WiiM Amp Bluetooth troubles

[marcmo60]

I've been trying to work out issues streaming music to my Bluetooth speakers. Whether my source is local to the WiiM, Spotify or LMS on a piCorePlayer; the music breaks up, plays slow (?) or intermittently. I started this project with a WiiM Pro Plus but swapped it for a WiiM Amp in the hope that Bluetooth performance was better. Based on my forum research, I am aware that 2.4 Wi-Fi is a known factor. I don't run 2.4 in my condo but there are many others in the building who do, how big of a factor is this? In the end this setup is destined for my home where there will be minimal 2.4 interference.

The setup is a RPi 5 piCorePlayer and LMS as the source of my music library. Pulling wire for passive speakers will be an issue in this home, I'm planning on using Bluetooth speakers to eliminate that concern but my testing with Bluetooth has not been going well. I've switched between wired Ethernet and 5G Wi-Fi as the network media without any change in results.

An additional note, the RPi will stream to the Bluetooth speaker(Bose) cleanly but not at the volume levels I had hoped for. It also doesn't have the ability to drive passive speakers without additional modifications. I have a pair of cheap bookshelf speaker arriving to eliminate Bluetooth and find out if the network might be the issue.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

 

[castalla]

I've been trying to work out issues streaming music to my Bluetooth speakers. Whether my source is local to the WiiM, Spotify or LMS on a piCorePlayer; the music breaks up, plays slow (?) or intermittently. I started this project with a WiiM Pro Plus but swapped it for a WiiM Amp in the hope that Bluetooth performance was better. Based on my forum research, I am aware that 2.4 Wi-Fi is a known factor. I don't run 2.4 in my condo but there are many others in the building who do, how big of a factor is this? In the end this setup is destined for my home where there will be minimal 2.4 interference.

The setup is a RPi 5 piCorePlayer and LMS as the source of my music library. Pulling wire for passive speakers will be an issue in this home, I'm planning on using Bluetooth speakers to eliminate that concern but my testing with Bluetooth has not been going well. I've switched between wired Ethernet and 5G Wi-Fi as the network media without any change in results.

An additional note, the RPi will stream to the Bluetooth speaker(Bose) cleanly but not at the volume levels I had hoped for. It also doesn't have the ability to drive passive speakers without additional modifications. I have a pair of cheap bookshelf speaker arriving to eliminate Bluetooth and find out if the network might be the issue.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

I found Bluetooth output on the Wiim pro to be poor, lots of stuttering. Conversely, the Mini is as steady as a rock. No problems with competing wifi. A mystery.

 

[marcmo60]

I was able to connect a pair of small bookshelf speakers to the WiiM Amp and my music playback issues were no more. I changed the audio input from Wi-Fi, to Ethernet and finally to USB drive to test out all my source media paths. Results were no more stutter or cut-out of the music regardless of the path into the WiiM Amp. In my uneducated opinion, something is seriously wrong with the Bluetooth implementation on the WiiM Pro Plus and the Amp. FYI, my Bluetooth speakers are using BT 4.2. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to proceed? Open a ticket with log while the issue is happening or some other approach. I also wonder if a USB BT 5.3 transmitter would help if I plugged it into the Amp?

 

[marcmo60]

I did ask a question of the support team: could a USB BT adapter be used to bypass the onboard hardware, answer was no.