WiiM Ultra Streamer Preamp Review

[Justkidding]

Yes, Chromecast or Google Cast works well.

Thanks a lot. I thought chromecast always also streams the video that's why I was confused.
As far as I understand the Wiim Pro supports chromecast whereas the ultra has Google Chromecast Audio (CastLite).
So is there a difference between those when you only consider the possibility to stream from an audio device?

 

[Grovkalle]

I wish they just released an upgraded version of Wiim Pro with a USB output but I guess for you guys that do not live in a country
where you can buy the Ultra for $330 it is ok. In Sweden I the cost of an Ultra is around $450-460 and then the price is getting into Bluesound territory.
The new Node Nano is actually cheaper here than the Wiim Ultra.

 

[Brian Hall]

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?

I am using the line out on the Ultra. I have a Plex server running on a Linux pc that also shares all of my ripped CD collection.

 

[Raxumit]

I have two Ultras. Mostly I'm very pleased with them. I've been an LMS user for 20+ years, so the LMS support is critical to me, but the Spotify/Tidal/etc. support is great for my spouse as well. Thanks to Amir for doing the numbers, its nice to know the audio quality is good.

I was early to report a series of LMS bugs, and Wiim has been very good about fixing these quickly, and repairing things when a release broke LMS display briefly. Multi-room grouping and syncing works great, at least for me. The sub-out and room EQ represents a huge value, although I haven't played with either much. I think the price extremely good for what you get.

Still, I rated this just "fine" because, at the moment, the UI is just adequate. The volume knob needs acceleration, the now-playing display should be more customizable. At the price point, I give them a pass on things that cost serious hardware money, like the display being small/not OLED and the volume knob not feeling smooth and awesome - I get it. But there are software improvements that could be made that would maximize the potential of the hardware. This unfufilled potential keeps me from calling it excellent, at least just yet.

The good news is Wiim shows no signs of stopping development. The way they added room EQ to most of their existing devices, and then iteratively improved it, was really impressive. The display for inputs has improved, I'm hopeful the rest will as well.

A Wiim Ultra Pro Plus might have balanced outs, a better screen, and a nice-feeling volume knob.

My vote for a Wiim Amp Ultra would be an Ultra combined with a Hypex NC252MP. That one probably won't happen though.

 

[Descartes]

No AirPlay makes it useless to me.

Do you live on the Cote D’azur

 

[Descartes]

I am 9 pages in to the review and no one has mentioned one of the greatest aspects of the WiiM family of products. All of the WiiMs as long as they are on the same network can be linked together to create multiple music room environments all controlled by your phone app.
We are building a new home and I have already identified 6 zones where I want music: family room, bedroom, den, outdoor room, by the pool, workout room. Each of these rooms will be a "zone" with it's own WiiM located in my electronics closet. I will be able to choose music for each zone, the volume etc. They can have the same music or different music.
Yes, this is available in commercial systems for big money on complex set ups or using SONOS for 3x the WiiM price. But with these little and relatively inexpensive WiiMs, I can set up many zones and manage them all with an app or have a cheap tablet in each room for control. I can use the higher quality WiiMs where sound matters and the cheaper ones where I just need some background music and they all work together.

I see this as a breakthrough for whole home sound systems.

How do you do that? Especially since Apple Airplay is no longer supported

 

[Burnside]

How do you do that? Especially since Apple Airplay is no longer supported

You can group WiiM/Linkplay devices in the WiiM Home app and play music across them, nothing to do with Airplay. Plus Airplay is only not supported on the Ultra and Amp Pro - the other WiiM units still act as Airplay receivers. Are you perhaps confusing it with the withdrawn Airplay cast feature?

 

[Romario]

If the USB is 5V on the ultra to power a tablet and control the Wiim unit from the phone then there's the bigger screen.

 

[harkpabst]

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.

You're right, but the discussion was about what to do when a USB storage device doesn't show up. It's not a matter of if or how the user should be able to understand the difference between a partition scheme and a file system. It's a question of how well the Ultra's Linux based operating system (not Android based) deals with it.

Experience shows that choosing the right file system and partition scheme at least increases the chances of the USB input working with different physical devices. If the OS has trouble recognising the partition scheme it doesn't matter if it could handle the file system used for a given partition or not.

 

[artishard116]

I am 9 pages in to the review and no one has mentioned one of the greatest aspects of the WiiM family of products. All of the WiiMs as long as they are on the same network can be linked together to create multiple music room environments all controlled by your phone app.
We are building a new home and I have already identified 6 zones where I want music: family room, bedroom, den, outdoor room, by the pool, workout room. Each of these rooms will be a "zone" with it's own WiiM located in my electronics closet. I will be able to choose music for each zone, the volume etc. They can have the same music or different music.
Yes, this is available in commercial systems for big money on complex set ups or using SONOS for 3x the WiiM price. But with these little and relatively inexpensive WiiMs, I can set up many zones and manage them all with an app or have a cheap tablet in each room for control. I can use the higher quality WiiMs where sound matters and the cheaper ones where I just need some background music and they all work together.

I see this as a breakthrough for whole home sound systems.

Can I ask what speakers you plan to use in such a setup? I've been considering ditching Sonos for multiple wiims but not sure what could replace the all-in-one relatively good sounding powered speaker and built in Alexa mic that comes in the Sonos Era 100.

 

[Descartes]

You can group WiiM/Linkplay devices in the WiiM Home app and play music across them, nothing to do with Airplay. Plus Airplay is only not supported on the Ultra and Amp Pro - the other WiiM units still act as Airplay receivers. Are you perhaps confusing it with the withdrawn Airplay cast feature?

I see yes you can add other WiiM devices, nice touch.
So if I have an original WiiM Amp which can play Airplay 2 and I add an other WiiM Pro will I be able to play from my Apple Music App?

 

[uofmtiger]

I see yes you can add other WiiM devices, nice touch.
So if I have an original WiiM Amp which can play Airplay 2 and I add an other WiiM Pro will I be able to play from my Apple Music App?

Yes ( the way it works now).

 

[JaccoW]

RyanWithWiim
Hi everyone! Thanks all for testing out the Plex integration! We've been going through your feedback and have partnered with Plex to build a more in depth integration with Plex before we go live. Please continue to share feedback, we'll keep reading it.

We'll let you know when there's more to share, but for now we're going back to the development desk for some more time.

Wiim Forums: Beta Test: Plex

There is a good bit of discussion going on there about a headless Plex implementation but they seem to be putting in the work to improve the integration.

 

[al2002]

It is much better than Phono but has rising low frequency noise which could aggravate phono performance:

Was phono overload measured?

 

[Mark Lawless]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the WiiM Ultra network streamer, DAC, phono stage and preamplifier. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $329.
View attachment 395569
Physical attribute are modern and attractive enough. Alas, I can't say the same thing about the graphical interface. Icons seem dated to me. They are also superfluous to what is in the App other than "now playing" screen. On that front, I am yet again disappointed by lack of volume control display even though there is plenty of room there:
View attachment 395570
Why emphasize bit rate and sample size instead of volume control? Also lacking is any indicator that you have EQ active and if so, which profile.

On that topic, the volume controls feels like it is scratching against the case. I tried to pull it out but would not move so left it alone, leaving an unsatisfying feel.

I tried to turn Ethernet off and it warned me that I would be switching to WiFi? Why is this either or instead of both being on at the same time?

Finally, there is no off switch on the UI or the unit itself:
View attachment 395571

The good news shows up when you look at the back and see such comprehensive connectivity, blowing away any stand-alone DAC or simple streamer. We have analog input, phono stage, and even HDMI ARC in addition to USB host capability. Alas, reading those names is next to impossible in most lighting/angles. As you see, I had to tilt the unit up for them to show up on the picture. Otherwise they wash away to same color as the case. Labels should be legible when looking down from above which the back is facing the wall.

The sophisticated app is there which instantly recognized the unit and allowed me to configure it. There is great value added here including proper crossover for bass management, EQ, etc.

WiiM Ultra DAC Measurements
I set up the unit for streaming over Ethernet from my Roon player and was greeted with excellent performance out of line out:
View attachment 395573
The WiiM Ultra easily makes way for itself among our very competent DACs, obviating the need to use an external one:
View attachment 395574
View attachment 395575
Noise performance is in the same class:
View attachment 395576

Multitone performance is great:
View attachment 395577

Here is the 50 Hz performance for comparison with Stereophile tests of DACs:
View attachment 395578
Linearity is perfect:
View attachment 395579

IMD test shows noise could be a bit better but distortion is nicely low:
View attachment 395580

Jitter shows some interference as we saw with WiiM Pro Plus but nto harmful to sound:
View attachment 395581

Filter attenuation beyond 24 kHz is excellent:
View attachment 395582

Frequency response is nice which is a good thing as I didn't see any option of changing the filter:
View attachment 395583

48 kHz wideband distortion+noise is not very good:
View attachment 395584
Increasing the sample rate fixed that indicating that there is some kind of noise shaping going on:
View attachment 395585

WiiM Ultra Headphone Output Measurements
I started with power testing which turned out just OK performance:
View attachment 395586
View attachment 395587
Stepping through the various load impedances shows substantial output impedance (should be near zero):
View attachment 395588

Response is also variable. So not a serious headphone amplifier.

WiiM Ultra Phono Stage Measurements
Let's start with our dashboard using MM mode:
View attachment 395606

And MC:

View attachment 395589
Noise floor seems elevated which when added to mains noise, resulted in lackluster performance. Fortunately RIAA equalization is good:

View attachment 395590

WiiM Analog Input Measurements
I configured the analog input for 24 bit/192 Khz:
View attachment 395602

So not bad. Here is the noise performance for both 24 bit and 16:
View attachment 395603

So better override the default 16 bits.

Frequency response is nice as and wide (at 192 kHz sampling):
View attachment 395605

WiiM Ultra Bluetooh Measurements
Someone suggested that I test the Bluetooth input using LDAC codec. I spent half hour trying to enable that and I could not. My Android phone would constantly show it in gray indicating the target device doesn't support it. A quick google found the FAQ for WiiM Ultra stating that it only supports SBC and AAC. Both turned in poor performance due to the nature of those codecs and their encoders in BT application:
View attachment 395591

I highly recommend company pursue supporting LDAC.

Conclusions
WiiM Ultra nails streaming performance with an excellent codec implementation. Rich functionality is another plus as is the App. The new display didn't do much for me and if anything, was a bit of a negative even though in general I am a fan of such things. Headphone output is not useful for serious listening. Phono stage may be OK if noise is not an issue. Finally, Bluetooth support is a let down with lack of LDAC support.

I think an overhaul of the GUI with a better platform and addition of LDAC would go a long way to justify the higher cost and display.

I am going to recommend the WiiM Ultra. There is such incredible amount of capability here that when combined with excellent codec and reasonable cost, it is hard to pass on it.

------------
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/

I have a Wiim Ultra and I can't recommend it more enthusiastically, I like it so much that the areas that come up short in the review are a surprise to me. When I did listen with headphones I was very happy with the sound. I also love that you can edit the EQ going to the headphones. I have some headphones that sound so much better now. Going to my speakers the sound is also great. I've used the EQ for some music but pure flat sounds best with quality recordings. If there's a better streamer out there I would love to hear it. I love the built in preamp.

 

[Miguelón]

I have a Wiim Ultra and I can't recommend it more enthusiastically, I like it so much that the areas that come up short in the review are a surprise to me. When I did listen with headphones I was very happy with the sound. I also love that you can edit the EQ going to the headphones. I have some headphones that sound so much better now. Going to my speakers the sound is also great. I've used the EQ for some music but pure flat sounds best with quality recordings. If there's a better streamer out there I would love to hear it. I love the built in preamp.

Agree with all, my best invested 400€ in audio gear.

And knowing WiiM’s reactivity in firmware updates, the thing can improve even more

 

[morillon]

Was phono overload measured?

(overload in mm (or mc), impedance and capacitance input....? since its release wiim has only informed about the gain...)

 

[Mort]

I switch between speakers and headphones often with my Wiim ultra. Each has it's own PEQ preset and I'm already fatigued switching the PEQ each time I switch the output. This is made worse because I use the Wiim ultra screen to change output at my desktop.

Seems like I have to get EQ from other sources until Wiim puts EQ on the outputs. Right?

Fortunately I was already ordering a minidsp that can handle the speakers. I just need one for headphones.

Space is a concern. I don't want a full DAC /Amp setup like the D50iii/a50. Qudelix 5k or the new Neutron player look suitable. Which would you pick? What other options should I consider?

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

I switch between speakers and headphones often with my Wiim ultra. Each has it's own PEQ preset and I'm already fatigued switching the PEQ each time I switch the output. This is made worse because I use the Wiim ultra screen to change output at my desktop.

Seems like I have to get EQ from other sources until Wiim puts EQ on the outputs. Right?

Fortunately I was already ordering a minidsp that can handle the speakers. I just need one for headphones.

Space is a concern. I don't want a full DAC /Amp setup like the D50iii/a50. Qudelix 5k or the new Neutron player look suitable. Which would you pick? What other options should I consider?

I’m in a similar position.

My fix is to use the Ultra for my speakers, and my old Mini to drive my Topping EX5 DAC/headphone amp.

Works perfectly.

 

[jhaider]

very good steaming qualities (except for Airplay)t.

Whoa - did WiiM (who haven’t from what I’ve seen previously put a foot wrong) really fail this badly and drop AirPlay?

Oh well, their less expensive stuff still has proper functionality.