WiiM Amp Ultra Users Experience

[JAB]

Wasn't this a song from The Animals? "The Housing of the Cooling Fan"?

 

[Burnside]

Wasn't this a song from The Animals? "The Housing of the Cooling Fan"?

It’s been the ruin of many a poor amp

 

[Goodnews]

Isn't it
Cool is probably a term that everyone interprets differently.
You see a rack (attached to the post slightly ahead) containing a setup.
When I touch the steel plate of the rack - in listening mode- it is cool, but when I touch WAU on the cover, it is nice and warm.
When I touch the mono amplifiers (bass) with fans underneath, they are as cool as the steel plate of the rack. The same is true for the Wiim devices.


No more, no less.

 

[Goodnews]

Wasn't this a song from The Animals? "The Housing of the Cooling Fan"?

The question should sound familiar to them

Who invented it?

 

[EddNog]

Is 100 watts at 8 ohms with an 18" dipole bass, with hardly any sound barrier
low, sufficient, or too much?

If using a fan makes the housing almost cool, then that's how it is.
That's what logic dictates.

It is irrelevant to me whether someone understands this or not, or whether I use my infrared thermometer to measure the different temperatures on the amplifier housing and adjust it accordingly.


I just want it designed that way.


And my first experience with the TPA3255 chip was a very hot one... now all Mac Mini/streamers, DACs, preamps, and mono amplifiers are on fans, WITHOUT background noise


AND IT WORKS FOR ME


Merry Christmas

My point is simply that even without an added fan, it will continue to work. For you. For me. For everybody. The WiiM devices are designed well and function well-within the thermal parameters set by the manufacturers of the internal components.

Sure, the amp might feel warm to the touch to you. You are not a class-D amplifier IC. Your hand is also not a class-D amplifier IC. Would you worry if your sauté pan got hot to the touch? If the amp is built to component spec, then trust the amp and the chip manufacturers to know what they’re doing.

Just saying.

-Ed

 

[Eddie Spaghetti]

And I thought I was the OCD one. Cooling fans. Power cords. Damping factor. I cannot believe the arcane hills people choose to die on around here. Me, I connect all my sh… uh, stuff, plug it in, turn it on. If it works like it should and sounds good, I’m happy. If it all sounds better than the gear it replaced, I’m ecstatic. And if I get lucky and it blows me away, then I’m blown away. I followed this complicated process twice with WiiM - first with an Amp Pro, and again with the Amp Ultra - with all the success I wanted for both times. Three times, actually - the last was upgrading my sub to an SVS. Each step was the upgrade (or more) than I had hoped for, each one made me a happier listener, and all on a retiree's budget. My WiiM devices paired with some decent speakers now have me looking forward to those opportunities to kick back and crank up some tunes and hear everything that went into producing them. What more could you ask for.

 

[harkpabst]

If using a fan makes the housing almost cool, then that's how it is.

As others have said before, it's almost cool with no fan.

It is irrelevant to me whether someone understands this or not, or whether I use my infrared thermometer to measure the different temperatures on the amplifier housing and adjust it accordingly.

The point is that you are talking like you found out some dirty secret about the WiiM Ultra and because of the ingenious move of adding a fan you have been able to mitigate the design error:

I just want it designed that way.

There is no design error in the WiiM Amp Ultra. It works and will continue to do so for years to come with no additional fan.

And my first experience with the TPA3255 chip was a very hot one... now all Mac Mini/streamers, DACs, preamps, and mono amplifiers are on fans, WITHOUT background noise


AND IT WORKS FOR ME

No such thing as a noiseless fan. If you cannot hear it, it really does work for you. Keeps me wondering why you have to shout at us when your fans are all silent.

I haven't seen anything in your posts on this topic indicating that you understood the real problem with the TPA3255 chips. It's not the case temperature. It's the problem of the high energy density because of the very small contact patch these tiny chips have to offer. The key to keeping a TPA3255 based design healthy and happy is to quickly dissipate the heat away from the chip. That's exactly what the heat pipe solution employed by WiiM does. Heat does not simply rise. That's pub-physics, at best. Heat transfer occurs in the direction of decreasing temperature, driven by the local temperature gradient. In other words: Wherever there are cooler temperatures, the heat flux vector will point into that direction, no matter if its upwards, downwards or sideways.

Cool is probably a term that everyone interprets differently.

It is and that individual feel is totally irrelevant for if the chip gets toasted or not. It doesn't care for individual perception.

It's totally up to you if you are happy or not with the case temperature of any device. If you don't like it the way it is, you are free to either ditch it or help yourself with cooling fans. That's all fine, you can do whatever you want and additional air flow will never be a disadvantage. Nobody can force you to accept a surface temperature that makes you feel uncomfortable.

But please, don't try to tell anybody that there is a technical problem just because you prefer a different design. Objectively there is no technical problem. No more, no less.