Wiim Home App - Queue Feedback

[Cartman25]

Just purchased the Wiim Ultra for a second system in a home office last week. Primarily to plug a USB drive with ~20k FLAC songs into to listen to my own music library. The hardware seems great (especially for the price). However the immediate noticeable thing from a new user experience was how poorly executed the Queue is on the Wiim Home app (iPhone version).

I spent an evening on the weekend exploring the app and it's functionality. It was near impossible to edit a Queue, swap the order of songs, easily add new songs from various different albums, etc.

This surprised me as I consider the ability to have a range of flexibility and options to add music to the queue and then edit and adjust the queue as a core feature of digital music playback experience.

I expected more from new software. Clients for MPD had more functionality with their play queue's 10 years ago. Maybe everyone is streaming now and very few users are using a local USB drive library of music, so maybe not a priority for the Wiim app developers.

Anyone else have feedback on using the queue? Are there "hidden" features a new user might not stumble upon?

 

[Burnside]

See https://forum.wiimhome.com/threads/beta-test-enhanced-play-queue-management.5366/

 

[Wiimer]

See https://forum.wiimhome.com/threads/beta-test-enhanced-play-queue-management.5366/

It appears to be a beta test that began unnoticed. I may not have known about it. Are you participating?

 

[Burnside]

No, got the persistent group and smart preset betas on the go just now but I might consider that one too although I’m not overly bothered about queue management as I tend to fire off playback and let it run without interfering with what’s playing

 

[Wiimer]

No, got the persistent group and smart preset betas on the go just now but I might consider that one too although I’m not overly bothered about queue management as I tend to fire off playback and let it run without interfering with what’s playing

Thanks.

Thus I may be the only one testing low latency MRM.

 

[Burnside]

Thanks.

Thus I may be the only one testing low latency MRM.

Keep up the good work

 

[Wiimer]

Keep up the good work

Yes, you too

 

[Cartman25]

Thanks for the link about the beta testing. Hopefully there is progress. I see that NAS and USB disk improvements are planned. Here is hoping for improvements soon.

 

[Weathercade]

Anyone else have feedback on using the queue? Are there "hidden" features a new user might not stumble upupon

The queue management features I've come to expect in streaming services and UPNP controlers like mconnect and BubbleUpnp don't seem to exist in the WiiM Home App which is a huge disappointment.

When listening to music I often manage the play queue as tracks come to mind, inserting tracks and reordering the queue as the mood takes me but, alas, the WHA doesn't have any of these options except for Amazon.

I've discovered the following:

NAS DLNA server - no Play Next or queue options
Qobuz - no Play Next or queue options
Tidal - no Play Next or queue options
Deezer - no Play Next or queue options
Amazon Ultimate does have Play Next and Play Last

The WHA itself only allows you to clear the queue. I'm unable to reorder the queue or remove tracks.

I have signed up for the beta queue features but so far there's no news on my request. Fingers crossed for these features in the future

 

[Hazenhart]

Agreed. This is core functionality, more important than additional RC and EQ tweaks in my opinion. And it needs to include NAS and local files.

 

[Cartman25]

Yes, I thought this would be core functionality too, so I was very surprised at the lack of this functionality in setting up and adjusting a queue.
Reorder the queue
Remove select tracks
Add individual songs
Play next or 'add to last' option (without deleting the queue - new song is inserted into the queue)

Those just seem like basic functions for listening and enjoying a digital music library.
(To the software developers - YES, there are still many of us who enjoy their own music libraries.)

The Wiim Home app is a major disappointment. I really hope they fix this soon. (It's not rocket science either. You could do all this with MPD clients 10 years ago... )

 

[WiiM Support]

Just purchased the Wiim Ultra for a second system in a home office last week. Primarily to plug a USB drive with ~20k FLAC songs into to listen to my own music library. The hardware seems great (especially for the price). However the immediate noticeable thing from a new user experience was how poorly executed the Queue is on the Wiim Home app (iPhone version).

I spent an evening on the weekend exploring the app and it's functionality. It was near impossible to edit a Queue, swap the order of songs, easily add new songs from various different albums, etc.

This surprised me as I consider the ability to have a range of flexibility and options to add music to the queue and then edit and adjust the queue as a core feature of digital music playback experience.

I expected more from new software. Clients for MPD had more functionality with their play queue's 10 years ago. Maybe everyone is streaming now and very few users are using a local USB drive library of music, so maybe not a priority for the Wiim app developers.

Anyone else have feedback on using the queue? Are there "hidden" features a new user might not stumble upon?

Hi Cartman25, team

Thank you for your valuable feedback!

We’re actively working on enhancing queue management, and the release is expected in two to three weeks. We greatly appreciate your continued support and patience!

 

[Weathercade]

Something weird happen to my queue last night. When adding single tracks to the play queue Amazon Music Unlimited previously gave me the option to "Play Next" or "Play Last" but these options disappeared.

I checked my WiiM Ultra firmware and nothing had changed, I am still on v5.2.636045.

The only thing I had done earlier was setup Alexa casting but I disabled it once I noticed it didn't give me anything that I couldn't do through the Wiim Home App.

 

[Burnside]

Something weird happen to my queue last night. When adding single tracks to the play queue Amazon Music Unlimited previously gave me the option to "Play Next" or "Play Last" but these options disappeared.

I checked my WiiM Ultra firmware and nothing had changed, I am still on v5.2.636045.

The only thing I had done earlier was setup Alexa casting but I disabled it once I noticed it didn't give me anything that I couldn't do through the Wiim Home App.

As far as I recall those queue options aren’t available when you are casting from the Amazon music app using AlexaCast, but they should be available if you are playing to your phone. This is what the Amazon Music app has always done, it’s nothing to do with WiiM. Either way, it shouldn’t impact the WiiM Home app where those options still appear for me even though I still have my WiiM linked to Alexa.

 

[Weathercade]

As far as I recall those queue options aren’t available when you are casting from the Amazon music app using AlexaCast, but they should be available if you are playing to your phone. This is what the Amazon Music app has always done, it’s nothing to do with WiiM. Either way, it shouldn’t impact the WiiM Home app where those options still appear for me even though I still have my WiiM linked to Alexa.

Yes, I found that out when I tried AlexaCast.

What I have discovered tonight though was that Play Next and Play Last feature does work for Amazon Music and Qobuz but the options disappear if the currently playing track is from a different source, for example from my NAS or another streaming service. Which is why the appeared to be randomly disappearing for me because I was trying out a bunch of different streaming services.

 

[Burnside]

Yes, I found that out when I tried AlexaCast.

What I have discovered tonight though was that Play Next and Play Last feature does work for Amazon Music and Qobuz but the options disappear if the currently playing track is from a different source, for example from my NAS or another streaming service. Which is why the appeared to be randomly disappearing for me because I was trying out a bunch of different streaming services.

Yeah, intermixing tracks from different sources isn’t currently supported but hopefully that’ll come in the future