I assume that Apple is trying to support old routers with their Apple Music Airplay 2 implementation. I have never had issues with Airplay 1 and I know it was a common issue from seeing numerous complaints online...even using one stream to one Airplay 1 device.
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WiiM Ultra
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BrooklynNick
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I think that is a pretty likely explanation. They need it to work on older networks. I did think it was an adaptive protocol, but it sounds like it might not be.
I remember reading that Apple's engineers believed that their 256k AAC files were transparent when compared to lossless (this was years ago, so don't have a link). I think they implemented hi res and lossless just to keep up with the other services, but I don't think it is something they care about.
Sorry, my old Synology server decided to flake out, so I had to restart it. I am not seeing album art, but it may just be reindexing, so I can't give a complete response.
As a side note, with LMS (Logitech Media Server) running off a hard drive, I can see album art when I pull up albums.
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Petrushka
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Speakers have improved, and younger people are buying them. 256 is fine for me.
I mainly use Amazon with the Wiim, but I will keep the 1st gen AirPort Express connected just in case I want to Airplay to the Ultra.
somebodyelse
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LMS to some extent. It probably worked well when all the players were their own hardware, but now with software players and different audio output chain latencies they can be a bit out of sync.
Apparently you have a server running on the NAS, I just pointed the Wiim to the folder, this may be the reason. I had Logitech many years ago and today I tried to find where to find it to download for Synology, but it is very confusing where to find it and how to install it. Do you have a link where to download it? Thanks.
Unforunately, I didn't write down anything when I installed it years ago. I dont have it running on a server. It is running on a computer I only use for serving files (Plex, LMS, etc). This link may help https://lyrion.org/ .
Plex maybe easier to do with and it also has the album art in the Wiim app.
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Petrushka
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Hi, Ant. Thanks for your reply. Do you mean the Wiim Pro, or Pro Plus? I've heard the analogue out (DAC) of the Pro and it's extremely poor, the analogue out (DAC) of the Pro Plus far superior.Perhaps from a third party retailer - but I doubt very much from wiim. This is because (see assumption above) the wiim already is audibly perfect. That means it has flat frequency response, and noise/distortion output from the DAC is below the level our ears can detect. Therefore changing the power supply - even if it improves the measurements - cannot improve the audible performance. Once audible perfection is reached, further improvements are redundant - you cannot make the imperfections more inaudible.
What I state above also applies to the Wiim pro - whatever power supply you might have tested will not be making a real audible improvement. Whatever improvements you think you heard will either be from insufficiently matched levels - or from sighted listening - which we know is unreliable. Only properly controlled blind comparisons can be relied upon to compare devices for real audible differences. And then, apart from anything else, the time it takes to change the PSU will take longer than your audio echoic memory lasts meaning you are unable to realistically compare in any case.
So to answer your 2 questions.
1 - No, they will sound the same no matter which PSU is used
2 - Not from Wiim. Unlikely from anyone else.
Hope that helps
I'm not sure what you're saying by "audibly perfect" and that even "improved measurements" would have no outcome on sound quality. There's no such thing as an audibly perfect DAC, is there? What's perfect? They don't all sound the same.
In my (subjective, unblinded) listening 'test' I had no difficulty in immediately recognising that the iPower2 power supply made a substantial improvement to sound quality in my system, it wasn't subtle. I've been mostly using the Wiim Pro Plus for audio from my tv; voices from shows I'd been watching for weeks and was very familiar with, had more solidity and presence, more texture and felt more like they were 'in the room', there was also a reduction in sibilance; stereo imaging was more solid, dynamics improved. That was my experience.
antcollinet
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Yes, there is - look at all the DACs in the blue and pretty much all the green sections of the chart here.
When the imperfections (noise distortion and frequency response) are so small that the human ear is not capable of detecting them - so audibly perfect
Our ears have neither infinite sensitivity, nor infinite bandwidth.
If you have two dacs that are audibly perfect (and a majority of modern ones are) then they must -by definition, sound the same.**see below the line of ******** at the bottom of this post for more detail on this.
I'm not surprised. In unblinded subjective listening tests there are all sorts of things going on in your subconcious brain that will alter the sound before it reaches your conscious brain. This is not a criticism - everyone's brain is doing this all the time - it is how we are built - it helps us to function.
Assuming the devices you are comparing are half way decent, if you tested blind, and controlled (including accurate level metching) I am confident those unsubtle differences would evaporate.
Yes, I did mean the pro+... BUT: the pro, like the mini has a sinad of around 90dB - while this is not guaranteed inaudible for everyone, it is for the vast vast majority (in blind tests the vast majority can't hear -45dB distortion - let alone -90dB). Purely on a statistical basis the odds of you being one of the tiny minority who can hear the difference is vanishingly small. If you are over the age of 30 I would say zero. Most likely the reason you hear it as worse is you have read that it measures worse, and your perceptive biases ensure that is how you hear it.
**********
** A DAC has one, and only one job, and that is to accurately convert the digital representation of music from the source into an analog representation of that music. Well measuring DACS do that with inaudible levels of noise and distortion, and with flat frequency response in the audible band. In other words the analogue output is (audibly) a perfect representation of the digitally encoded music.
If two DACS both achieve this (and well measuring DACS do) then the analog signal from both must be identical within audible limits. By definition, they must sound the same.
Or at least, assuming the amp and speakers are the same, will result in identical sound waves reaching the ear of the listener. What the listeners brain does with that sound information, and how it mixes in the environment, expectations of the listener, mood of the listener etc etc to "colour" the perception of that sound has nothing to do with the performance of the DAC.
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Are you saying WiiMs (pre Ultra)use both Airplay 1 & 2?
Petrushka
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I have no idea. I’ve used airplay to watch TV, but just started reading about it a week ago,
Impressed with what they managed to do with a device like the WiiM Ultra.
I've been testing it for two days and everything is working as expected.
There are still a few things I haven't tested, like the Phono input, which I'm going to put together with a McIntosh 6800 and a Rega Planar 3 and see how this output behaves.
I'm anxiously awaiting the Roon certification.
Yesterday I formatted a 4TB HD and put in 4600 CDs that I've digitized in Flac. The WiiM read them correctly.
The only thing I noticed is that it joins the albums together, unlike the Roon, where I have the option of leaving them together or separate.
I think the App should have this option.
The USB loading part is fast, but it needs more advanced features. This isn't complicated to do and implement.
The LCD responds well. For a $329 device, it's a real bargain.
I don't need Airplay, but I know a lot of people use it. I have a Cambridge CXN V2 and I see that the loading is better on the WiiM on the external USB HD.
As for the quality between the two, I haven't done the test yet, I hope to do AB in the next few days.
I've been testing it for two days and everything is working as expected.
There are still a few things I haven't tested, like the Phono input, which I'm going to put together with a McIntosh 6800 and a Rega Planar 3 and see how this output behaves.
I'm anxiously awaiting the Roon certification.
Yesterday I formatted a 4TB HD and put in 4600 CDs that I've digitized in Flac. The WiiM read them correctly.
The only thing I noticed is that it joins the albums together, unlike the Roon, where I have the option of leaving them together or separate.
I think the App should have this option.
The USB loading part is fast, but it needs more advanced features. This isn't complicated to do and implement.
The LCD responds well. For a $329 device, it's a real bargain.
I don't need Airplay, but I know a lot of people use it. I have a Cambridge CXN V2 and I see that the loading is better on the WiiM on the external USB HD.
As for the quality between the two, I haven't done the test yet, I hope to do AB in the next few days.
Would be interested in hearing how the phono input test goes when you get around to doing that.
Yorkshire Mouth
Major Contributor
Yes, but only if you feed the DAC from the optical or coax out, not the USB.
What about the HDMI arc input? My understanding was the USB was for external drives and was not an audio input.
Sorry to clarify I would not be using an external dac. I would use the WiiM Ultra as a single unit dac and preamp.
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