WiiM Ultra Streamer Preamp Review

[rccarguy]

I read quite a few of the audio forums and I've not seen any of the really serious "audiophile" types give a hoot about the Ultra. It simply doesn't cost enough nor sufficiently exclusive or fancy. Those fellows are all sticking by their exotic and pricey brands. For example, I just did a quick search over on Audiogon for "Wiim Ultra" and only found a handful of posts. No one over there was giving it any serious consideration. Same thing over on Audio Asylum.

There is some snobbery in hifi, when I went into audio show I asked about Wiim and you could see his nose scrunched up lol. He was selling Hifi Rose audio streamers.

I asked do the roses support softsqueeze. He didn't know.

 

[Chester]

I read quite a few of the audio forums and I've not seen any of the really serious "audiophile" types give a hoot about the Ultra. It simply doesn't cost enough nor sufficiently exclusive or fancy. Those fellows are all sticking by their exotic and pricey brands. For example, I just did a quick search over on Audiogon for "Wiim Ultra" and only found a handful of posts. No one over there was giving it any serious consideration. Same thing over on Audio Asylum.

It’s funny really, if Wiim were instead called something more prestigious, they could have added a zero to the price and the audiophiles would have been swooning all over the ultra.

 

[Emlin]

It’s funny really, if Wiim were instead called something more prestigious, they could have added a zero to the price and the audiophiles would have been swooning all over the ultra.

Only if it coloured the sound and took a while to supposedly break in.

 

[Brian Hall]

I read some people reporting connecting a hard drive on the USB at the black of the wiim, my friend reported it doesnt work for him and do not have a USB input to select. He has ethernet, Line in, digital in,bluetooth,TV,phono only
He connected a 300go HD but nothing happen

I have an SSD drive connected to the USB port on the Ultra. It shows up as USB and there is no issue playing my ripped CDs from that drive.

 

[Petrushka]

It’s funny really, if Wiim were instead called something more prestigious, they could have added a zero to the price and the audiophiles would have been swooning all over the ultra.

Only if they put a couple of tubes on top.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

Except for the Amp Pro.

No, that really doesn't count. A DAC is a stand alone product, the Amp Pro ties you in to the amplification section...unless you use the USB out, in which case you lose the bass management and sub out.

 

[harkpabst]

What IS a partition system ?

There are file systems and partition schemes and they are not the same thing.

I just deleted a very lengthy post I had prepared as all the fine details don't really matter. My recommendation for best compatibility is to ensure that the disk uses the MBR partition scheme, not GPT. The one and only partition on that disk should ideally be formatted with the FAT32 file system or NTFS. Changing any of these characteristics means to delete all the contents and setting up the drive as new.

300 GB is not a lot of storage capacity. I would recommend to buy a current USB thumb drive instead and copy the music over to this. The investment should be less than 50 bucks.

 

[Brian Hall]

Only if they put a couple of tubes on top.

I think it would have to be at least four tubes.

 

[Brian Hall]

The one and only partition on that disk should ideally be formatted with the FAT32 file system or NTFS.

FAT32 is what I used on the SSD drive. I just plugged it into a Linux pc, formatted it and then copied my collection over to it. There is a scan function that needs to complete on the Ultra before the folders and files are visible to play.

 

[Brian Hall]

Back to the lack of inputs on the Ultra. I have a Schiit Modi+ plugged into the line in rca jacks. That gives me a USB C for my main pc, an optical for another pc and a coax for my CD player.

 

[TimW]

I just moved and was planning on getting the Wiim Amp Pro for my bedroom. Instead I decided to get the Ultra for my living room and to repurpose the Pro I was using for the bedroom. I got the Ultra using store credit from trade-ins at my friend's Hi-fi shop. It's so nice to have a local place to try something hands on before buying so I try to do as much business with them as possible.

I will be using the HDMI ARC input for my TV, the line in for my tape deck, the phono in for my turntable, and the built in streaming of course. I may hook up my Oppo to the optical input so that I can listen to CD's without turning on the TV. There may also be some occasions where a visitor wants to share music and they could use the bluetooth input. I doubt the inferior bluetooth codec will bother us during a social music sharing session.

For $330 this is a well enough made preamp with awesome streaming and DSP capabilities and enough legacy inputs for my needs. If you need something with different features consider paying over 2x the price for the Eversolo DMP-A6 or 3x the price for the upcoming Bluesound Node Icon. Even then you may not be satisfied with those products' feature sets. To complain about the features or performance of this product at this price is just silly to me.

 

[lowkeyoperations]

I'd prefer them to skip phono inputs - anyone that's halfway serious about vinyl would get a dedicated preamp instead of using these ho-hum implementations, I'd expect (caveat: I abandoned vinyl in the late 90s). I'd rather see that useless $ in development going towards a better headphone amp.

I'd also prefer a coax analog input, rather than a coax digital output (I guess that's what the coax out it).

That said, for a bit over $300 this is an awesome list of features and very good performance as a preamp-streamer.

And yet the two most important features beyond streaming for me are phono input for my relatively inexpensive turntable and digital cox out to my active monitors.
They already have products without phono input and coax out so I’m glad they added these features.

 

[Petrushka]

And yet the two most important features beyond streaming for me are phono input for my relatively inexpensive turntable and digital cox out to my active monitors.
They already have products without phono input and coax out so I’m glad they added these features.

The scary thing is the phono preamp is probably as good as a lot of mid priced phono preamps.

 

[Sokel]

Bluesound Node Icon looks promising but at a much higher price.

Did they fixed their EQ down low?
Cause it had the same problem as others,nice measurements without it,elevated noise with it enabled.

(Wiim should be measured the same way,there are some reports about it but we need the visuals to know)

 

[somebodyelse]

NTFS, FAT, FAT32, EXT2/3, BTFS, Exfat

Disk partitioning - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Those are filesystems - you format a partition with one of them. The partition table would be MBR or GPT, at least for PC hardware.

 

[pablolie]

Those are filesystems - you format a partition with one of them. The partition table would be MBR or GPT, at least for PC hardware.

Partitions think they are physical disks, and the operating system sees them as such. The file system is what governs organization within the partition. To the average user the distinction is pretty immaterial, they'll simply see (or not, some partitions can be hidden to users) physical disks managed by the file system.

 

[somebodyelse]

Partitions think they are physical disks, and the operating system sees them as such. The file system is what governs organization within the partition. To the average user the distinction is pretty immaterial, they'll simply see (or not, some partitions can be hidden to users) physical disks managed by the file system.

I was confused until I remembered Windows presents them like that - and DOS before it. And hides a lot of things from users. In linux you see both the raw disk and its partitions,

 

[Petrushka]

I was confused until I remembered Windows presents them like that - and DOS before it. And hides a lot of things from users. In linux you see both the raw disk and its partitions,

You can see this in Windows if you look.

 

[pablolie]

I was confused until I remembered Windows presents them like that - and DOS before it. And hides a lot of things from users. In linux you see both the raw disk and its partitions,

True indeed. But even in Linux you don't see the swap partition on an everyday basis and such unless you invoke a - admittedly easy to start- tool. Which also exists in Windows, albeit not by default unless you're command line versed.

Even as a power user, I very seldom deal with partitioning after initial setup... especially these days, when there's so much storage there that dealing with that seems unnecessary.

 

[khuntim]

Back to the lack of inputs on the Ultra. I have a Schiit Modi+ plugged into the line in rca jacks. That gives me a USB C for my main pc, an optical for another pc and a coax for my CD player.

Interesting. I know little about Linux, maybe use an open source DLNA server? I have used both Jriver and Plex and works well for local playback.

a bit confusing.. so you are still using the line-out on the Ultra, using it's DAC?