WiiM Support
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Hi Amir,
Thank you so much for reviewing WiiM mini and sharing your test results with the community. If you don't mind, we have a few comments on the test methodology used with the performance measurement.
1. Use AirPlay 2 to measure DAC performance - we don't recommend this. AirPlay 2 captures and re-encodes the decoded audio (transcoding) from Apple device and streams it to AirPlay 2 receiver like WiiM Mini. The transcoding involves some type of lossy compression and leads to quality degradation that is not contributed by the DAC.
2. To measure the DAC performance, we suggest you test both 16-bit and 24-bit contents. The theoretical bound for 16-bit is 96dB and 24-bit is 144 dB. It's better to give the bit depth of the test content so we can compare this apple to apple (not fair comparison using 16-bit number vs. 24-bit number).
3. When you test, please use the fixed volume output so it gives you bit perfect output. Thus, we can test the pure DAC performance.
If you're OK, we can share our test methodology and results offline with you. Once again, thank you very much for your great efforts and hope to work with you to clarify the above suggestions.
Thank you so much for reviewing WiiM mini and sharing your test results with the community. If you don't mind, we have a few comments on the test methodology used with the performance measurement.
1. Use AirPlay 2 to measure DAC performance - we don't recommend this. AirPlay 2 captures and re-encodes the decoded audio (transcoding) from Apple device and streams it to AirPlay 2 receiver like WiiM Mini. The transcoding involves some type of lossy compression and leads to quality degradation that is not contributed by the DAC.
2. To measure the DAC performance, we suggest you test both 16-bit and 24-bit contents. The theoretical bound for 16-bit is 96dB and 24-bit is 144 dB. It's better to give the bit depth of the test content so we can compare this apple to apple (not fair comparison using 16-bit number vs. 24-bit number).
3. When you test, please use the fixed volume output so it gives you bit perfect output. Thus, we can test the pure DAC performance.
If you're OK, we can share our test methodology and results offline with you. Once again, thank you very much for your great efforts and hope to work with you to clarify the above suggestions.
AmirThis is a review and detailed measurements of the WiiM Mini Wifi/Bluetooth streamer. It is on kind loan from a member and is on sale on Amazon for US $89.
View attachment 200172
As you can see the former factor is a "hockey puck." An included phone charger needs to be used to power the unit over USB-C. It did not work so when I used my computer USB port.
Initial setup is by connecting using Bluetooth and the available App. I connected using BT but the Android app would not see it. I had to shut off BT and turn it back on for it to recognize it. While this is disappointing, I have had similar issues with other streamers. Once there, the app was reliable and gave me the option of configuring Toslink output for bit exact and its maximum sample rate which I appreciated. It also updated the device on first connection.
WiiM Mini Measurements
My first tests were using Aiplay 2.0 as initiated by my Roon player. As usual, Airplay itself becomes the bottleneck as we see with Toslink digital out:
View attachment 200173
Not sure if Airplay forced the sample rate to change to 48 kHz or the device did it. Using it with analog out we get:
View attachment 200174
While we are beating the company spec, performance is lackluster as is typically the case in this category of product. Noise performance is not great either:
View attachment 200175
There is however good news if you use the App and output over Toslink:
View attachment 200176
This is the best you can do with 24-bit dithered signal. At 141 dB, your limit then will be what your DAC can do as even state of the are units have a SINAD of 123 dB.
Using the same signal but now testing the analog output we get:
View attachment 200177
So just a hair better than using Airplay. The internal DAC as expected, is a mass market product than high performance.
Using the same for jitter we have:
View attachment 200178
Noise floor is fairly high which can hide a lot of sins.
Since my analyzer can't control streaming devices, these are all the tests I can reasonably run. I think we have a good picture though.
Edit: by request, here is the frequency response from the internal DAC:
View attachment 200372
Edit WiiM Mini ADC Analog In Measurements
Feeding the Mini analog input and capturing the same, gives this output:
View attachment 200375
Performance is dominated by distortion. Switching to Toslink out to eliminate effect of the DAC we basically get the same result:
View attachment 200376
So just like the DAC, this is a mass market ADC implementation. Good enough for common uses though but I would not route the clean output of any DAC through it.
Conclusions
If you use the App and Toslink output, you basically have a transparent wireless link to your stereo. Connect it to your favorite DAC and your performance will only be limited by the rest of your system. For me personally lack of Roon support is a big deal. I don't want to use their App to play or stream content. I hope the company looks at supporting Roon endpoint. Analog output of the unit is just OK.
Personally I can't recommend the WiiM Mini due to lack of support for Roon player. That aside, it is great to see bit exact digital output in a budget streamer allowing you to improve its performance to any level you want using your own DAC.
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