WiiM Sound Lite - a user experience

[adias]

WiiM released recently the WiiM Sound Lite, a variant of the original WiiM Sound introduced last Summer, minus a display; it also misses in the package a remote control which can be purchased separately. The speaker is sold in the US at Amazon at a current price of $229.

My speaker arrived very well packed, indeed triple-packed, assurance that the speaker is well protected during shipping.





A country-specific power corded and an RCA interconnect cable were included, along with a paper manual.



Setup is straightforward via the WiiM Home App (WHA) making sure that the app is allowed to use localization and the device has bluetooth active. Just attach the power cord to the Sound Lite, open the WHA and wait for the newly detected device notification and proceed to install the Sound Lite.





The speaker's top has a proximity sensor and once activated by sensing a hand it will illuminate convenient control settings (+ - volume controls, <- and -> channel preset controls and a center > pause/play control). A small pilot light is also present below the - control and it can be set always on or off by a setting in the WHA.

How does it sound? I found that Sound Lite can sound very well indeed, but only after a significant break-in period. When I first turned the unit on and played known streams, the sound was dry and somewhat harsh. I know that electronic devices (analog in particular) can have long break-in periods. Components need to adapt and capacitors, in particular, need time to 'form' their dielectrics. The theory behind this is that electronic circuits are tuned/voiced on the design bench after many hours of operation, thus a newly built circuit needs the same aging time to settle in the designed parameters. This is clearly the case with this speaker. It took several days, leaving the speaker constantly on for its sound presentation to rebalance. After one week the speaker sounded quite good. Also my preference is always to leave these devices on 24/7 - their power consumption is quite modest.

Sound presentation also depends very much on how the speaker is located and how close or how far it is from hard acoustically reflecting surfaces (walls). In my case I set the Sound Lite as an accent sound source in a nook of the house. It sits on a small table, about 35cm from the back wall. This position creates a dip in the low frequency range that can easily be corrected with a slight boost in that area:

Assuming the speaker is some distance from side walls, measure the distance from the center of the speaker to the rear wall - call it L. Calculate the attenuated frequency f:

f = 340/(2L)

where L is in meters, and f in Hz.

(Unit conversion: 3.3ft is about 1m. 12 in about 0.3m.)

Using the WHA parametric EQ, apply a PK boost at the frequency f, start with a gain of +2dB and a Q of .4 to .8. Adjust that in small increments while listening. It should produce a pleasantly balanced sound.

Here is the PEQ correction in my setup:



The WiiM Sound Lite is a great modern-day table top radio - a digital one playing streams from established radio stations, streaming services and even local signals (analog or digital). It can also form a stereo pair, one unit playing the left channel and the other the right channel.

Highly recommended!
___________

Addendum:

And of course the full portfolio of WiiM’s WHA digital signal processing - graphical and parametric EQ, RoomFit and Dynamic Bass - are tools the Sound Lite can use. I recommend low values of Dynamic Bass (1 or 2 dB) if a balanced tonality is sought.

 

[Mr Ee]

Here are my musings from using a Sound and a Sound Lite both individually and as a stereo pair for the past 6 weeks in various rooms / setups.

All of these comments were made with the default setup (no eq etc.) apart from Dynamic Bass which I reduced to 4db.

"Sound" with a capital S refers to the Wiim Sounds.
"sound" with a lowercase s refers to music / noise / sound!

This particular post is more about using two Sounds for stereo than the Lite itself, although it may be worth noting that, as one might expect, I was unable to tell the Sound and Sound Lite apart by sound alone.
i.e. it really shouldn't be any different from using two Sounds, or two Sound Lites.

As ever, these are entirely my subjective thoughts & impressions. I have no expectation for others to particularly agree / disagree with them.
I apologise to those that have read them in other, private, posts - I have mostly copy / pasted from them.



Groupies

I first set the Sound and Sound Lite up as a persistent group with the Sound as the leader (so I can use the remote it came with as the Lite doesn't come with one) in my lounge.
Can't choose L or R for the group members in the group screen, so started playing something and then changed LR, L, R in the group tile as appropriate.
Flicking between the LR, L, R on each Sound definitely made an obvious soundstage difference, but when set to L and R, as it would be for a stereo pair, it somehow wasn't as natural / sounded somewhat artifical compared to my normal stereo speakers. (More on that later.)

I then played something to just one of the Sounds and the group 'dissolved' in the Devices screen, as expected.
I then cast back to the persistent group and both Sounds had reverted back to LR each, rather than one being L and the other R.
i.e. as others have noted, it's not (yet?) possible to persistently retain the desired stereo pairing.


Lounging Around.

In my lounge, let's say 25m2, and me sitting 4m away, the two Sounds paired and at 70+ made a half decent stab at filling the room, but it sounded very anemic, especially with anything with a reasonable bass line.
At that point I brought in the C10 as a 'centre' speaker to provide the necessary heft, and it transformed the overall sound.
Still nothing like the amp ultra driving my floorstanders, but a significant improvement.

But what about using the C10 as a 'centre' speaker, you ask?
How would a C10 in the middle of reasonably widely separated Sounds affect the stereo-ness of it all?
Glad you asked...

Earlier I wrote "sounded somewhat artifical" when describing listening to just the stereo Sounds.
The way I thought about it at the time was that the sound was more dispersed, e.g. when I was expecting vocals to be dead centre they weren't as tightly fixed in the centre.

As others have noted, this is quite likely to be due to the Sound's design with each Sound having two tweeters firing 'sideways'. Great for a single speaker, not so great for a stereo pair.
While sounds in the music which are very definitely in either the left or right channel are easily noticed as coming from the respective Sound, my conclusion was that two Sounds as a stereo pair blurred the image quite considerably.



To quote Britney, "Now get to work, b****!"

I moved the two Sounds into my office, say 13m2.
The Sounds are on my desk. I'm sitting at my desk. My head is maybe 1m from each Sound.

It instantly sounds better than when they were in the lounge.
The bass is greatly improved by this new positioning (Sounds closer to walls, me closer to Sounds) - stronger, but not overpowering or muddy.

Due to the nearfield listening the extreme left / right separation is obvious, but it's a very different experience to my normal stereo listening in this room.
It's a bit like the sound is everywhere in front of me all at once, like a wide stereo effect.
This is perhaps what @Hommerun was referring to by 'an incredible immersive experience'?
Back to the central vocal example, with just an Ultra playing over the bookshelf speakers in this room (the Sounds are sitting on top of these speakers, so the bookshelf speakers are also 1m from my head), the vocals are dead centre.
With the Sounds it's like the vocals are everywhere in between the two speakers.

I really didn't like two Sounds as a stereo pair for nearfield listening at all; it just sounded 'wrong'.
However, using just a single Sound directly in front of my head (behind my monitors) was significantly better.
Each 'sideways' tweeter was doing its respective L or R channel so there was still a reasonable level of stereo-ness to the sound, and the vocals were much more centred.



"Hey, good-looking. Whatcha got cooking?"

Moved the Sounds into my kitchen, say 28m2.
Both Sounds are reasonably close to the front / side walls.

One Sound in there is completely lost in that space, but two Sounds? Significant improvement. Once the volume reaches 65+
At anything less than 50 it's mostly a bit of background noise, not able to fill the space and with no 'presence' to it and thus no incentive to pay much attention to it.
Which might be fine for some light tunes while making breakfast.
But turn it up that bit more and it comes to life.
As before, fiddling with LR, L, R on each speaker makes an obvious difference, with L and R being by far the best.
I could easily live with this setup.

So why do I think two Sounds in my kitchen is better than in my lounge or office?
Simply because I'm not sitting in one spot 'listening' in my kitchen.

There is just one potential minor problem in this larger space - even with both Sounds at 100 it's loud, but not party loud.
But plently loud enough for all but that specific scenario, and a small amount of gain / eq may help.

In summary, for me, it's about application.
In the right setting a Sound or two can be a very effective solution, but as a replacement for 'normal' stereo speakers? I'll pass (the Dutchie 'pon the left hand side).

 

[Hommerun]

@Mr Ee Indeed! Yes, as you have described it, the vocals are at times dead center and other times all around.

 

[Aquaman]

Can't choose L or R for the group members in the group screen, so started playing something and then changed LR, L, R in the group tile as appropriate.
Flicking between the LR, L, R on each Sound definitely made an obvious soundstage difference, but when set to L and R, as it would be for a stereo pair, it somehow wasn't as natural / sounded somewhat artifical compared to my normal stereo speakers.

I still haven't gotten my head 'round this LR,R,L thing. I can understand L and R but what the heck is LR opposed to Stereo supposed to do?

 

[hgo58]

@Mr Ee Indeed! Yes, as you have described it, the vocals are at times dead center and other times all around.

The audio needs to be in phase to get a proper stereo image. That is hard to get via WiFi and a router that is also used for other network traffic. The network jitter is simply too high.

 

[Aquaman]

The audio needs to be in phase to get a proper stereo image. That is hard to get via WiFi and a router that is also used for other network traffic. The network jitter is simply too high.

But they are specifically advertised to do exactly this?
Is the "Sync Audio" setting not intended to resolve any such issues?

I cannot test it as I only have one Sound. But I've got two Bluesound speakers operating as a stereo pair over wifi. They can indeed get out of sync while listening to radio. But for stuff coming from my NAS I have yet to see any such problems.

 

[hgo58]

But they are specifically advertised to do exactly this?
Is the "Sync Audio" setting not intended to resolve any such issues?

I cannot test it as I only have one Sound. But I've got two Bluesound speakers operating as a stereo pair over wifi. They can indeed get out of sync while listening to radio. But for stuff coming from my NAS I have yet to see any such problems.

There is a difference between being in sync and being in phase. The later is needed for proper stereo image.

It may be possible to stay in phase but we can see from the test by @Mr Ee that the Sounds don't stay in phase, as the stereo image changes.

I have wireless a pair of active speakers that uses WiFi and that is working fine. They do however have a Hub with dedicated WiFi that is broadcasting the data to both speakers, so that they get the same audio at the same time.