All sorts of issues - search, recents, play next etc

[SpeckledEgg]

Hi,
New owner, hoping these things are fixable. Basically, the app is being horrible to me. It “works”, I play music, but lots of things are not, shall we say, smooth.
I’m using Amazon music unlimited.

1. When I search for a song on native Amazon music app, I get lots of results, and the right ones. When I search on WiiM app, I get a few results but not all. Tapping more and all etc then gets a large jumble and often I can find the song I’m looking for, but muddled in with artists of that name. It’s very frustrating.

2. Recently played: empty, apart from two songs which don’t change!

3. Find a song, add it to play next, it doesn’t play next.

4. No heart for adding to favourites anywhere.

These are what I can think of right now; there are other things that “don’t seem right” given the app pedigree I’ve read about. The whole thing seems pretty flakey, and given how well other people seem to be getting on with it, I wonder if there’s a common cause I’m suffering from.

What could be going on?
Thank you!

 

[Mr Ee]

Someone will ask, so it might as well be me...
If you're using AMU, why are you not just casting from tha amazon app? Why use wiim app?

 

[SpeckledEgg]

Someone will ask, so it might as well be me...
If you're using AMU, why are you not just casting from tha amazon app? Why use wiim app?

Ah, good question.
In order that the music is independent of my phone. So I could play music and leave, use my phone for calls etc, and leave music streaming.
I also have a Fire Cube connected to the receiver (Sony STR-DN1080), I can play music from the AMU app on that, but that interface is horrible, and requires the TV to be on to use it.
I bought the WiiM to be a music player, controllable from phone, but phone only being a remote control. After hitting play, the phone is not a link. Tv is off, it’s like an old school music source, a cd player or something.

 

[Mr Ee]

Casting from amazon app is using your phone as a remote.
Alexacast or chromecast, your choice. I'd go with alexacast...

 

[SpeckledEgg]

Okay, I’ve done as you suggested, and it works, thank you.
I feel it’s a bit of a workaround, though? Reading reviews of the WiiM, much is made of the app/interface, and how good it is. Akin to Sonos, pulling services together to one place. I was attracted to this! I feel like I’m missing something if I’m not able to make it function properly.
I primarily use AMU now, but largely because that’s been the practical option; WiiM was supposed to make more services easy too?
I’ve only had it 48 hours, so I don’t want to give up on the app completely already!

 

[Mr Ee]

The general consensus here seems to be that the app does need some polishing, particularly in the playback / queue management area.
Many people, myself included, use 3rd party apps such as bubbleupnp; they may not have the same level of service integration that wiim does, but what they do, they do well.
(Edit - I don't think many, if any, support Amazon)

Just checking - which casting option did you go with?
'round' alexacast, or 'square' chromecast? (Assuming you have a pro)

 

[SpeckledEgg]

That’s very helpful, thank you. Expectation management, at the very least! Stops me spending time trying to fix it myself.

I’ll have a look at your suggestion.

I used alexacast. Haven’t turned chromecast on, though it’s a Pro. Don’t have any android devices.
That said… the STR-DN1080 supports chromecast, so maybe I’ll have a tinker with that tomorrow. Perhaps I’ve bought something I barely need!

 

[Mr Ee]

Bubbleupnp is android. mconnect and hificast (not used them myself) are mentioned here a bit.

Maybe you've been through all the menus, but just checking you enabled hd/uhd in the device, amazon alexa settings menu.

 

[Maurizio]

Hi,
New owner, hoping these things are fixable. Basically, the app is being horrible to me. It “works”, I play music, but lots of things are not, shall we say, smooth.
I’m using Amazon music unlimited.

1. When I search for a song on native Amazon music app, I get lots of results, and the right ones. When I search on WiiM app, I get a few results but not all. Tapping more and all etc then gets a large jumble and often I can find the song I’m looking for, but muddled in with artists of that name. It’s very frustrating.

2. Recently played: empty, apart from two songs which don’t change!

3. Find a song, add it to play next, it doesn’t play next.

4. No heart for adding to favourites anywhere.

These are what I can think of right now; there are other things that “don’t seem right” given the app pedigree I’ve read about. The whole thing seems pretty flakey, and given how well other people seem to be getting on with it, I wonder if there’s a common cause I’m suffering from.

What could be going on?
Thank you!

I totally agree with you. WHA is practically unusable. In addition to the defects highlighted by you, there are others among which, for me, the most serious is that there are no options for sorting the albums. The only one is Album Title, but if you have a library of more than 800 albums, searching by title becomes impossible. As album sorting options it would be necessary to have:
Artist name
Last Added
Speaking of AMU, it's a problem, because the native App has been working erratically for a while now, even with the latest update. It could therefore have been a solution to use WHA, but........
For Qobuz I solved with BubbleUPnP, perhaps one of the best made Apps.
Unfortunately it has no AMU.
I've searched everywhere on the net to find alternatives to AMU or WHA, but it seems there are no alternatives to the native Appp. As @Mr Ee says
(Edit - I don't think many, if any, support Amazon)
Amazon does not willingly, indeed not at all, share access to its API to third parties.

 

[Brantome]

As well as expectation management (or an over optimistic reading of reviews) , perhaps you’re missing some background knowledge about third party interfaces to streaming services which in general are much poorer than the streaming apps due to the less feature rich interfaces (APIs) that are made available to third party developers like WiiM. The emergence of protocols like Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect and Amazon Music’s AlexaCast (with Qobuz Connect to come later this year) to allow you to use the full feature set of the native app and cast to third party devices gets round the issues with less functional APIs. Indeed, the WiiM devices are still the only devices on the market which support bit perfect Alexacast up to 24/192.

I’d say no third party app approaches, or ever will approach, the feature set of a native app.

As an aside, my amazon music app on my android phone has been performing better since its last update.

 

[Brantome]

The general consensus here seems to be that the app does need some polishing, particularly in the playback / queue management area.

There’s a limit to how much polishing it can do given the restricted feature set made available by the streaming services’ third party APIs, that’s why cast/connect type mechanisms will always be better

 

[d6jg]

There’s a limit to how much polishing it can do given the restricted feature set made available by the streaming services’ third party APIs, that’s why cast/connect type mechanisms will always be better

You can't polish a ......
As you know I would suggest that there is a very good third party solution that brings in almost everything to one interface with a lot of the native feature sets of the main streaming platforms, better Radio Paradise, full BBC Sounds, more Internet Radio stations and a lot more besides but unfortunatley no AMU or Apple.

 

[Mr Ee]

There’s a limit to how much polishing it can do given the restricted feature set made available by the streaming services’ third party APIs, that’s why cast/connect type mechanisms will always be better

True, but other apps, and other manufacturers' apps, do a better job, so there is significant room for improvement.
That's not to decry the improvements made so far.
Also why I currently use tidal, for comnect, and am waiting for qobuz connect.
I know some people like a single app to search across multiple services, but a single service whose app works well is all I need.
And no, that's not Spotify

 

[Maurizio]

As well as expectation management (or an over optimistic reading of reviews) , perhaps you’re missing some background knowledge about third party interfaces to streaming services which in general are much poorer than the streaming apps due to the less feature rich interfaces (APIs) that are made available to third party developers like WiiM. The emergence of protocols like Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect and Amazon Music’s AlexaCast (with Qobuz Connect to come later this year) to allow you to use the full feature set of the native app and cast to third party devices gets round the issues with less functional APIs. Indeed, the WiiM devices are still the only devices on the market which support bit perfect Alexacast up to 24/192.

I’d say no third party app approaches, or ever will approach, the feature set of a native app.

As an aside, my amazon music app on my android phone has been performing better since its last update.

I agree with you except one thing. Unfortunately my AMU App continue to have an erratic behave, as in IOS as in Android. Both Apps updated in the last days

 

[Maurizio]

Yes, Qobuz connect. Me too i’m waiting for. Let’s hope that it will come sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile BUPnP satisfies me

 

[Brantome]

I agree with you except one thing. Unfortunately my AMU App continue to have an erratic behave, as in IOS as in Android. Both Apps updated in the last days

To be fair, I’d tend to agree that the amazon music app isn’t all it could be and has perhaps deteriorated in the last year, but with some signs of improvement for me in the latest release. It’s hard to see why it isn’t as good as it could be. After all, it’s not as if it’s trying to accommodate some new ground breaking technology - at its most basic level it’s managing a collection of lists and queuing up content for playback and many apps have been doing that and doing it better for years. It’s slow and flabby where it needn’t be, but I remain optimistic it’ll improve.

 

[Maurizio]

To be fair, I’d tend to agree that the amazon music app isn’t all it could be and has perhaps deteriorated in the last year, but with some signs of improvement for me in the latest release. It’s hard to see why it isn’t as good as it could be. After all, it’s not as if it’s trying to accommodate some new ground breaking technology - at its most basic level it’s managing a collection of lists and queuing up content for playback and many apps have been doing that and doing it better for years. It’s slow and flabby where it needn’t be, but I remain optimistic it’ll improve.

Well, me too i want to be OPTIMISTIC. For this reason i do not abandon AMU

 

[SpeckledEgg]

Thanks for all the help above.
I’ve sort of come to terms with the WiiM being not quite the dream ticket I hoped it would be. Using it as a casting device does seem to be the best way, which seems like one is only using a part of its functionality.

I’ve also learned more about my Sony amp. I had always ignored the Chromecast feature, as I don’t operate Android devices. I assumed it wouldn’t play with iPhones. Little did I know that I only needed to turn it on and I could cast from the AMU app to the amp! It basically does what I wanted all along. And does what the WiiM does, given the limitations with the app. I almost feel like it just don’t need the WiiM.
Still, it’ll be handy for parties!