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WiiM Ultra Streamer Preamp Review

Rate this streamer/DAC/Preamp:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 5 1.2%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 43 10.3%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 161 38.6%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 208 49.9%

  • Total voters
    417
I will laugh forever that they included weights inside at the year 2025 to add premium feeling.
It works :)

That said, my Luxman LXV-OT10 is a bit too light such that sometimes the weight of the phono cables makes it tilt up a bit.
 
I have not played around much with the WiiM room correction, and for $329 I think one needs to keep expectations in line. The EQ by itself seems pretty good.
I agree and you don’t need to use the room EQ feature (even though that does allow you to choose the operating bandwidth and maximum boost allowed), just use the manual filters alongside something simple like House curve is enough to improve modal issues and fine tune tonal balance.
 
Seems like it’s a good sign if people don’t have much else to complain about than extraneous weights being added to the unit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-Ed
"People"? Say "Sokel" I won't take it hard :p
And,who's complaining?I'm just laughing by the decades old practice who found its way to 2025.

Would it be so surprising that someone shamelessly combined 1:1 Apple looks with the long time audiophile prejudices?
I don't think so.

(if you want to see what complains are like wait till I get it in my hands and test it the "Sokel" way :p )
 
"People"? Say "Sokel" I won't take it hard :p
And,who's complaining?I'm just laughing by the decades old practice who found its way to 2025.

Would it be so surprising that someone shamelessly combined 1:1 Apple looks with the long time audiophile prejudices?
I don't think so.

(if you want to see what complains are like wait till I get it in my hands and test the "Sokel" way :p )
It so far seems to be as close to a complaint as I’ve seen. It appears that I’m not being very clear about the actual point of my statement.

-Ed
 
"People"? Say "Sokel" I won't take it hard :p
And,who's complaining?I'm just laughing by the decades old practice who found its way to 2025.

Would it be so surprising that someone shamelessly combined 1:1 Apple looks with the long time audiophile prejudices?
I don't think so.

(if you want to see what complains are like wait till I get it in my hands and test it the "Sokel" way :p )

Just laughing? I thought you said embarrassing. That’s a pretty serious damning criticism, not a joke.

Maybe lay off the coffee for a bit.

IMG_1609.jpeg
 
That’s a pretty serious damning criticism
The exact same with the old CDP's,other gear,etc all this years across forums.
And of course this kind of practice was always suitable for both,laugh and criticism.

(and I will never,ever lay off of my Ristretto's,they're good for the soul )

((don't take it so serious,I'm sure that the Wiim's fox who brought it back to life is laughing too)
 
Excellent updates from WiiM over the past few months.

Room correction, now in stereo, so that's10-band PEQ in stereo (10 bands per channel).

They're regularly updating the display.

And now we also have 'smart presets'. You can assign each preset (up to 12) for input, output, custom PEQ profile, and sub on/off. So I have Preset 1 turning on Wi-Fi input, PEQ for my speakers/room, sub on, output over line out to my Topping PA5 ii amp. Whilst Preset 2 in Wi-Fi in, PEQ for my Sennheiser HD600s, optical out to my Topping EX5 DAC/HP amp, sub off. One click on ether the remote, the app, or the Ultra's screen takes care of everything.

Absolute powerhouse of a piece of kit.

It has to be said, I'm a big fan of Topping, but we begged and pleaded for years for the to bring out a DAC with PEQ, and when they finally managed that last April, it was about as vanilla as you could get. In comparison the Ultra's functionality is full double scoop of rocky road + mint choc chip, with an extra portion of rum 'n' raisin thrown in for good measure.

Forget the streamer part, this is the best-specced/featured transparent DAC you can buy for less than...well, hold on, for any money, isn't it? I mean I know you can buy miniDSP, and do all sorts on a PC, but as a standalone consumer DAC, plug and play, is there anything out there at any price that does transparent DAC, stereo 10-band PEQ, and sub out with bass management? Even if you'll never use this streamer as a streamer, it's an astonishing DAC/pre amp for any money.
 
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I mean I know you can buy miniDSP, and do all sorts on a PC, but as a standalone consumer DAC, plug and play, is there anything out there at any price that does transparent DAC, stereo 10-band PEQ, and sub out with bass management?

Yup. Stereo.de published their measurements showing it beating the Pro Plus with their test suite.

The closest competitor is the Bluesound Node Icon. No one knows how transparent the DAC will be (it’s in Amir’s hands) and Dirac is an extra cost, but it is the closest feature competitor.
 
The closest competitor is the Bluesound Node Icon.
Why should it be the Icon when the N132 is slightly ahead in terms of sound quality at STEREO :rolleyes:
And we're not talking about Dirac Live yet.
 
Yup. Stereo.de published their measurements showing it beating the Pro Plus with their test suite.

The closest competitor is the Bluesound Node Icon. No one knows how transparent the DAC will be (it’s in Amir’s hands) and Dirac is an extra cost, but it is the closest feature competitor.
I thought I would regret giving up the node icon but have been pleasantly surprised by the WiiM:

- A more feature rich app with just some no-brainer things like choosing your output
- More accessible on-device controls
- USB out with volume control (icon could not control volume for the 2 devices I tried to connect)
- A super rich community with their forums with loads of help
- Good customer support experience, they pushed a beta firmware to my device to fix an issue with 48hrs of informing them of a regression during a patch update
- a lot cheaper

The biggest thing now I would love from them would be multi channel/atmos audio decoding and output over USB (or a new device that can output over Ethernet using AES67/Dante). Which would essentially eat up a large portion of the AVR market and all these unnecessarily high and expensive audio processor manufacturers will get disrupted. Adding Dirac support could also be next upgrade in their device catalog.
 
I ordered the Dayton iMM-6C not only, but also because of the Wiim Ultra Auto room calibration.

1000023048.jpg

According to the calibration file, it only has an error of + or - 0.5db in the range from 40 to 16000 Hz, i.e. a total of 1db max.
I specified the correction range from 150 to 15 khz.

The autocorrection is clearly better than with the built-in micro of the Google Pixel 8 Pro, but still not as optimal as with other programs. But it is very useful as a basis for further adjustment, whereby I find Flat the most useful, because B&K and Harman Curve get a small belly from the autocorrection, which is omitted with Flat.
 
I ordered the Dayton iMM-6C not only, but also because of the Wiim Ultra Auto room calibration.

View attachment 424565
According to the calibration file, it only has an error of + or - 0.5db in the range from 40 to 16000 Hz, i.e. a total of 1db max.
I specified the correction range from 150 to 15 khz.

The autocorrection is clearly better than with the built-in micro of the Google Pixel 8 Pro, but still not as optimal as with other programs. But it is very useful as a basis for further adjustment, whereby I find Flat the most useful, because B&K and Harman Curve get a small belly from the autocorrection, which is omitted with Flat.
Nice!
Excuse my question, but is that "belly" something you hear or something you see in the graphs ?
IOW, is that deviation from flat, something you can identify without looking on the graph ? Perhaps it is just a preference ?
I remember that kind of "belly" called ESS-Hump, which - afaik - also had been not clearly identified as audible, but most people prefer to have not.
edit - missing letters ;-)
 
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I have had a discussion last night with a friend, who does Audio(phile) fora for more than 3 decades, and sees himself as a scientiest (does have a PHD and is a self-declared lab rat). He told me that, in the USA (where he lives), the WIIM ULTRA is marketed as "audiophile" and as another hot cake like Tesla earlier, and no-one cares about their history as OEM manufacturer and their organic growth into a people's favorite toy through reasonable customer interaction and technical performance evolution on an acceptable budget for audio lovers.
As someone from Europe, following WIIM's way since I noticed the "mini " almost 3 years ago, I feel kind of surprised to hear that kind of reception?
Is that a resasonable anaylysis of the marketing/media thing in the US, or rather a less informed opinion ? Can't judge that for myself ...
 
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