5.1 pass thru

[nobler]

Interested in adding the wiim pro to my av receiver setup but I had a question. The hope is that I can put the wiim pro inline between my TV and AV receiver using optical in/out on the wiim pro. I am interesting in it being inline, so I do not have to change the input on my receiver. I would depend on the auto sensing feature, where if its not streaming music and it detects sound on optical it will pass that audio through. The challenge here is, I have a 5.1 surround sound setup with my receiver and do not want to loose that surround from TV -> wiim -> av receiver. Would it pass the 5.1 signal to the AV receiver? Now I assume it will pass a stereo signal when its streaming music to the receiver.

 

[Mr Ee]

Interested in adding the wiim pro to my av receiver setup but I had a question. The hope is that I can put the wiim pro inline between my TV and AV receiver using optical in/out on the wiim pro. I am interesting in it being inline, so I do not have to change the input on my receiver. I would depend on the auto sensing feature, where if its not streaming music and it detects sound on optical it will pass that audio through. The challenge here is, I have a 5.1 surround sound setup with my receiver and do not want to loose that surround from TV -> wiim -> av receiver. Would it pass the 5.1 signal to the AV receiver? Now I assume it will pass a stereo signal when its streaming music to the receiver.

No, it won't work.
The pro requires a stereo pcm input.

However, there's talk of the Ultra supporting 5.1 on the hdmi input.
Not sure if it downmixes to stereo though..

Edit. I found the wiim ultra faq page a bit confusing...

Question:
Will the Ultra support multichannel music output on the HDMI port? If not, thats a big miss for a premium product
Answer:
Yes, it supports Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

Question:
Will it be possible to route multichannel HDMI input to multichannel USB output (e.g., 5.1 channel)
Answer:
Our system currently supports only two-channel audio for both HDMI input and USB output. However, our team is exploring options to enable multichannel support for routing HDMI input to USB output.


Maybe you'd be better off just sticking with tv hdmi to avr

 

[nobler]

Thanks for the detailed response! Currently the TV is connected to an older AV receiver over optical. I will have to wait for more details but fingers crossed.

The idea of adding wiim inline is very inciting, as it adds all of the streaming options, voice integration with Alexa, and I do not have to change the input on the receiver. Makes me think if they had different versions of the mini, designed as a pass through, people would want to put them in between all of their TV's and soundbars. Have a dedicated HDMI version and a dedicated optical version at a cheap price point like the mini. Dedicate to keep the costs down instead of an all in one unit. Would be great.