "Alexa-enabled devices" which can output Amazon Music HD/UHD digital stream untouched.

 

[Brantome]

Except there is no definition of what's "Alexa-enabled device" mentioned on this page means. The page used to link to a generic search page with various Amazon devices listed (e.g. Echo Dot) but that has been removed recently. So far, I have not encountered any "Alexa-enabled devices" which can output Amazon Music HD/UHD digital stream untouched.

For me, a device is Alexa-enabled if it interfaces to Alexa, or if it is visible to Alexa, most commonly thru the use of an associated Alexa skill for the purposes of being controlled by Alexa. I’d say, for example, that my Heos Link HS2 is Alexa enabled since, thru its skill, it appears as a speaker that Alexa can direct audio to. It also plays bit perfect Amazon Music HD/UHD tracks, albeit not via Alexa.

Maybe the page you mention is a variation of this?

 

[Scot_Douglas]

The Heos app doesn’t support those for the Amazon Music HD service and while I’ve read that Bluesound does, some other comments I’ve read suggest that it doesn’t.

Heos app definitely does NOT, and it's frustrating as heck. I recently found a way around it for my familyroom system - enable Alexa on my new LG TV (optical out to my Denon AVR) and cast to it like I do for the WiiM.

Absolutely no idea if it is lossy, lossless or all the other terms that get thrown around. Sounds good in the room and I now have access to my music.

 

[Music1969]

that s just 50% more jitter than the small cca ..2015... not expensive too
;-)
possibility of progress with a new firmware?

Jitter is irrelevant here.

Like I mentioned before, hook it to an RME ADI-2 optical input and run J-test and you won't see any on the DAC output.

The only important thing for the optical source is bit perfect transfer from source to DAC digital input.

After that, it is all about the DAC.

 

[AKR]

Newbie here.
I have a few questions on the WiiM Mini:

Please confirm if I got this right.
1. At this time the only streaming service that works with high resolution (24/192) on this device is Qobuz. Tidal can presently only stream lossless CD quality 24/48. A future update will enable Tidal hi res but an external MQA capable DAC is required. Amazon Music HD and 24/192 is also a work in progress.

2. Apple Music songs in hi resolution streamed over Airplay 2 is compressed to AAC 256 ( equivalent to 320 kpbs), basically same as Spotify connect. No way to stream Apple Music to the Wimm in 24/48.

3. As an Apple Music subscriber can I physically connect my phone- lightening to 3.5mm to the Wiim and then optical out to my DAC- and get 24/48 or 24/192 depending on Apple Music’s song resolution. Obviously not an ideal solution for a streamer but good to know if it works.
Thanks.

 

[Brantome]

See this Wiim page for their plans, which have slipped a bit as we don't yet have the Apr30 release. https://wiimhome.com/whatsNew

Re 1, Wiim only currently support lossy Amazon Music - the support for the lossless Amazon Music HD service which includes 16 bit up to 48Khz iirc and 24 bit tracks up to 192KHz has slipped to the end of May.

Re 2, search this thread for Airplay - there's been a lot of discussion around this, but WiiM plan to implement 48kHz/24 bit support on AirPlay 2 very soon too (but I guess that might slip a few weeks)

Re 3, I think the WiiM line in is analog, so I can't see how the original song resolution could be passed along the chain you describe

 

[AKR]

Regarding Airplay 2 my understanding is this has nothing to do with Wiim support but rather an inherent Apple Airplay 2 limitation or more accurately, bad implementation. To the best of my knowledge no high end streamer including the BlueSound Node supports lossless Apple Music streams.
Perhaps I have this wrong?

 

[telemike]

Airplay 1 with an Airport Express will get you lossless ALAC 44.1/16

 

[AKR]

Airplay 1 with an Airport Express will get you lossless ALAC 44.1/16

So I understand from an earlier ( last year) deep dive into this. Sad state of affairs that the only device that can provide basic CD quality streams is a decade old piece of long discontinued hardware. It’s truly bizarre that Apple promotes Apple Music having lossless coding but does not provide any way for a user to stream this to current hardware. Assuming this is all correct and one of their many software updates over the past year has not fixed this. Have not read of a recent test verifying AirPlay 2 still compresses Apple Music lossless streams.

 

[morillon]

non
you can observ

Jitter is irrelevant here.

Like I mentioned before, hook it to an RME ADI-2 optical input and run J-test and you won't see any on the DAC output.

The only important thing for the optical source is bit perfect transfer from source to DAC digital input.

After that, it is all about the DAC.

you have mesureaments of jtest with rme in toslink, not usb?

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

non
you can observ

you have mesureaments of jtest with rme in toslink, not usb?

RME has them. SteadyClock FS, which the ADI-2 DAC FS uses, all but eliminates jitter on the optical input, as seen in this video.

If you can "hear" jitter from the WiiM through the RME ADI-2 DAC FS, you have a very vivid imagination.

 

[morillon]

i dont have rme....

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

i dont have rme....

That's your problem. You wanted measurements via the optical input on the RME. You have them.

The low jitter of the WiiM Mini is a non-issue with the RME, and, per Archimago, pretty much any decent DAC.