My thoughts on the Vibelink Amp

[WiiM Support]

What exactly would "power control" refer to in this context?

Hi harkpabst, team

Power control refers to the device entering or exiting sleep mode, which reduces power consumption to approximately 0.5W.
While in sleep mode, the device can be woken up in any of the following ways:

• Via the 12V trigger input
• By tapping the power button
• Or through the WiiM Home App

Let me know if you have any further questions!

 

[Wiimer]

Hi harkpabst, team

Power control refers to the device entering or exiting sleep mode, which reduces power consumption to approximately 0.5W.
While in sleep mode, the device can be woken up in any of the following ways:

• Via the 12V trigger input
• By tapping the power button
• Or through the WiiM Home App

Let me know if you have any further questions!

Hi,

After 60 minutes Amp goes into deep sleep and LEDs are off, will it still be able to wake up from WHA?

 

[WiiM Support]

Hi,

After 60 minutes Amp goes into deep sleep and LEDs are off, will it still be able to wake up from WHA?

Hi Wiimer,

The WiiM Home App can wake the device from sleep mode. Even while in sleep mode, the BLE connection remains active, allowing seamless wake-up and control.

 

[Mr Ee]

So now we just need a one button remote for power on/off so we don't have to reach round the back or open the app

 

[Burnside]

Hi Burnside, Team

The Vibelink features a built-in BLE chip that enables communication with the WiiM Home App. In the upcoming app release, you’ll be able to use the app for features like OTA updates and power control for the Vibelink.

Stay tuned—more updates coming soon!

That’s why I said “or very limited”

 

[harkpabst]

Modern times. Even power amplifiers contain microcontrollers, Bluetooth chips, DACs or other kinds of trickery ...

And that's not only WiiM.

 

[onlyoneme]

And even purest of the pure ones.

BTW, did you notice that your avatar contains not properly aligned elements?

 

[harkpabst]

It's all within the tolerances defined by good engineering principles.

 

[canard]

It seems that some people are upset to discover that ASR review has more like 70W under 8ohm than the 100W announced by "Wiim marketing"....

 

[Burnside]

As I said there: “I’ll probably get shot down for this guess (I don’t pretend to understand the numbers) but is one quoting RMS values and the other not given 73*1.1414 is just over 100?”

 

[slartibartfast]

As I said there: “I’ll probably get shot down for this guess (I don’t pretend to understand the numbers) but is one quoting RMS values and the other not given 73*1.1414 is just over 100?”

I thought the days of quoting peak power were long gone . It must be RMS and the Amp is 60W so it would be extremely odd if the Vibelink was only 73W.

 

[Burnside]

I thought the days of quoting peak power were long gone . It must be RMS and the Amp is 60W so it would be extremely odd if the Vibelink was only 73W.

As I said, it’s a wild guess - my mind just clocks numbers and the last time I studied any basic electronics stuff like that was over fifty years ago. No doubt someone will get to the bottom of it…

 

[slartibartfast]

As I said, it’s a wild guess - my mind just clocks numbers and the last time I studied any basic electronics stuff like that was over fifty years ago. No doubt someone will get to the bottom of it…

If we knew what the power supply voltage was compared to the Amp and Amp Pro that would help. It would be strange for the marketing dept to lie about the Vibelink but not the Amp

 

[dominikz]

If we knew what the power supply voltage was compared to the Amp and Amp Pro that would help. It would be strange for the marketing dept to lie about the Vibelink but not the Amp

I don't think we can say this is "lying"; like many other manufacturers I believe WiiM simply quotes the power figure where THD passes the 1% (-40dB) mark.
At 8ohm load that is indeed ~100W, as we can see from the ASR review:

Amir uses a more conservative (and IMHO more reasonable) approach to rate amplifier power; he uses the point where the THD shoots up ("knee" of the curve, if you will) - i.e. the point where the amp starts to visibly clip. The issue with this approach can be that some amps go into clipping very gradually, so it can be difficult to determine this point. With Vibelink it is fairly obvious, as we can see above.
This could explain in part why many vendors default to the 1% or 10% THD points when quoting power. Though that approach is IMHO actually even more problematic, because it is debatable whether the amp in question can maintain power output in clipping for any extended amount of time.

 

[canard]

I don't think we can say this is "lying"; like many other manufacturers I believe WiiM simply quotes the power figure where THD passes the 1% (-40dB) mark.
At 8ohm load that is indeed ~100W, as we can see from the ASR review:

Amir uses a more conservative (and IMHO more reasonable) approach to rate amplifier power; he uses the point where the THD shoots up ("knee" of the curve, if you will) - i.e. the point where the amp starts to visibly clip. The issue with this approach can be that some amps go into clipping very gradually, so it can be difficult to determine this point. With Vibelink it is fairly obvious, as we can see above.
This could explain in part why many vendors default to the 1% or 10% THD points when quoting power. Though that approach is IMHO actually even more problematic, because it is debatable whether the amp in question can maintain power output in clipping for any extended amount of time.

 

[slartibartfast]

I don't think we can say this is "lying"; like many other manufacturers I believe WiiM simply quotes the power figure where THD passes the 1% (-40dB) mark.
At 8ohm load that is indeed ~100W, as we can see from the ASR review:

Amir uses a more conservative (and IMHO more reasonable) approach to rate amplifier power; he uses the point where the THD shoots up ("knee" of the curve, if you will) - i.e. the point where the amp starts to visibly clip. The issue with this approach can be that some amps go into clipping very gradually, so it can be difficult to determine this point. With Vibelink it is fairly obvious, as we can see above.
This could explain in part why many vendors default to the 1% or 10% THD points when quoting power. Though that approach is IMHO actually even more problematic, because it is debatable whether the amp in question can maintain power output in clipping for any extended amount of time.

Fair enough but the Amp produces 62W into 8 Ohms without clipping at all so maybe the amplifiers have exactly the same power supply but the Vibelink is allowed to clip and the Amp isn't

 

[slartibartfast]

Exactly, the WiiM Amp and Amp Pro can't clip with digital inputs so quoting the power of the Vibelink in a different way is misleading.

 

[dominikz]

Fair enough but the Amp produces 62W into 8 Ohms without clipping at all so maybe the amplifiers have exactly the same power supply but the Vibelink is allowed to clip and the Amp isn't

I guess that is impossible to know for sure - but we do know that, even if we are feeling generous and look at the officially rated figures for Amp Pro and Vibelink (100W vs 60W) that equates to only about 2dB difference in max SPL.

If we instead look at the 8 ohm power quoted in the ASR review (59W vs 73W), the difference would be about 1dB.

In either case the power output difference between these amps is not as much as many might believe looking just at the watts. In practice both amps will play very similarly loud, so I see these as equivalent in terms of power output. IMHO this is what we should be interested in as consumers.

Though it should be noted that Vibelink seems to be able to drive more difficult loads without going into protection - I guess that might be important to some people (very few, probably).

 

[canard]

I'm still really curious about the analog input and volume processing (in relation to the pro amp)...

 

[Burnside]

On the pro amp, analog input is passed thru an ADC, while on the vibelink it isn’t. Surely this has already been said time after time e.g.

https://forum.wiimhome.com/threads/...sh-the-power-of-pure-sound-🎉.6766/post-116184