Ultra or Amp Pro

[Snowgoose]

A bit of background... I come from the 1970s where most people were into HiFi and it was just as much a topic of daily discussion as soccer! So my current setup is (fairly low end stuff) : JVC record deck with Ortofon MM cartridge, Marantz amp (from early 1980s) and Celestion Ditton 15 speakers. I recently dug out my Sony Blu-ray player and thought it would be useful to connect this to my amp for the audio and to the TV for the video. Then I remembered HDMI Arc on the TV and wished my amp had that facility so I could play any TV audio through the amp.

OK, that's the background. After a lot of googling, I realised that I can also stream Amazon music through my system with some extra kit and I ended up looking at the WiiM range. The WiiM amp seemed to be an excellent option for the reasons you will all be familiar with, but the one downside was no phono input (why??). So if I went down that route, I would need to buy a separate preamp but almost all preamps seem to only have analogue outputs. This would use the only analogue input so I couldn't connect anything else to it (I need at least 1 pair of RCA or equivalent).

So that led me to the Ultra. Brilliant... a phono input AND a line input! Ahhh, but no power amp.

So it seems to me that I can either buy the Ultra and keep my oversized classic ancient amp which means I have way more connections than I need including 2 phono inputs! Plus I have an old large amp that won't turn on and off with the Arc. Or I can buy the WiiM amp and then I might need a preamp and a DAC to use my record deck and have a spare line input.

Both WiiM products look excellent (especially given the new Amp Pro soon to be released in UK) so does anyone have any comments or suggestions? I was leaning towards the Ultra especially as the sound quality of the Amp was questionable (What HiFi 3/5 review) but I imagine the Amp Pro will be much improved. Seems a big pity to me that the Amp & Amp Pro don't have a phono input. Surely an obvious addition?

Thanks and apologies for the long post.

 

[pieterv1]

A bit of background... I come from the 1970s where most people were into HiFi and it was just as much a topic of daily discussion as soccer! So my current setup is (fairly low end stuff) : JVC record deck with Ortofon MM cartridge, Marantz amp (from early 1980s) and Celestion Ditton 15 speakers. I recently dug out my Sony Blu-ray player and thought it would be useful to connect this to my amp for the audio and to the TV for the video. Then I remembered HDMI Arc on the TV and wished my amp had that facility so I could play any TV audio through the amp.

OK, that's the background. After a lot of googling, I realised that I can also stream Amazon music through my system with some extra kit and I ended up looking at the WiiM range. The WiiM amp seemed to be an excellent option for the reasons you will all be familiar with, but the one downside was no phono input (why??). So if I went down that route, I would need to buy a separate preamp but almost all preamps seem to only have analogue outputs. This would use the only analogue input so I couldn't connect anything else to it (I need at least 1 pair of RCA or equivalent).

So that led me to the Ultra. Brilliant... a phono input AND a line input! Ahhh, but no power amp.

So it seems to me that I can either buy the Ultra and keep my oversized classic ancient amp which means I have way more connections than I need including 2 phono inputs! Plus I have an old large amp that won't turn on and off with the Arc. Or I can buy the WiiM amp and then I might need a preamp and a DAC to use my record deck and have a spare line input.

Both WiiM products look excellent (especially given the new Amp Pro soon to be released in UK) so does anyone have any comments or suggestions? I was leaning towards the Ultra especially as the sound quality of the Amp was questionable (What HiFi 3/5 review) but I imagine the Amp Pro will be much improved. Seems a big pity to me that the Amp & Amp Pro don't have a phono input. Surely an obvious addition?

Thanks and apologies for the long post.

You could go with the Ultra and add a 12v trigger device to your setup to automatically turn your old amplifier on & off along with it.

Something like this:

AUDIOPHONICS Trigger 12V 230V Slave Power Supply Device - Audiophonics

The Audiophonics Trigger 12V is the simple and effective solution for turning on and off any appliance connected to 230V AC mains with an IEC female mains input

www.audiophonics.fr

 

[Mr Ee]

Welcome.
Get the ultra, then come Xmas you can get a new amp too
Slightly more seriously, if you like the current amp then, as the previous post, there are ways to trigger it on / off.
But it's not a real hardship to do so manually.
imo, the Ultra sets you up for more fun / expansion later.

 

[Snowgoose]

You could go with the Ultra and add a 12v trigger device to your setup to automatically turn your old amplifier on & off along with it.

Something like this:

AUDIOPHONICS Trigger 12V 230V Slave Power Supply Device - Audiophonics

The Audiophonics Trigger 12V is the simple and effective solution for turning on and off any appliance connected to 230V AC mains with an IEC female mains input

www.audiophonics.fr

Thank you... I didn't think about a remote device to turn amp on and off using the trigger. Good option.

 

[Snowgoose]

Welcome.
Get the ultra, then come Xmas you can get a new amp too
Slightly more seriously, if you like the current amp then, as the previous post, there are ways to trigger it on / off.
But it's not a real hardship to do so manually.
imo, the Ultra sets you up for more fun / expansion later.

Thank you. Actually it seems to me that the ideal solution would be an Ultra feeding into an Amp Pro but then it seems a waste because of the duplication of the streaming facility. I was hoping to reduce the space taken by my current amp but if I keep it for now at least I have loads of inputs and a streaming set up with HDMI Arc.
I agree that the three paces I have to take from chair to amp to manually turn it on and off won't actually kill me . I do remember the days when there were no remotes controls! I didn't even want the Arc for that reason, but just to enable my TV to play through my amp. So yes, Ultra it is!

 

[adias]

Get the WiiM Amp Pro and a Schiit Mani phono preamp.