Tech Tuesday: Achieving Bit-Perfect Playback on Your WiiM Devices

[Toad]

There's no such thing as hearing the music exactly as intended by the artist, because what the artist or producer heard was in whatever studio they recorded it, with whatever monitors etc. It'll sound different anywhere else no matter how good your system may be.

The artist walked out of the studio with their own recording and listened to it elsewhere and it sounded different.

As I recently pointed out in a different post, if you move your speakers a few inches closer to or further from the wall or tilt them a few degrees this way or that, raise them up or down a few inches.. the acoustic consequences of that are very significant.

So, I'm not saying that wanting your music to be played as close as possible to the way the artist would like you to hear it is a bad thing to strive for. Certainly if you feel the need to fiddle with the EQ on your system a lot there's probably some issue that needs a better fix.

I haven't touched the EQ on my system in years, I have EQ but once I set it, that's it. I just play music.

But no I don't have bit perfect playback, obviously. But then, your speakers aren't bit perfect, your room isn't bit perfect. Your ears are not not perfect matches to the ears of the engineers who recorded and mastered the music you play.

I think it's well and good to worry about processing that degrades the fidelity in undesired and possibly unnecessary ways.. but also to not take this bit perfect idea TOO literally, because there's not really any such thing end of the day...

 

[MrA]

...yes @Toad and every time I listen to a live performance at a different venue or a recording of it at home or even if it's the next gig on a live tour it will sound different so I agree with you.

As an aside I have only ever heard three performances that sounded truly 'perfect' acoustically even though I have seen one of these acts several times (Wilco UK Manchester Academy 2007, Faithless Glastonbury Pyramid Stage 2010, Alanis Morissette Phoenix Festival '96).

'Audiophiles' chasing a perfect home listening system need to realise that most times what we have got sounds pretty great as it is so why aspire to try and match the results from a compromised acoustics live venue?

(....you cant beat the kick-in-the-stomach feel, being there, shared experience & atmosphere of the best live performances though!)

 

[dtc]

The whole idea of "bit perfect" was that in the early days of audio on Windows, Windows controlled the output device and made changes to the bits without the knowledge of the users. In order to bypass the Windows Mixer people figured out ways to connect directly to the output device without going through the mixer. That was call "bit perfect" because it avoided Windows changing the bits on its own. It was always understood that it meant simply avoiding the Windows Mixer. And, yes, in those early days, it was the holy grail. But for most people these days pretty much everything is bit perfect in the sense of unexpected changes. Consciously changing the signal path, like using room correction, is entirely in the users hands. Some people like room correction and equalizers and some do not. To each his own. It just needs to be a conscious decision.

 

[F1 Fan]

Hi Mr Ee,

Currently, enabling bit-perfect playback mode is a bit complex. Next month, we will add a simple option in the WiiM Home app to allow you to easily enable bit-perfect playback.

Hi,

Did this ever happen as I can not see it ..