I think choice overload may scare some audiophiles away from the glorious world of streaming, where the bulk and finite scope of a physical music-media collection can be traded for (or augmented by) many more listening choices. If you're willing to explore and choose, you can hear as…
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Life is not for Goldilocks. "Just right" is elusive. Every day, we face countless situations where our choices are either too many to navigate or too few to find satisfaction. Behavioral scientists call those dissatisfying alternatives "choice overload" and "choice deprivation," respectively (footnote 1).
How does it sound?
The design is neat and tidy; the app is well done; the build feels solid. Yet I had serious doubts that the WiiM Amp would sound good enough to deserve a mention in Stereophile.
How could they pack all that functionality and good sound into something this cheap in price yet not in look and feel? You're reading this in the pages of Stereophile, so you know my doubts were unfounded. It sounds pretty darn good! It's peppy but not thin, not the fastest amp ever made but plenty dynamic. And those DSP tone-shaping controls allow you to pair it with speakers in a…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid state, class-D stereo streamer/integrated amplifier outputting up to 60Wpc into 8 ohms, 120Wpc into 4 ohms (both equivalent to 17.8dBW). S/N Ratio: 98dB. THD+N: 0.002% (–92dB). Analog inputs: 1 single-ended on RCA. Digital inputs: 1 TosLink, 1 HDMI-ARC, 1 USB-C. Streaming inputs: Ethernet (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n/ac Dual band, 10/100Mbps LAN), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (BT 5.1 A2DP Sink and Source, AVRCP BLE HID). Analog outputs: loudspeaker via banana/screw-terminal binding posts; mono line-level subwoofer via RCA (autodetecting cable insert, user-adjustable…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: dCS Bartók streaming DAC, Oppo DV-981HD universal disc player.
Preamplifier: Benchmark LA-4.
Power amplifier: Benchmark AHB2.
Integrated amplifier: McIntosh MA6500.
Loudspeakers: B&W 808, Amphion One18, Behringer Truth 2031P, Klipsch Heresy.—Tom Fine
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I performed a complete set of measurements on the WiiM Amp with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system. Before I did so, I installed the WiiM Home app on my iPad mini and connected the amplifier to my network with a CAT-5 Ethernet cable. The app (version 2.9.5.24041612) recognized the Amp, and I performed a factory reset.
Because the amplifier has a class-D output stage, I inserted an Audio Precision AUX-0025 passive low-pass filter between the test load and the analyzer. This filter mitigates noise above 80kHz and eliminates noise above 200kHz that would…
Fig.13 WiiM Amp, optical input, impulse response (one sample at 0dBFS, 44.1kHz sampling, 4ms time window).
I examined the behavior of the WiiM's D/A conversion circuitry with Ethernet data sourced from Roon and with the optical input. The latter locked to S/PDIF data with sample rates up to 192kHz. The Amp's digital inputs preserved absolute polarity and with the volume control set to the maximum, a 1kHz digital signal at –20dBFS resulted in an output level of 2.283V from loudspeaker outputs, which is exactly 20dB below the amplifier's clipping voltage into 8 ohms. It is rare to find…
It's a truism in business—or if it isn't strictly true, it's at least a cliché—that you can't please everyone. But Mark Mawhinney sees everyone as a potential customer. He does his best to cover all customer bases, from old-school audiophiles to newcomers, from Boomers to Gen Z. "As long as they have two legs and two ears, they can be our customers," he told Stereophile in a recent phone interview.
Mawhinney owns and runs three businesses: Spin-Clean, the longstanding, inexpensive record-cleaning system; Northern Audio, a high-end audio dealership; and Music To My Ear, a record store…
Of all the albums in the Grateful Dead catalog, American Beauty is the one with the widest appeal. Its proto-Americana tunes are neither antique nor modern; instead, they are timeless. The album's sound is clean and lean, up to modern snuff even more than a half-century after its original release in November 1970.
The tunes seem to roll like a Sunday drive on a country road, in and out of dark hollows and up and down hills (footnote 1). Three of its 10 songs have become folk-rock standards: "Friend of the Devil," "Sugar Magnolia," and "Truckin'."
As you'd expect, the album has…
For 16 years, I bled jazz. Countless hours alone in my practice shed, honing technique, recording myself for brutal self-analysis, dissecting and transcribing master drummers' solos note for note. My dream was to transcend technique, to exist in a state of pure reaction among musicians in perfect communion, where improvisation flows as effortlessly as thought.
The years melted away—George Lawrence Stone's sticking variations, Benjamin Podemski's concert drum solos, dog-eared "Real Book" charts, college big band concerts, smoky jam sessions, a basement practice routine that nearly deafened…
Setup
The 2A3 EVO found a comfortable home on the lowest shelf of my Salamander rack. To optimize performance, I arranged three of Norman Varney's A/V RoomService large Equipment Vibration Protectors (EVPs) under the amp. I have found that the EVPs reduce noise and improve clarity without sacrificing dynamics or character; in this respect, they're better than various cork and rubber isolation options I've tried. Then I simply connected it to the rest of the system—see Associated Equipment for details—turned the system on, and started listening.
The 2A3 EVO found a comfortable home on the lowest shelf of my Salamander rack. To optimize performance, I arranged three of Norman Varney's A/V RoomService large Equipment Vibration Protectors (EVPs) under the amp. I have found that the EVPs reduce noise and improve clarity without sacrificing dynamics or character; in this respect, they're better than various cork and rubber isolation options I've tried. Then I simply connected it to the rest of the system—see Associated Equipment for details—turned the system on, and started listening.
Listening
I began…