After struggling for ages to find an alternative to a Brennan to store and play all of the music I own on cd, I found this forum and was given some very helpful advice to try the WiiM Amp and was helped to get it set up. I was asked to provide an update on how I found using it.
I’m very happy with it. I’m not an audiophile and can’t comment on the criticisms of the sound made in the ‘What Hi-Fi’ review recently, other than to say it sounds perfectly fine to me, although I have initially used some ancient Sony bookshelf speakers with it and have all of the music in MP3 format at the moment.
I use the Amp with a portable 2TB USB hard drive and a powered USB hub. This isn’t the primary function of the Amp by any means, so there’s very little about this use of it on WiiM’s website or in the manual or the App user guide. I’m a reluctant user of Apps generally, but this one is very easy to understand and use. WiiM’s Customer Support Service was extremely helpful for the few things I couldn’t figure out myself. A few basic functions can be carried out using the remote and the knob on the front of the Amp can adjust the volume.
I’ve got just over 36,000 tracks on the hard drive which I own on cd and it took a few scans for the App to find all of them. Once it’s done that, they are all shown in a list of songs, a list of artists who have any songs there even if it’s only one on a compilation and lists of albums. It’s easy to play songs randomly or select an album or an artist to play. The App also divides them by genre and setting up playlists and favourites is very quick.
The Amp is very quick to start up and power down and it does everything that I might want it to do to play the music I have on cd. A lot of information about each track is displayed in the App as it’s playing, including usually the artwork from the album it’s on and a queue of the next few dozen songs to be played can be shown, which I think is based on random/shuffle not being selected.
The only possible criticism of it I could make is that random/shuffle is a bit clunky and it can get fixated on playing songs or artists which begin with the same letter for a while. People have commented on this on the WiiM forum and it irritated me a bit at first, when it, for example, only played songs starting with J or artists whose names start with J for an hour or so. I have now found that it’s very easy to move it on if I notice it doing this. I usually start it off by searching for a random selection of letters such as ‘ese’ or ‘che’ and then move it on to something in the queue which starts with a different letter from the first song played and it then plays songs randomly quite happily.
In summary, at £299 with a free five-year guarantee (it’s £319 now), I think the WiiM Amp is amazing value for money and offers a great way of playing a large library of music owned on cd, amongst a wide range of other functions.
I’m very happy with it. I’m not an audiophile and can’t comment on the criticisms of the sound made in the ‘What Hi-Fi’ review recently, other than to say it sounds perfectly fine to me, although I have initially used some ancient Sony bookshelf speakers with it and have all of the music in MP3 format at the moment.
I use the Amp with a portable 2TB USB hard drive and a powered USB hub. This isn’t the primary function of the Amp by any means, so there’s very little about this use of it on WiiM’s website or in the manual or the App user guide. I’m a reluctant user of Apps generally, but this one is very easy to understand and use. WiiM’s Customer Support Service was extremely helpful for the few things I couldn’t figure out myself. A few basic functions can be carried out using the remote and the knob on the front of the Amp can adjust the volume.
I’ve got just over 36,000 tracks on the hard drive which I own on cd and it took a few scans for the App to find all of them. Once it’s done that, they are all shown in a list of songs, a list of artists who have any songs there even if it’s only one on a compilation and lists of albums. It’s easy to play songs randomly or select an album or an artist to play. The App also divides them by genre and setting up playlists and favourites is very quick.
The Amp is very quick to start up and power down and it does everything that I might want it to do to play the music I have on cd. A lot of information about each track is displayed in the App as it’s playing, including usually the artwork from the album it’s on and a queue of the next few dozen songs to be played can be shown, which I think is based on random/shuffle not being selected.
The only possible criticism of it I could make is that random/shuffle is a bit clunky and it can get fixated on playing songs or artists which begin with the same letter for a while. People have commented on this on the WiiM forum and it irritated me a bit at first, when it, for example, only played songs starting with J or artists whose names start with J for an hour or so. I have now found that it’s very easy to move it on if I notice it doing this. I usually start it off by searching for a random selection of letters such as ‘ese’ or ‘che’ and then move it on to something in the queue which starts with a different letter from the first song played and it then plays songs randomly quite happily.
In summary, at £299 with a free five-year guarantee (it’s £319 now), I think the WiiM Amp is amazing value for money and offers a great way of playing a large library of music owned on cd, amongst a wide range of other functions.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram