WiiM Ultra

[morillon]

there is obvious confusion....
the large part of the public concerned by these products is not aware of the limits of the difficulties of implementation, and of the often relative effectiveness, sometimes even "at least good"... the rc in two clicks on his phone, the "absolute weapon" is not for the moment... that will be known...
and the DSPs have been present for decades...
(but the effectiveness and the interest even if not so simple either, is more evident on the headsets... a sacred democratization... and the general public and inexpensive wiim products are very interesting on this point.. even a simple "pro ")

(the absence of multicaptures mmm etc on the wiim rc is really a weakness at the moment and not so much suggested...)

(but thanks to rew!)

 

[morillon]

you should especially consider the revision of the amp in the future... the screen is not necessarily that useful and... future fragility in addition...
(and to be honest, even if I can be a little surprised... the integration of the power supply in the ultra or the amp is a bit much regrettable... scalability, reliability, after-sales service etc....)

 

[BSerg]

Thank you all very much. I want to use ultra or pro plus instead of DAC. I have UMIK1 and REW. With Wiim, I want to remove the resonances of the room. Do you think the sound will be better if you use HDMI ARC instead of Toslink?

 

[BSerg]

You can turn it off completely. I don't think there's an option yet for it to go to sleep after a certain period of time. Maybe later, maybe, maybe not.


10 bands. Either 10 bands applied to both channels simultaneously, or - if you prefer - 10 bands per channel. At the moment, WiiM's automatic room correction only supports simultaneous L+R channel PEQ. Independent channel room correction is currently in public beta (but was broken in version 2.11.6 of the WiiM Home app). This will likely be fixed in the next release, but it may take some time before it makes it into production firmware.


If you can use third party software like REW or HouseCurve, all the above about stereo or L+R RC doesn't matter. You can manually adjust the PEQ filters, then either per channel or combined.

If you want to rely on a simple automated process for RC, then - as @morillon pointed out - you should be aware of its limitations. Depending on your room and microphone (phone), the results may or may not be useful. In any case, it makes sense to limit the frequency range in which RC works.

By default, the WiiM is quite generous (40Hz to 4kHz), but you can easily limit this range even further. Also, max Q (default: 10) and max gain (default: 10dB) are a bit high, but (again) they can be easily changed.

In one sentence: be prepared to play and tinker a little.

Translated by mod .

Thanks. This is exactly what I want to play with. As far as I understand, autocorrect only works on Apple, and I have Android, so I will use umik1 and REW.

 

[staticV3]

Do you think the sound will be better if you use HDMI ARC instead of Toslink?

The sound will stay the same, but with ARC you can control volume using your TV remote, which is handy.

Спасибо. Это именно то, с чем я хочу поиграться. Насколько я понимаю, автокоррекция работает только на Apple, а у меня Android, поэтому я буду использовать umik1 и REW.

Automatic room correction works on Android as well, and you can even plug your UMIK into your Android phone for this.

However, WiiM's room correction algorithm still needs some improvement, so if you know how to do it manually using REW, that is preferred.

Also, please use english on ASR

 

[Jimbob54]

Translated by mod .

Thanks. This is exactly what I want to play with. As far as I understand, autocorrect only works on Apple, and I have Android, so I will use umik1 and REW.

I've translated this one but please post in English . Thanks

 

[Abdo]

However, WiiM's room correction algorithm still needs some improvement, so if you know how to do it manually using REW, that is preferred.

Please excuse my lack of knowledge, but what would it be like to use REW on the Wiim Ultra. Thanks.

 

[fuzzy_logic]

Hello everyone. Tell me, please: 1. Is it possible to turn off the screen on Ultra, or can the screen turn off itself after a while? 2. How many PEQ bands exactly, 4 or 10? 3. Now I use a Chinese DAC and a D amplifier to watch TV and listen to music from my smartphone, but I want to use room correction. Do you think it's better to use Ultra for this, or is Pro Plus enough? Thank you.

For your first question, there is a screen setting to allow the screen to sleep when there is no active input .

 

[Shorty]

@staticV3 ”…with ARC you can control volume using your TV remote, which is handy.”
If I’m not mistaken and unless this was rectified with an update, this would only have been possible with ‘eARC’, no?

 

[BSerg]

I've translated this one but please post in English . Thanks

Thanks for correcting my mistake. I accidentally copied the wrong window from Google Translate.

 

[BSerg]

The sound will stay the same, but with ARC you can control volume using your TV remote, which is handy.


Automatic room correction works on Android as well, and you can even plug your UMIK into your Android phone for this.

However, WiiM's room correction algorithm still needs some improvement, so if you know how to do it manually using REW, that is preferred.

Also, please use english on ASR

Thank you. I don't use the TV remote. The TV is quite old and the smart works slowly in it. I don't want to change the TV because it is 3D, and sometimes, nostalgically, I rewatch "Avatar" on it I control everything with the remote from the Xiaomi TV Stick 4K. So, for my purposes, the Wiim Pro Plus is quite suitable. The language was an accident. I copied the text from the wrong window in Google Translate. Thanks again.

 

[Jimbob54]

Thanks for correcting my mistake. I accidentally copied the wrong window from Google Translate.

No problem and welcome.

 

[Petrushka]

Thank you. I don't use the TV remote. The TV is quite old and the smart works slowly in it. I don't want to change the TV because it is 3D, and sometimes, nostalgically, I rewatch "Avatar" on it I control everything with the remote from the Xiaomi TV Stick 4K. So, for my purposes, the Wiim Pro Plus is quite suitable. The language was an accident. I copied the text from the wrong window in Google Translate. Thanks again.

My Roku Ultra controls TV on/off and volume. Much easier than the TV remote. I currently don’t have ARC. Just optical.

 

[staticV3]

Please excuse my lack of knowledge, but what would it be like to use REW on the Wiim Ultra. Thanks.

Could you please be more precise?

@staticV3 ”…with ARC you can control volume using your TV remote, which is handy.”
If I’m not mistaken and unless this was rectified with an update, this would only have been possible with ‘eARC’, no?

No. HDMI CEC is compatible with both ARC and eARC.

See WiiM's FAQ section:

WiiM Ultra Questions & Answers

We're excited see all the interest in our next product -- WiiM Ultra. You can find the full specs on our forum post. TABLE OF CONTENTS Hardware Features/Software Display Music Services/Formats Availability How Tos What's included ...

faq.wiimhome.com

 

[Abdo]

Could you please be more precise?

This: However, WiiM's room correction algorithm still needs some improvement, so if you know how to do it manually using REW, that is preferred.

What's REW ?

 

[Emlin]

This: However, WiiM's room correction algorithm still needs some improvement, so if you know how to do it manually using REW, that is preferred.

What's REW ?

Room Equalisation Wizard.

 

[tsfreo]

A quick note on screen size /utility. My Ultra sits in a system in my lounge so the whole family has access. Sure, you can't see detail from across the room - but if you are a bit closer it gives you details about what is playing at a glance.
More importantly, with 12 presets easily put in place you can quickly swipe across to that list on the screen and make a selection without having to get out a phone or tablet. That is something my family is finding very useful. There are a few radio stations and playlists that are often chosen by my family and this has them up and running with a minimum of fuss.
Might not be worth it for others, but has been good for my use case.
I also think it looks nice.

 

[JaccoW]

Latest update dropped this morning and adds Plex (beta) support on Android. Finally playback with all the data on screen.
No possibility to change track ratings as far as I can tell and no control from the native app while playing back on the Wiim but it's a great addition and one I was waiting for.

One other question, does anybody know if the Wiim supports embedded volume levelling? If so I will add +6dB to all my SACD DSD rips to remove the volume differences between different tracks in a playlist.

 

[Emiyanez]

This: However, WiiM's room correction algorithm still needs some improvement, so if you know how to do it manually using REW, that is preferred.

What's REW ?

REW is a really powerful software to perform acoustic measurements and, among other things, correct for room modes. It's certainly more customizable than the WiiM RC and, with a bit of time and patience, the results are better than WiiM's.

All you need is a computer, a decent measuring microphone and some free time to learn how to use it. There's plenty of information in this forum as well as plenty of YouTube tutorials on how to perform basic acoustic measurements or use it for RC (using average full frequency measurements or alternative methods such at the moving microphone).

The usual output you get from REW is a number of filter values that you can manually input in the PEQ section of the WiiM App in order to get the sound of your system adjusted. I strongly recommend playing a bit with it because it's quite fun and it allows you to understand you room acoustics and easily improve the sound in your room.

 

[5onderling]

I basically just ordered that stuff 2 days ago to do exactly that. And I ordered the WiiM Ultra too of course, so it can hopefully replace my BlueSound Node. I will report how it turns out, but I guess it will just work.

Okay, everything arrived yesterday and I set everything up but I only used it for like 2-3 hours. So first I only tried my new cables, so coaxial to BNC adapter -> 25cm BNC cable -> Neutrik NADITBNC-M -> AES/EBU Cable -> Genelec -> AES/EBU Cable (I used normal microphone cable previously so now everything has correct impedance finally) -> Genelec. This worked pretty much without problems.

Then I switched my BlueSound Node for the WiiM Ultra which of course is the more important part in this review. First the setup was fantastic, it worked so flawless and in matter of few minutes (excluding a firmware update). Remembering how long it took and how many on my BlueSound node it's just a shame BlueSounds puts out such a product.
Auto Switching between something like Spotify connect and my TV (eARC) works perfect, just like it did with the BlueSound. But here I have an additional feature on the WiiM it says it can auto detect Optical input. So thats where my CD-Player is connected to. Sadly it seems to work semi good. When I'm in standard mode (so Wifi input I guess) and turn on the CD-Player it switches to the input correctly. When it first detect my TV (eARC) though and I turn on then my CD-Player it doesn't seem to want to switch. While when I first turn on my CD-Player and the the TV it switches easily to it. So I guess that is more smartness than in my BlueSound but still not perfect.

For the display I looked shortly at it. It's nice that it shows the song cover artwork when playing spotify (or chromecast or so I guess) but it's just distracting when watching TV or playing CD. I like to have almost no other light source when my TV. So an option for the display to be turned off when connected to eARC would be cool, but I have hidden the WiiM Ultra now completely inside my TV-bench, so I guess I would still keep it that way. Nice and minimalistic.

Sadly though I have noticed one major problem, I also had when I first got the Genelecs and tried to connect them directly through TV optical out -> optical to coaxial converter -> coaxial to aes/ebu cable -> genelecs. So sometimes the sound drops out but like not really. It's like first the left speaker goes quiet and immediately again to normal volume (feels like a smooth transition too) and directly after that the right speaker. It's not as often as with my initial connection method through the TV optical but on the Node I got it to be basically non existent. I turned on the "Optical/HDMI Audio De-noising" feature but it doesn't seem to help. I also tried another samplerate for the coax output, maybe that works better. I have to test some more in the following days. If I can't fix it I probably will switch back to the BlueSound, which would make me very sad, since it seems so great otherwise.