WiiM amp volume levels via HDMI eARC

[Venger]

I've recently purchased a WiiM amp to run two stereo speakers to improve the sound of a new OLED tv having been extremely disappointed with demos of some expensive soundbars.

This is a fabulous little amp, I'm so impressed with it's versatility and running a pair of ancient Kef Coda 7's has made a massive difference to my enjoyment of movies particularly.

I watch quite a lot of content on Disney+ and I've noticed that I'm having to run the amp's volume at about 80% to get a decent weight of sound for a movie. At 80% you'd think it would be unbearably loud and you couldn't even be in the same room but it's nothing like that at all. By comparison, if I watch terrestrial TV, running the amp's volume at 50% is plenty loud enough.

When listening to music over Spotify Connect, I have the volume between 30%-40% and this is quite loud, at this level you'd need to reduce the volume in order to have a conversation.

I have the amp hooked up to the tv via HDMI eARC and I've checked the tv settings to see if there's any control of output level via HDMI, there isn't.

Any thoughts on why I'm having to run the amp volume so high when viewing content on Disney+?

Many thanks for your time.

 

[harkpabst]

WiiM Amp or WiiM Amp Pro?

The WiiM Amp Pro can decode AC3 signals while the WiiM Amp is restricted to Linear PCM. The TV putting out either PCM or AC3 might well be the only setting available regarding the digital output. The actual term used in your TV's setup might be different, it could be Bitstream, DD, DolbyDigital or AC3 or maybe something else.

If you have the original WiiM Amp (non-pro) you should not hear any sound at all with the output not set to PCM. If you have the WiiM Amp Pro you could try out both options and see if one provides a higher level than the other. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

Also make sure to not enable eARC on your TV, just ARC. eARC is not supported by WiiM.

As long as you can still reach the desired loudness with the volume control set to 80% there's nothing wrong with using it. The WiiM Amps are designed in a way to never ever clip the output signal, even with the volume control set to 100%. To make input switching more convenient you can e.g. use the pre-gain feature in the Audio Input settings of the WiiM Home app to manually normalise the level between Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, TV, Line in and Optical in. You can adjust the values between -10 dB and +10 dB.

Using positive pre-gain could potentially introduce digital clipping if the digital source was using the entire dynamic range up to 0 dBFS, but since the TV is definitely more silent than your other digital sources I wouldn't shy away from increasing the TV gain here.

 

[mr_paslow]

I have had the same experience with an Ultra in my case. I currently have the Ultra's TV Input pre-gain boosted by 7dB in an attempt to compensate, but I still have to set the volume at least twice as high when watching TV source vs. WiFi, USB, or optical.

A related issue is that the per-source volume levels don't currently work well for groups (the other speakers always see WiFi as the source). I have tried to summarize my experience in another thread: here.

 

[Mr Ee]

Welcome.

Similar here, and completely unrelated to using a wiim.
Normal tv via hdmi to an avr, volume at aroud 45. Netflix, amazon, disney etc all around late 50s.

 

[harkpabst]

I have had the same experience with an Ultra in my case. I currently have the Ultra's TV Input pre-gain boosted by 7dB in an attempt to compensate, but I still have to set the volume at least twice as high when watching TV source vs. WiFi, USB, or optical.

You could still bump it up to 10 dB or reduce the pre-gain of the other sources (if it really bothers you, of course).

It's definitely not a WiiM thing, but at least they provide a way of dealing with it.

 

[mr_paslow]

You could still bump it up to 10 dB or reduce the pre-gain of the other sources (if it really bothers you, of course).

It's definitely not a WiiM thing, but at least they provide a way of dealing with it.

Yes, I'll probably push the limits in both directions as you suggest. The only real problem at this point is that expecting family to make manual changes when switching sources is not realistic. The volume level that the surround speakers are left at after watching TV sources is shockingly loud for music. Hopefully that specific scenario (WiFi-connected surround speakers not changing levels along with "main" unit) gets handled by a future update.

 

[Venger]

Many thanks for the prompt replies and many thanks @harkpabst for taking the time to write such a detailed response.

I'm using the Wiim Amp (not pro version).

When I first hooked it up I had no sound from Disney+ or blu ray playback but as you quite rightly say, after a quick Google, I changed the digital audio output on both TV and blu ray player to PCM and everything worked fine.

I must be honest and say I hadn't realised it was ARC not eARC. I think by default eARC was set to Auto on the TV, I did change it to On when I hooked up the WiiM but I've just switched to Off.

Thanks for you're reassurances about not clipping the output stage if running the volume high and I will also look into the pre-gain feature.