is wiim gone?

[Staresyj]

I only have the Mini. It’s obviously a perfectly capable piece of hardware when coupled with a decent external DAC but it has had some rough edges firmware wise which only become apparent in certain use cases. Failure to cope with gapless playback with upnp sources until fairly recently being an obvious example.
The WHA IMHO tries to do too much and fails in a lot of cases. Only really useful as a setup tool.

All valid points. I think where I have been fortunate in my use is that I use my Wiim Pro’ in very basic configurations. I don’t stream from a laptop or PC or storage device of any kind. I just stream music from qobuz tidal AMU using the WHA with my IPhone as the interface. Maybe, that is why I haven’t encountered some of the reports of issues?

 

[Maurizio]

All valid points. I think where I have been fortunate in my use is that I use my Wiim Pro’ in very basic configurations. I don’t stream from a laptop or PC or storage device of any kind. I just stream music from qobuz tidal AMU using the WHA with my IPhone as the interface. Maybe, that is why I haven’t encountered some of the reports of issues?

Just like you . I use my Pro only for streaming music services. Qobuz and Amazon Music Unlimited in my case. Never had a problem or some small micro problem almost immediately solved.

 

[WiiM Support]

I only have the Mini. It’s obviously a perfectly capable piece of hardware when coupled with a decent external DAC but it has had some rough edges firmware wise which only become apparent in certain use cases. Failure to cope with gapless playback with upnp sources until fairly recently being an obvious example.
The WHA IMHO tries to do too much and fails in a lot of cases. Only really useful as a setup tool.

Hi d6jg,

I am disappointed to see this. First of all, we support upnp gapless playback a year ago.

"The WHA IMHO tries to do too much and fails in a lot of cases. Only really useful as a setup tool."
Can you please name a few examples that don't work for you. We'll improve these parts. We have many users that definitely use this beyond a setup tool. Thank you!

 

[mlsstl]

Wiim Support -- I've had a Mini and a Pro since the start of 2023. I find the native software rather limited. Simple things are not currently supported -- like clearing a playlist when done with a listening session or adding a whole album to the current queue. Other things like reordering the queue or removing a song also aren't options. But, I've also been a LMS user for years and been spoiled by the flexibility of their software. I acknowledge they've had a lot longer to fine tune things. (Also continuing to hope that Squeezelite will be added as a player option....)

One frustration is that I asked about the above in an email to support at the start of this year and the response made it sound like these were imminent, but still no improvements in what I consider to be fairly basis music management items.

 

[WiiM Support]

Wiim Support -- I've had a Mini and a Pro since the start of 2023. I find the native software rather limited. Simple things are not currently supported -- like clearing a playlist when done with a listening session or adding a whole album to the current queue. Other things like reordering the queue or removing a song also aren't options. But, I've also been a LMS user for years and been spoiled by the flexibility of their software. I acknowledge they've had a lot longer to fine tune things. (Also continuing to hope that Squeezelite will be added as a player option....)

One frustration is that I asked about the above in an email to support at the start of this year and the response made it sound like these were imminent, but still no improvements in what I consider to be fairly basis music management items.

Hi Mlsstl,

Thank you for letting me know about your problems with the WHA queue management. Please see my comments below:
1. Clearing the play queue - it'll be supported in the next release around 6/15.
2. Adding the whole album to the current queue - it'll be supported in the next release for certain music services. I'll get the details from our Eng. team for you.
3. Remove a song - will be supported by 6/30.
4. Reorder the queue - we don't have a concrete plan but it's in our to-do list.

Are you referring to NAS or particular music services for these two functions? To support more queue options on music services, we're working on this right now, but it needs to tailor for each music service.

Thank you again to point this out, but I'm happy to let you know most of these items will be resolved soon. Please stay tuned! Thank you!

 

[Maurizio]

Hi d6jg,

I am disappointed to see this. First of all, we support upnp gapless playback a year ago.

"The WHA IMHO tries to do too much and fails in a lot of cases. Only really useful as a setup tool."
Can you please name a few examples that don't work for you. We'll improve these parts. We have many users that definitely use this beyond a setup tool. Thank you!

What's wrong with WHA :
The options for reordering the Album List are completely missing. Last Added - Author Name. With a huge library, without these options it's nearly impossible to find an album
Recently Played. The possibility of deleting the whole list is missing. You have to delete the songs one by one.
Albums playing. Essential information is missing near the cover. Album Duration, Total Tracks Number. The length of each song is missing next to the songs list.
Possibility to choose how to view the Albums. List/Grid
What I have indicated are essential options/informations that any other App to manage music has. Bubble is an example of what a well done App should look like. I am referring only to the essential options, not to the many customizations that Bubble allows. I don't ask for much.
Already last year, by contacting the support, I had reported more than once these shortcomings, unforgivable to me.
Your answer has always been "Interesting suggestions. We will apply them as soon as possible".
In September, a year will have passed since my first requests.
What happened in the meantime? Absolutely nothing. All reported deficiencies are still present. No improvement.
What was my solution? Stop using WHA to play music by switching to much more efficient Apps.
As @d6jg says i'm using WHA just as a setup tool. By the way the Gapeless function, for me, has always worked since its introduction.
I would like to use WHA? Yes of course. It would be very convenient to use a single App for all services.
However, I will do it when all the deficiencies reported have been eliminated

 

[WiiM Support]

What's wrong with WHA :
The options for reordering the Album List are completely missing. Last Added - Author Name. With a huge library, without these options it's nearly impossible to find an album
Recently Played. The possibility of deleting the whole list is missing. You have to delete the songs one by one.
Albums playing. Essential information is missing near the cover. Album Duration, Total Tracks Number. The length of each song is missing next to the songs list.
Possibility to choose how to view the Albums. List/Grid
What I have indicated are essential options/informations that any other App to manage music has. Bubble is an example of what a well done App should look like. I am referring only to the essential options, not to the many customizations that Bubble allows. I don't ask for much.
Already last year, by contacting the support, I had reported more than once these shortcomings, unforgivable to me.
Your answer has always been "Interesting suggestions. We will apply them as soon as possible".
In September, a year will have passed since my first requests.
What happened in the meantime? Absolutely nothing. All reported deficiencies are still present. No improvement.
What was my solution? Stop using WHA to play music by switching to much more efficient Apps.
As @d6jg says i'm using WHA just as a setup tool. By the way the Gapeless function, for me, has always worked since its introduction.
I would like to use WHA? Yes of course. It would be very convenient to use a single App for all services.
However, I will do it when all the deficiencies reported have been eliminated

Hi Maurizio,

I think you also listed the above items in this thread - https://wiim.community.forum/threads/what-i-would-in-wha.1010/

I want you to know that we heard you and we had a concrete plan to address this as we discussed in the thread above. Please refer to that thread. Thank you!

 

[Maurizio]

Hi Maurizio,

I think you also listed the above items in this thread - https://wiim.community.forum/threads/what-i-would-in-wha.1010/

I want you to know that we heard you and we had a concrete plan to address this as we discussed in the thread above. Please refer to that thread. Thank you!

Hi
Thanks. Yes are same things, but i'm waiting...waiting...waiting....and i can imagine many others with me

 

[d6jg]

Hi d6jg,

I am disappointed to see this. First of all, we support upnp gapless playback a year ago.

"The WHA IMHO tries to do too much and fails in a lot of cases. Only really useful as a setup tool."
Can you please name a few examples that don't work for you. We'll improve these parts. We have many users that definitely use this beyond a setup tool. Thank you!

Hi Support
I have been away for a few days.

I am using LMS and like others who also use this have said, the flexibility we get from the LMS control interface has probably spoiled us.
When I opt to use WHA all of the things that others have pointed out become extreme annoyances. I used WHA to set up the device but have made little use of WHA otherwise. NB This would be different if I used Amazon Music.

Some things for you to consider.
BBC Radio - there is still a non BBC station in the list!?
Auntie Beeb is well known to be constantly changing things around and their focus now is solely on BBC Sounds. You would be well advised to switch to this method of delivery asap.
UPnP support. As you well know UPnP is not a definitive protocol and different manufacturers do things in different ways. I suggest you concentrate on supporting some key UPnP servers and get them as near to 100% supported as possible AND tell us all which ones they are!

On Gapless I have to disagree with you. Only recently has it been possible to properly and consistently play gapless tracks over UPnP (using the LMS UPnP/DLNA Bridge in my case). It did work at some points in time but a firmware update broke it but then another one fixed it.

Roon. It has gone very quiet but I couldn't care less. I'd obviously prefer to see Squeezelite integrated into both Mini and Pro and given the size of the code this should be easily possible. There will also be no certification requirement. I don't know why you thought Roon was as important as you clearly think it to be - it's user base really isn't that large.

 

[Brantome]

I don't know why you thought Roon was as important as you clearly think it to be - it's user base really isn't that large.

True, maybe because the Mini wasn’t recommended on audiosciencereview by its “guru” amir because it didn’t have Roon support (tbf that didn’t go down well with many) ; the Bluesound Node that many would see as its main or logical competitor has it; or maybe Roon has an ‘audiophile’ cachet that WiiM see as significant in the market. I’ve tried Roon and quite liked it but couldn’t justify its cost both in subscription and hardware terms which you could argue goes against WiiM’s much more affordable prices.

 

[d6jg]

True, maybe because the Mini wasn’t recommended on audiosciencereview by its “guru” amir because it didn’t have Roon support (tbf that didn’t go down well with many) ; the Bluesound Node that many would see as its main or logical competitor has it; or maybe Roon has an ‘audiophile’ cachet that WiiM see as significant in the market. I’ve tried Roon and quite liked it but couldn’t justify its cost both in subscription and hardware terms which you could argue goes against WiiM’s much more affordable prices.

Exactly. Roon is expensive, Roon Ready players are (in the main) expensive. WiiM is not. Strange

 

[Achim1811]

Exactly. Roon is expensive, Roon Ready players are (in the main) expensive. WiiM is not. Strange

Please define expensive! The yearly costs are 120 € what ends at 10 € p.month. You can have the lifelong option, but who knows how long he will live. One needs to run either a pc or a dedicated Roon server. If one writes here I guess a pc is in house. Blaming Roon, without bringing it in relation to other nice-to-haves, to be to expensive is in my eyes, sorry, nonsense. If you define 10 €/m as (to) expensive it is only your sight of the thing. For me f.e. 10 € for lossy Spotify is to expensive in relation to...many others.

 

[d6jg]

Please define expensive! The yearly costs are 120 € what ends at 10 € p.month. You can have the lifelong option, but who knows how long he will live. One needs to run either a pc or a dedicated Roon server. If one writes here I guess a pc is in house. Blaming Roon, without bringing it in relation to other nice-to-haves, to be to expensive is in my eyes, sorry, nonsense. If you define 10 €/m as (to) expensive it is only your sight of the thing. For me f.e. 10 € for lossy Spotify is to expensive in relation to...many others.

When LMS does virtually everything that Roon does and is completely open source then Roon is expensive. I dropped Spotify in favour of Qobuz because I agree £10pm for lossy audio isn’t worth it.

 

[Achim1811]

Here the word "virtually" is important! So we talk about software which runs and software which runs (as today) not.
Of course it is absolutely ok if you are able! and willing! to handle these open source things. I am neither nor. Roon is well established, works perfectly smooth and is for noobs like me a no brainer. And if one has fun with trickling and frickling the software before he even can listen to music it is fine. For him.
The main difference is one solution is professional, the other more or less diy. I prefer the convenient way. And regarding costs, years ago when this popped up I tried such a funny but never reliable streaming via a Pi with hat. For Volumio I also had to pay...and it was horrible. These guys from Italy are nice tinkerers, but the product is far away from any good performance. It was around 5 € and in relation to 10 € for Roon Roon it is a bargain. (Btw, they got the Roon label quite quick so WiiM with its mother company in background should solve this issue quicker.)
And, btw, Qobuz is (today) a perfect choice. But as always and our Old Fritz already said: Let every man seek heaven in his own fashion.

 

[d6jg]

Here the word "virtually" is important! So we talk about software which runs and software which runs (as today) not.
Of course it is absolutely ok if you are able! and willing! to handle these open source things. I am neither nor. Roon is well established, works perfectly smooth and is for noobs like me a no brainer. And if one has fun with trickling and frickling the software before he even can listen to music it is fine. For him.
The main difference is one solution is professional, the other more or less diy. I prefer the convenient way. And regarding costs, years ago when this popped up I tried such a funny but never reliable streaming via a Pi with hat. For Volumio I also had to pay...and it was horrible. These guys from Italy are nice tinkerers, but the product is far away from any good performance. It was around 5 € and in relation to 10 € for Roon Roon it is a bargain. (Btw, they got the Roon label quite quick so WiiM with its mother company in background should solve this issue quicker.)
And, btw, Qobuz is (today) a perfect choice. But as always and our Old Fritz already said: Let every man seek heaven in his own fashion.

I didn’t like Volumio either but a Pi with a high quality HAT or usb DAC is a great piece of audio hardware - arguably better than a WiiM if you can make it work properly

 

[Brantome]

Please define expensive! The yearly costs are 120 € what ends at 10 € p.month. You can have the lifelong option, but who knows how long he will live. One needs to run either a pc or a dedicated Roon server. If one writes here I guess a pc is in house. Blaming Roon, without bringing it in relation to other nice-to-haves, to be to expensive is in my eyes, sorry, nonsense. If you define 10 €/m as (to) expensive it is only your sight of the thing. For me f.e. 10 € for lossy Spotify is to expensive in relation to...many others.

When I looked at Roon, they didn’t have a monthly subscription option so the annual costs were relatively expensive and a lot to fork out at one go, and while we all may have a pc, having it on constantly just to listen to music seemed overkill. The alternative of buying a Roon Nucleus (at £1.7k iirc) or even an Intel NUC again seemed like even more expensive overkill. As a Linn owner, I’m aware that my dealer often sells kit costing silly money, where adding on a Qobuz and Roon subscription, along with a Nucleus seemed an almost insignificant part of their standard sale - however for me, as a relative entry level Linn user, it would have been more than 50% extra on top of my purchase. While I’m not the archetypal miserly Scot, Roon and its server would have been a spend too far…

 

[d6jg]

When I looked at Roon, they didn’t have a monthly subscription option so the annual costs were relatively expensive and a lot to fork out at one go, and while we all may have a pc, having it on constantly just to listen to music seemed overkill. The alternative of buying a Roon Nucleus (at £1.7k iirc) or even an Intel NUC again seemed like even more expensive overkill. As a Linn owner, I’m aware that my dealer often sells kit costing silly money, where adding on a Qobuz and Roon subscription, along with a Nucleus seemed an almost insignificant part of their standard sale - however for me, as a relative entry level Linn user, it would have been more than 50% extra on top of my purchase. While I’m not the archetypal miserly Scot, Roon and its server would have been a spend too far…

LMS by comparison will happily run on a Raspberry Pi with an attached USB disk for storage. <£150.
Pi 4’s are starting to reappear at official stockists

 

[Achim1811]

While I’m not the archetypal miserly Scot, Roon and its server would have been a spend too far…

As half Prussian and half Scottish spending to much for something is definitively not in my genetic preposition. Since the Nucleus runs in our most frequented home no one has only to think about streaming issues. It works, out of the box. My wife and I use it both, so we could divide the costs And the decision between f.e. a pricy holiday or a Nucleus for us was easy.
For me such lines as "this is (to) expensive" are to absolute. Personal priorities and personal financial ability are to different. That is normal in real life.
Regarding Linn...my LP12 Majik runs for more than 20 years and now is with my son. And yeah, their modular and extreme cost intensive pricing is "special". But if one is able to spend such money and wants a high quality, built like tank items and the possibility to update/upgrade the stuff Linn will stay in top league.

 

[mlsstl]

Hi Mlsstl,

Thank you for letting me know about your problems with the WHA queue management. Please see my comments below:
1. Clearing the play queue - it'll be supported in the next release around 6/15.
2. Adding the whole album to the current queue - it'll be supported in the next release for certain music services. I'll get the details from our Eng. team for you.
3. Remove a song - will be supported by 6/30.
4. Reorder the queue - we don't have a concrete plan but it's in our to-do list.

Are you referring to NAS or particular music services for these two functions? To support more queue options on music services, we're working on this right now, but it needs to tailor for each music service.

Thank you again to point this out, but I'm happy to let you know most of these items will be resolved soon. Please stay tuned! Thank you!

Just curious what the status is for the above items. June 15 and June 30 have come and gone and I can't spot anything in the Wiim program that allows me to clear the current play queue or add a whole album to the current queue (neither with my local collection nor Qobuz.) Likewise, I just tried to remove one song from the queue a few moments ago and didn't see anyway to do that.

This situation is the same as the start of this year when I bought my first Wiim player. I was told these features were imminent, but they never showed up. Then, in June, you gave specific dates for the changes to be implemented, but here we are weeks past that and... no change.

What's up with this? Very frustrating.

 

[WiiM Support]

Just curious what the status is for the above items. June 15 and June 30 have come and gone and I can't spot anything in the Wiim program that allows me to clear the current play queue or add a whole album to the current queue (neither with my local collection nor Qobuz.) Likewise, I just tried to remove one song from the queue a few moments ago and didn't see anyway to do that.

This situation is the same as the start of this year when I bought my first Wiim player. I was told these features were imminent, but they never showed up. Then, in June, you gave specific dates for the changes to be implemented, but here we are weeks past that and... no change.

What's up with this? Very frustrating.

Hi mlsstl,

I wanted to share an update regarding the queue management feature for Qobuz and the filtering of "My Qobuz". It is currently undergoing internal testing and is scheduled to be released around July 15th. We appreciate your patience and encourage you to stay tuned for the upcoming release. Thank you for your understanding and continued support!