John Darko
If you’ve unboxed a Macbook or Macbook Pro, you’ve already unboxed the WiiM AMP. The WiiM’s box dimensions, material structure, graphic design and slow-release lid are all extremely similar to Apple’s. Get your ruler out though and you’ll also see how the AMP’s 19cm x 19cm top plate sits within a whisker of the MacMini’s 19.7cm x 19.7cm. Also very Apple-esque are the WiiM AMP’s colour options: ‘Space Grey’ or ‘Silver’. Moreover, the WiiM logo cut into the AMP’s top plate, which reads identically from either end, recalls the upside-down thinking behind the Sonos name. Linkplay – the manufacturer behind the WiiM brand – clearly knows a winning formula when it sees one. Or two. 😉
Not that Linkplay hasn’t already developed a winning formula of its own. For the last year and a half, WiiM has prodded cash-conscious audiophiles with its Mini, Pro and Pro Plus network streamers that put a combination of Google Chromecast, Apple AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect and Roon Readiness in a single box for not very much money. The WiiM Pro Plus, for example, offers greater streaming flexibility than the €449 Sonos Port – and it does for two hundred fewer dollars.
Loaded with the same streaming power as the Pro Plus, the new WiiM AMP makes an ever-better first impression. The plastic casework has been replaced by aluminium on all sides but the underside and there’s a physical volume wheel that we press for pause/play if we don’t feel like reaching for the supplied remote wand or a smartphone app. And because that remote connects to the WiiM AMP over Bluetooth LE, the amplifier can be stashed away out of sight should we so wish. Not that the AMP is at all physically intrusive or displeasing to the eye. For me at least, it is the epitome of understated hi-fi minimalism.
Take note: at the time of writing, Roon isn’t yet Ready for the AMP. Instead, I sent Roon streams to the Chromecast input – and wirelessly because my new sideboard’s internals aren’t yet Ethernet-equipped – but the AMP is. (Yes, I could have just as easily streamed to the AirPlay 2 input). Then there’s WiiM’s own Home app which integrates Qobuz and Amazon Music HD plus analogue, TOSLINK and HDMI ARC inputs on the back panel, all for US$299/€349. Crikey!
I no longer have a Sonos AMP (€799) to hand for a side-by-side comparison with the WiiM AMP but you could drive a bus through the €450 price gap between the two. The WiiM advantage doesn’t end there. It’s more extensively spec’d on streaming options, it gives us physical control buttons and the whole thing feels more substantial in the hand. I am, frankly, amazed that WiiM managed to wrap their AMP in aluminium for under half of the plastic-shelled Sonos AMP’s asking and without farming out the power supply to an external brick.
Time to get techy.
On amplifier power, the internal Class D Texas Instruments TI 3255 chip is rated at 60wpc into 8 Ohms and 120wpc into 4 Ohms. Those aren’t baller numbers but they’re plenty for a pair of Pro-Ject Speaker Box 5 S2 (€649/pair), here smartly dressed in a mustard yellow.
I double-checked with WiiM: the ADC that manages the AMP’s analogue input was pulled from the Pro Plus but despite originally planning to bring the DAC circuit across as well, the AMP’s DAC circuit has been built around one of ESS Labs’ earlier flagship chips, the Sabre ES9018.
Chip-spotters should unzip their anoraks to consider what they don’t know: a DAC chip’s implementation matters more than the silicon itself: we must consider the analogue stage that follows the chip and the power supply that juices it. But power supplies and output stages rarely come with make/model numbers. There is nothing else to do but put down the keyboard and take a listen.
Like the Mini, Pro and Pro Plus, the WiiM AMP is a cinch to onboard onto a wi-fi network. On first use, the Home app automatically discovers the AMP, injects the wifi network’s password into the AMP and pulls down any firmware updates. We are up and running with music in less than five minutes after unboxing.
Unexpectedly, WiiM has added voice messages that play out of the amp and into our speakers to tell us when it is network-connected. Turn the AMP off and on again and we hear a start-up sound that lets us know when the system is ready to use. A restart takes all of thirty seconds.
Me? I was eager to hear, yet again, The Mountain Goats’ Jenny From Thebes. The WiiM/Pro-Ject pairing gives greater priority to the album’s rhythm and swing with the string section and acoustic guitar strum’s tonal characteristics taking a bit of a back seat. That much I also heard from Ricardo Villalobos’ Alcachofa, a recently re-issued minimal techno classic.
Moritz Von Oswald’s Silencio and John Cale’s Fragments Of A Rainy Season tell us that the WiiM’s transparency is more overt than its delivery of a piano’s timbre. And it’s a similar story with the string sections that haunt Laurel Halo’s otherwise ambient-washed Atlas. In WiiM/Pro-Ject hands, they enjoy nicely focussed soundstage placement but come up ever-so-slightly short on the inflections we get from more luxurious amplification.
Yes, I’m being super nit-picky; but please know that the WiiM does not sound grey or washed out. It’s just not as tonally saturated as the €1000 Marantz Stereo 70s. And given the price differential, we wouldn’t expect it to be. The WiiM draws instrument shapes with crisper edges than the Marantz. The Marantz sounds more natural. No amplifier blows the other out of the water. Nothing gets ‘destroyed’. (The way I see it, those who would use such terminology to describe the differences between hi-fi components never really grew out of playing Battleships).
No, the WiiM AMP simply belongs to the clean, lean and lit-up school of sound reproduction. I told my friend and colleague Terry Ellis (over at Pursuit Perfect System) about this and he suggested I make use of the Home app’s graphic or parametric EQ to help the WiiM AMP sound fleshier. That works – but only to a point. EQ alone won’t turn the WiiM into an Audiolab 6000 Play (€999), which sounds comparatively warmer and fuller-bodied.
If the WiiM is a sparkling white to the Audiolab’s creamier Chardonnay then the AMP’s closest sonic and functional cousin is the Bluesound Powernode Edge (€650). The Canadian box pushes forward the synthesized hi-hats heard on Biopshere’s Microgravity with marginally less urgency. The Bluesound sounds a little more relaxed: a full stop to the WiiM’s exclamation mark. But that’s a delta so small that I wouldn’t swear on it. What I am more confident of is how the Bluesound and the WiiM are better suited to Björk’s modern pop or Daniel Avery’s electronica than the string-driven works of Richard Strauss or Vivaldi. Think: pizzicato over legato.
The WiiM remote’s four preset buttons and its speedy response times might make us miss less the touch panel on the front of the Edge but you still need the Bluesound if you need an old-school wired headphone socket.
Did you know that all WiiM products now offer two-way Bluetooth, just like BluOS? I didn’t until I caught up with Linkplay’s furious rate of software development, as detailed in the Home app’s release notes. It’s a sharp reminder that Future-Fi is as much about software as hardware. And listener satisfaction with Biosphere’s Microgravity is as much about sub-bass heft as it is crisp n’ clean hi-hat delivery. A subwoofer becomes essential when running standmounts that don’t easily dip below 50Hz without the room’s assistance.
After connecting a bass maker to the subwoofer output on the back of the WiiM, we pull up the Home app to which WiiM’s software developers have added a bass management pane. This is where we set the subwoofer crossover point – but also gain and phase settings. The latter two make it easier to blend the subwoofer with the loudspeakers from the listening position. I didn’t have to get in and out of my seat to adjust the KEF KC62’s gain rotary or experiment with its nearby phase toggle as I did when using the Bluesound Powernode Edge to cross the KEF sub over with the Pro-Ject standmounts. There are no subwoofer gain and phase settings (yet) in the BluOS app.
And that DSP-powered bass management also means we get the added benefits of high-passed filtered loudspeaker outputs, just as we do with the Powernode Edge. The on-paper benefits for a two-way like the Pro-Ject Speaker Box 5 S2 go something like this: 1) a high pass filter is applied to the speakers to deprive them of low bass duties which then 2) reduces the mid/bass driver’s excursion which in turn 3) reduces the voice coil heat that would otherwise cause 4) the mid/bass driver’s input impedance to rise enough to 5) compress dynamics.
And with a 2.1 system in play, maybe other WiiM listeners will hear Ricardo Villalobos’ minimal techno or Four Tet’s Live At Alexandra Palace as I do: once the subwoofer is correctly dialled in and the main speakers high-pass filtered, any desire to swap out the loudspeaker amplifier for another model is seriously blunted. If you want to hear first-hand what the high-pass filtering is doing to the loudspeaker, physically disconnect the subwoofer before turning the subwoofer ‘on’ and ‘off’ in the app. When ‘on’, you should hear less bass wallop but also more midrange clarity.
The upshot is that any audible differences between the Bluesound and the WiiM become less apparent once a subwoofer is added to the scene. Sub and low-bass applied to the Pro-Ject loudspeakers add meat to music’s bones to render amplifier quality beyond the subwoofer less critical than when that amplifier is running solo. That WiiM has done this for half of the Bluesound’s sticker is reason enough to rate it highly.
It’s not all smooth sailing on the good ship WiiM. There are some minor issues to consider:
- Turning off an HDMI-connected Samsung ‘The Frame’ TV shuts off sound to the loudspeakers (as we’d expect) but a low-level randomised ‘put-put-put’ sound (noise interference?) continues to spill from the KEF KC62 subwoofer. I have to switch the WiiM AMP over to another input to make it stop.
- This subwoofer ‘noise interference’ also shows up sometimes – but not always – after having used the TOSLINK input.
- Then there was that one time that the WiiM stopped sending a signal out to the subwoofer completely. An AMP restart quickly resolved the issue.
- And lastly, be careful in the winter around the WiiM’s metal chassis. I touched the top plate yesterday only to cause the AMP a static shock that brought Boards of Canada to a stuttery end. I thought I’d fried an internal board. Thankfully, a restart returned the AMP to normal operation.
Those already well versed in the ways of Wilson, D’Agostino, McIntosh, Magico, Gryphon etc. will look down on the WiiM AMP as a toy. From the lofty perspective of many high-end audio consumers, it is. You’d be lucky to see the WiiM AMP at a hi-fi show because it isn’t really for the show-going hi-fi enthusiast: he who just has to stare blankly at the back of every loudspeaker in play. It’s for people who have never been to a hi-fi show and likely never will. It’s for those, obviously, who find themselves operating on much tighter budgets. When shopping on just the other side of Sonos, a hi-fi system’s total cost will still need to come in at under $1000. The WiiM AMP makes that possible. And with ease.
This AMP is also for those who put connectivity, functional flexibility and looks on the same priority level as sound quality. Tell me again which far more costly streaming amplifier (or streaming DAC) puts 2-way Bluetooth, Google Chromecast, Tidal Connect, Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, AirPlay Casting, Roon Readiness, Alexa / Siri voice control and subwoofer bass management under one roof. I’ll wait.
From one MacMini-sized/-coloured device, we get a suite of streaming options that goes beyond even BluOS; hard-wired connectivity that includes the all-important HDMI ARC; a hi-res-capable DAC and a 60wpc amplifier that collectively hits the bullseye drawn on the wall that otherwise separates aspirational audiophiles from mainstream consumers. Come together!
I’ve not seen value for money fly this high in entry-level hi-fi since the Logitech Squeezebox Touch hit the streets in 2010. And that makes the WiiM AMP not only a DAR-KO award winner but a very strong contender for product of the year.
Further information: WiiM
