Teddy pardo power supply for the ultra

[Musician]

Agreed I have a musical fidelity V- Dac 2 that came with a nice wall wart linear power supply. But they made a power supply that was so pretty. It looked exactly like the dac for the same money as the dac. And it made no change whatsoever. That’s when I learned my lesson that changing something out is not always better. Did it look cool having the same two beautiful aluminum boxes on my Audio rack yeah. Was it worth 400 bucks no! Also, I trust the WiiM team to design a switch mode power supply that would work very well with the Ultra. Why would they give you a crappy power supply? With their responses and knowledge and customer service that I see on here I would not doubt their ability to do anything, especially when it comes to a power supply, they know what they’re doing.

Yes, there are NO guaranties to get better sound. The proof If its better sounding or not is in the measurements and also the listening tests.

The Ultra has different regulators on the PCB after the 12V power supply - they are all probably optimised for using the inbuilt switch mode power supply, i.e. made for supressing higher frequencies. There are probably SMPS regulators feeding the DAC chip.

I guess most people dont even know what a regulator is .

This component makes the power supply regulated and will alone supress noise and ripple 60-90 dB . Very different regulators are needed depending on the power supply used. A SMPS needs a regulator that supresses higher frequencies, like a LM2596S. A linear power supply needs a regulator that supresses lower frequencies, like a tl1084 or lm317.

Rob Watts from Chord calls linear power supplies a ”religion” , and postulate that most SMPS sounds better.
RFi seems to be an evil thing though.

 

[Musician]

I did a lot of experiments with LPS and WiiM pro :

Test WIIM pro+ with different power supplies

Hifi should really be about what sounds nice to the system's owner. I have everything from old 70s amps to my wiim amp, I'm sure most of them measure terribly compared to $40,000 hifi stuff shown at the trade shows, however I like how they sound and isn't that what it's all about? Yeah. I’m...

forum.wiimhome.com

I have also compared the electrical digital spdif output from the Ultra to an external dac , with the spdif out from the WiiM pro, and even when using a linear power supply with the pro , the stock Ultra with its smps sound a tiny bit better.

Onlyoneme has shown that the Ultras eye pattern of the spdif output is better than the pro:s.

 

[canard]

It is also one of the main sources of breakdowns, of planned obsolescence in consumer equipment... often fragile, would require more costs to make them reliable but which would then be contradictory with their choice...etc.

 

[Musician]

It is also one of the main sources of breakdowns, of planned obsolescence in consumer equipment... often fragile, would require more costs to make them reliable but which would then be contradictory with their choice...etc.

This might be a concern - youre right about this.

 

[gordik]

The Ultra seems pretty hard to disamble, and theres probably some desoldering to do and some time to find the ” stealing ” point for the DC .

How many amateurs can desolder smd components , especially on a 4 layer card ?

it's very easy, 4 screws under the rubber feet, the prise the bottom off, solder +ve wire from the linear supply to the +ve 12 V pin of the ac/dc convertor and -ve wire to the -ve 12 V pin (make sure mains lead to the Ultra is disconnected). Sounds a bit smoother. Solder a connector and you can go back to using the mains lead/switching supply if you want to compare switching vs linear etc.

if you want to go further you can disconnect the other board from the main board if you're not using those inputs/outputs and it still streams via ethernet and outputs via the internal dac and it means any noise introduced by the second board is gone.

 

[gordik]

it's very easy, 4 screws under the rubber feet, the prise the bottom off, solder +ve wire from the linear supply to the +ve 12 V pin of the ac/dc convertor and -ve wire to the -ve 12 V pin (make sure mains lead to the Ultra is disconnected). Sounds a bit smoother. Solder a connector and you can go back to using the mains lead/switching supply if you want to compare switching vs linear etc.

if you want to go further you can disconnect the other board from the main board if you're not using those inputs/outputs and it still streams via ethernet and outputs via the internal dac and it means any noise introduced by the second board is gone.

important - need to remove the ac/dc convertor first, so can't do old/new testing. Still relative easy to do, just unscrewing board and disconnecting the connectors.
seems to operate at below 12 V with the one board, am using a bench supply and wiim was working at 5V

 

[Musician]

important - need to remove the ac/dc convertor first, so can't do old/new testing. Still relative easy to do, just unscrewing board and disconnecting the connectors.
seems to operate at below 12 V with the one board, am using a bench supply and wiim was working at 5V

Hi, very interesting .
Does the AC/DC convertor not need any desoldering ? Can you send me some pictures how to do it at conversation ?
Im also active at diyaudio were there are interesting discussions about Ultra :

WiiM Ultra: who has it and who has already opened it?

….but probably much, much lower than 100mV after the external regulators on the board. Probably less than 1 mV before reaching the analog stage ? Further , Opa 1611 has a CMRR of 120 dB. Its rather unsensitive to ripple. This is why the Ultra dac has a SINAD of 115 dB at audiosciencereview. To...

www.diyaudio.com

 

[gordik]

Hi, very interesting .
Does the AC/DC convertor not need any desoldering ? Can you send me some pictures how to do it at conversation ?
Im also active at diyaudio were there are interesting discussions about Ultra :

WiiM Ultra: who has it and who has already opened it?

….but probably much, much lower than 100mV after the external regulators on the board. Probably less than 1 mV before reaching the analog stage ? Further , Opa 1611 has a CMRR of 120 dB. Its rather unsensitive to ripple. This is why the Ultra dac has a SINAD of 115 dB at audiosciencereview. To...

www.diyaudio.com

I cut away the lower bit of the right hand side plastic cover of the ac/dc module about 4mm with a dremel tool, this exposed 2 pins at either end, which I broke using long nosed pliers and then levered the module up thus exposing the other 2 pins which I cut. (did try unsoldering, but couldn't get it off). Am trying to understand a bit more about the circuit and whether what I have done is correct or dangerous in any way to the Ultra, so can't recommend it at this stage. The Teddy Pardo part exchange offer price is not too bad.

Am impressed with the SQ, USB out to DAC is a bit rough so use USB to Gustard U18 with external clock and I2S to a dac. Have LMS squeezebox server on a laptop with dlna setup and control it via BubbleUpnp. The SQ of the Wiim renderer is better than the squeezelite renderer, so point BubbleUpnp at the LMS library and render to the Wiim renderer, suspect wav will be better than flac as no conversion processing.

 

[cc_rider]

pinkfishmedia

 

[Gr80]

It makes no sense to buy affordable streamer then mod it for improved sound quality. There’s no assurance doing mod would improve anything aside from your imagination. It’s simple for most part you get what you pay for. Those streamer cost several thousands has a reason why their product was expensive.

Exactly, just get yourself a two piece DAC at that point.

 

[slartibartfast]

I cut away the lower bit of the right hand side plastic cover of the ac/dc module about 4mm with a dremel tool, this exposed 2 pins at either end, which I broke using long nosed pliers and then levered the module up thus exposing the other 2 pins which I cut. (did try unsoldering, but couldn't get it off). Am trying to understand a bit more about the circuit and whether what I have done is correct or dangerous in any way to the Ultra, so can't recommend it at this stage. The Teddy Pardo part exchange offer price is not too bad.

Am impressed with the SQ, USB out to DAC is a bit rough so use USB to Gustard U18 with external clock and I2S to a dac. Have LMS squeezebox server on a laptop with dlna setup and control it via BubbleUpnp. The SQ of the Wiim renderer is better than the squeezelite renderer, so point BubbleUpnp at the LMS library and render to the Wiim renderer, suspect wav will be better than flac as no conversion processing.

So what was the point of buying the Ultra?

 

[gordik]

So what was the point of buying the Ultra?

er to play music from my music library, stream music/radio, sync with my other wiim device, play records on my Rega turntable etc

 

[multibit]

I cut away the lower bit of the right hand side plastic cover of the ac/dc module about 4mm with a dremel tool, this exposed 2 pins at either end, which I broke using long nosed pliers and then levered the module up thus exposing the other 2 pins which I cut. (did try unsoldering, but couldn't get it off). Am trying to understand a bit more about the circuit and whether what I have done is correct or dangerous in any way to the Ultra, so can't recommend it at this stage. The Teddy Pardo part exchange offer price is not too bad.

Am impressed with the SQ, USB out to DAC is a bit rough so use USB to Gustard U18 with external clock and I2S to a dac. Have LMS squeezebox server on a laptop with dlna setup and control it via BubbleUpnp. The SQ of the Wiim renderer is better than the squeezelite renderer, so point BubbleUpnp at the LMS library and render to the Wiim renderer, suspect wav will be better than flac as no conversion processing.

Do you know the loading current needed for the Ultra ? So it needs +/-12v DC ? I do diy and worked with SMD , I've only just got the Ultra and mainly be using it with a diy USB RTZ FIRDAC so the Ultras internal psu won't matter there .
I might knock a regged psu up at some stage though and see if I can hear any difference when using the Ultras analogue output , as it is now I prefer the external dac

 

[gordik]

Do you know the loading current needed for the Ultra ? So it needs +/-12v DC ? I do diy and worked with SMD , I've only just got the Ultra and mainly be using it with a diy USB RTZ FIRDAC so the Ultras internal psu won't matter there .
I might knock a regged psu up at some stage though and see if I can hear any difference when using the Ultras analogue output , as it is now I prefer the external dac

don't know loading current, rating on switcher was 12 V DC 1760 mA, guess +-12 v DC is required for the ES9038 chip, 5 V for the processor and USB out ? am using ethernet in.

 

[CliffyBC]

Do you have any measurements of this gentleman’s power supply. And the measurements that I’ve seen on the ultra’s switch mode power supply is excellent. It adds no noise whatsoever. Adding a linear power supply to a $320 streamer and even if it was more expensive, won’t do anything. Except put more money in the gentleman’s pocket and take money away from you. Total snake oil.

It does indeed sound like snake oil.
Anyone who buys something like this clearly bought the wrong streamer to start with. If I want a hot hatch I would buy a GTI not a base model then change the engine. It makes no sense at all.

 

[gordik]

funny how the diy guys don't put smps in their dac projects if it's just snakeoil

 

[pieterv1]

funny how the diy guys don't put smps in their dac projects if it's just snakeoil

In (personal) DIY projects where cost, power efficiency, weight and space are not an issue it's easier just to build a linear power supply. It's always going to be pretty clean, but they can also suffer from ripple and AC hum and generate a lot of heat.

SMPS are more complex, but also smaller and more energy efficient. When properly implemented, they can be just as clean - if not cleaner - than a linear PSU.

 

[gordik]

In (personal) DIY projects where cost, power efficiency, weight and space are not an issue it's easier just to build a linear power supply. It's always going to be pretty clean, but they can also suffer from ripple and AC hum and generate a lot of heat.

SMPS are more complex, but also smaller and more energy efficient. When properly implemented, they can be just as clean - if not cleaner - than a linear PSU.

yes, it's been suggested that adding an amyalice filter to the ultra power circuit would be an improvement

 

[multibit]

funny how the diy guys don't put smps in their dac projects if it's just snakeoil

Beauty with diy we get to try this stuff out for ourselves , its either better or its not only way to be sure is try it . I personally preferred a good linear psu with low noise shunt regulation for low level signal applications . SMPS are cheaper more compact especially for higher current requirements, just need adequate filtering for the switching noise