Teardown of the Ultra

[Musician]

Highend Opa1612 at IV stage and Opa1611 buffer at the analog outputs from the dac. Nice SMPS regulators.
Ne5532 at the analog inputs.
Very impressive engineering, not only for the money, but regardless of price.

 

[Musician]

Measurements from ASR:

 

[canard]

you are exaggerating.. ;-)
it has become the standard " Chinese machines type topping smsl etc"..

with increases in the number of chips etc by moving upmarket... ( and no-balanced output in wiim)
and not the solutions, even from these brands, r2r more expensive to implement)

It is consistent but indeed well placed in this product range...
"""standard in 2024 for this type of product"""..(but remains at least since the "plus" , regrettable that there is no balanced output and, the absence of galvanic isolation on the coaxial output)
;-)

 

[canard]

the real technical question...is how the phono input of the ultra is treated...and this has been the case since its release

 

[Valentino]

Yes, we know the photo input is about good enough for complete turntables in the price bracket of the Ultra itself, and it would have been nice if it was switchable to a line 2 input from the app. The rest of the packet is if not SOTA so at least practically transparent, good enough for anything.
The balanced craze for hifi I really don’t get but I’d like to kill off the RCA standard.

 

[canard]

correction riaa via dsp (announced upstream) or passive?
capacitance?
impedances?

 

[Valentino]

With those specs and ASR measurements I suspect the RIAA correction to be 16 bit DSP.

 

[canard]

or modest riaa passif
It would have seemed to me that the riaa would have been more rigorous via dsp...? but since June...no explanations...

but hey..there are clocks...see vusmeters without much meaning... but no autogain in peq
etc

 

[Musician]

you are exaggerating.. ;-)
it has become the standard " Chinese machines type topping smsl etc"..

I dont agree. Topping SMSL etc dont have any world class leader app that WiiM has. They are really bad at this. Thats why topping and SMSL never have succeded building a good streamer, just good dacs.

 

[canard]

m

I dont agree. Topping SMSL etc dont have any world class leader app that WiiM has. They are really bad at this. Thats why topping and SMSL never have succeded building a good streamer, just good dacs.

you were talking about the hardware aspect of the DAC... not the streaming-software aspect of LinkPlay...

 

[canard]

Highend Opa1612 at IV stage and Opa1611 buffer at the analog outputs from the dac. Nice SMPS regulators.
Ne5532 at the analog inputs.
Very impressive engineering, not only for the money, but regardless of price.

 

[Musician]

m

We were talking about the hardware aspect of the DAC... not the streaming-software aspect of LinkPlay...

…but a streamer really needs to perform well in the streaming software - This is why WiiM is successful now, just as Squeezebox and bluesound was successful 10 years ago. You cant use a product If its app is useless.

The WiiM ultra is a 350 dollar product that kicks ass in the highend segment ( most of the 2000 dollar competition has much worse streaming software ). The only real competition seems to be Bluesound node Icon for 1400 dollars.

 

[canard]

Highend Opa1612 at IV stage and Opa1611 buffer at the analog outputs from the dac. Nice SMPS regulators.
Ne5532 at the analog inputs.
Very impressive engineering, not only for the money, but regardless of price.

my answer is for that..... ok?
(ps what you describe is available from the "pro" about streaming software...see the mini if you put aside the peq mode)

 

[Kblade97]

Highend Opa1612 at IV stage and Opa1611 buffer at the analog outputs from the dac. Nice SMPS regulators.
Ne5532 at the analog inputs.
Very impressive engineering, not only for the money, but regardless of price.

I like it when he said I’m not an expert. But I think you kinda are. That was very interesting, taking apart your ultra better than taking mine apart. Thank you.