Playing aif files on usb stick with Amp

[fredofredo]

Hi everyone,
Just created an account for the forum, I received my WiiM Amp a couple days ago and have it connected for basic playback so far just to get going. Streaming from my Amazon Music Unlimited account and playing from a CD transport connected to the Amp via Toslink cable. My problem, that I haven't seen addressed anywhere in previous threads from a search--

Using a MacBook, I formatted an 8GB Sandisk USB stick as MS-DOS FAT as a test for playing my digital music files. I transferred about two dozen folders of artists to the stick, at the stick's top-level hierarchy, so you open the disk and you immediately see the two dozen directories. The music files are mostly uncompressed .aif files I ripped from my CD collection 15 years ago now using Apple iTunes. There are also a few mp3 files sprinkled in here and there that I mostly had sent to me by friends.

WiiM Amp finds, indexes and will play the mp3's. It ignores/does not see the aif's. Why? Could it be as simple as changing the file name for all the files to .aiff instead of .aif? That shouldn't be necessary, aif/aiff is a universal thing but I can't figure what else it could be given the WiiM documentation says it plays numerous filetypes including aif.

Thanks in advance for a really cool product, I can't wait to try the subwoofer integration using a pair of Meadowlark Swallows and an SVS sealed sub, fingers crossed...

 

[WiiM Team]

Thanks for your feedback; I will check with our engineers to check the AIF playback issue.

 

[fredofredo]

FYI, I renamed all the files with an .aiff extension instead of .aif, asked the Amp to rescan the USB stick--no change in behavior. Amp ignores the aiffs, only sees the mp3 files. The files play normal on Mac OS whether the aif or aiff suffix is attached to them.

 

[Brantome]

If you use the beta Mac desktop WiiM Home app (at https://www.wiimhome.com/img/app/macOs.webp), can it see and play aif files on your Mac to the WiiM amp? Or if your version of MacOS supports iOS apps, can you see if it can play them under “my music” there?

 

[simbun]

I'm pretty sure MiniDLNA (which I think the Amp is based on) doesn't support aiff but I'm just about to double check.

 

[simbun]

I just tried loading a single album comprising of mp3, aif and m4a with MiniDLNA 1.3.3 and they're all indexed apart from the aif tracks.
One way to check if it's using MiniDLNA would be to browse to albums (via the Album index) that have the same name e.g. Greatest Hits, as MiniDLNA merges them.

 

[Smartplug]

I just tried loading a single album comprising of mp3, aif and m4a with MiniDLNA 1.3.3 and they're all indexed apart from the aif tracks.
One way to check if it's using MiniDLNA would be to browse to albums (via the Album index) that have the same name e.g. Greatest Hits, as MiniDLNA merges them.

If anything fails, convert aif to flac.

 

[simbun]

If anything fails, convert aif to flac.

Or use a better server (although not on the Amp), are all options I'm sure @fredofredo is aware of.
Let's see what WiiM's response is before deciding for them

 

[fredofredo]

If anything fails, convert aif to flac.

I have a large library, really don't want to convert so many files just for this purpose. WiiM documentation says it supports aif files, so I'll wait for their response. I suppose another option would be to load the files from a computer on the local network and then AirPlay them over to the WiiM Amp, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having a single box to run everything.

 

[harkpabst]

Since WiiM claim support for AIFF it should work for local files on USB storage as well. And if it doesn't (yet), this should really be fixable.

I was about to recommend MusicBee as a temporary workaround (and much more) but noticed that you're on a Mac. Unfortunately, MusicBee is Windows-only. One of its many great features is synchronization of your music library (or parts of it) to external media including on-the-fly conversion!

Most of my digitally stored music is in FLAC format, which my car audio doesn't like (plus it's simply a waste of storage for playback in a convertible). So whenever I added something to my library I just plug in my USB thumb drive, click on its icon in MusicBee and hit the Synchronize button. It discovers the changes, copies over new files, converting them to 320 kbps CBR using Lame, replaces the value of the Artist tag with the value from Album Artist, replaces the Genre tag with a generic Genre Category and resizes embedded cover art to 700x700 px.

All these actions (and many, many more) can be configured for each external storage device individually. Great piece of free software, but ... no MacOS version.

 

[simbun]

There is an open ticket for AIFF support, but it was created back in 2016 so it looks like something WiiM would need to address.

 

[fredofredo]

Since WiiM claim support for AIFF it should work for local files on USB storage as well. And if it doesn't (yet), this should really be fixable.

I was about to recommend MusicBee as a temporary workaround (and much more) but noticed that you're on a Mac. Unfortunately, MusicBee is Windows-only. One of its many great features is synchronization of your music library (or parts of it) to external media including on-the-fly conversion!

Most of my digitally stored music is in FLAC format, which my car audio doesn't like (plus it's simply a waste of storage for playback in a convertible). So whenever I added something to my library I just plug in my USB thumb drive, click on its icon in MusicBee and hit the Synchronize button. It discovers the changes, copies over new files, converting them to 320 kbps CBR using Lame, replaces the value of the Artist tag with the value from Album Artist, replaces the Genre tag with a generic Genre Category and resizes embedded cover art to 700x700 px.

All these actions (and many, many more) can be configured for each external storage device individually. Great piece of free software, but ... no MacOS version.

Unfortunately, since day 1 of digital media, you Pee Cee guys have always had it better than us in the Mac space. I got initiated into Macs in 1987 by my employer--they put a Mac SE on my desk and told me to use it--and I've been Mac ever since. Things haven't been helped by Apple's close-vested effort with protected iTunes and m4a files back in the day. It's been more of a struggle over the years than it should be........

 

[harkpabst]

There is an open ticket for AIFF support, but it was created back in 2016 so it looks like something WiiM would need to address.

Support for AIFF is in the official WiiM Amp specs, at least (and were talking the Amp here).

Let's hope this doesn't turn out to be a documentation error.

Things haven't been helped by Apple's close-vested effort with protected iTunes and m4a files back in the day. It's been more of a struggle over the years than it should be........

Living in a Parallels universe ...

 

[simbun]

Support for AIFF is in the official WiiM Amp specs, at least (and were talking the Amp here).

Let's hope this doesn't turn out to be a documentation error.

That's almost certainly referring to playback, and even then not to all their interfaces, but yes it's not clear from the website.

 

[harkpabst]

@fredofredo, I would still report this as feedback directly from the WiiM Home App. Since the specs don't list any restrictions, I think it's fair enough to report this as a problem.

 

[fredofredo]

FYI Part 2--Since this is just a test USB stick I've been using at 8GB in size, the number of files involved is modest at <300. So I went ahead and cleared the drive, converted the files from .aif to .flac via the free utility MediaHuman Audio Converter for Mac, and re-loaded the stick. WiiM Amp now easily indexes the files into song and album categories, with cover art, and plays them no problemo. I can bring the music up via the WiiM app on the iPhone, or do so with voice command via Alexa all over my home. Cool.

So the issue here for WiiM's support seems to be Mac related. When I initially formatted the stick, it was in standard Mac NTFS file structure via Disk Utility--WiiM wouldn't read/recognize the stick. When I re-formatted using MS-DOS FAT32 via Disk Utility--WiiM sees and reads the stick. That's a Mac compatibility problem. Similarly, the native .aif files are a straight CD rip, that is an Apple original file format (aif is basically a container for PCM 16/44.1 audio tracks). WiiM does PCM audio, and it does the flac files, so this once again seems to be an Apple compatibility shortcoming. If so, and it can't be addressed, the documentation should reflect that. I'd almost certainly still buy the Amp, but I bet some others wouldn't. Open disclosure is always best.

I prefer aif format because those are bit-for-bit rips from the original source. Flac is supposed to be lossless, but it's not bit-for-bit, so on an intellectual level at the least I don't like it. I'll use it if I must to enjoy the relevant music on the WiiM device, but I'll never be happy with that workaround if that's what it comes down to.

 

[Mr Ee]

it's not bit-for-bit, so on an intellectual level at the least I don't like it

Some might argue that once decompressed it is bit for bit, being lossless.
And some might argue that the decompression process itself can cause noise, so aif / wav are 'better'.
Do aiff files suffer from the limited metadata that wav files do?

 

[simbun]

I prefer aif format because those are bit-for-bit rips from the original source. Flac is supposed to be lossless, but it's not bit-for-bit, so on an intellectual level at the least I don't like it. I'll use it if I must to enjoy the relevant music on the WiiM device, but I'll never be happy with that workaround if that's what it comes down to.

Given you're on a Mac ALAC might be more appropriate than FLAC, but they're all bit-for-bit perfect so it's your choice.

The AIFF indexing limitation is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, so your realistic options are to either use a different media server that supports AIFF (on another machine) because the WiiM does play AIFF, or switch formats.

 

[fredofredo]

Some might argue that once decompressed it is bit for bit, being lossless.
And some might argue that the decompression process itself can cause noise, so aif / wav are 'better'.
Do aiff files suffer from the limited metadata that wav files do?

Metadata better than wav, worse than flac.

 

[Brantome]

Thread 'New firmware v5.0.606744'
https://forum.wiimhome.com/threads/new-firmware-v5-0-606744.2683/