WiiM Amp blows NAD M10v2

[layer9]

Guys, the NAD is getting better and better the more I am into Dirac. It is interesting what subtle changes to the EQ curve can impact listening quality!

However, WiiM still very very good for its price tag. WiiM Amp v2 is a safe buy for me.

 

[merifon]

Guys, the NAD is getting better and better the more I am into Dirac. It is interesting what subtle changes to the EQ curve can impact listening quality!

However, WiiM still very very good for its price tag. WiiM Amp v2 is a safe buy for me.

I agree...
Build from walls a dedicated and precisely designed listening room or go with Dirac.
Anything else will be always a merely and unsatisfactory compromise...

 

[harkpabst]

I agree...
Build from walls a dedicated and precisely designed listening room or go with Dirac.
Anything else will be always a merely and unsatisfactory compromise...

Anything else? I don't think so. There are definitely alternatives. RoomPerfect works brilliantly (and brilliantly simple).

 

[merifon]

Anything else? I don't think so. There are definitely alternatives. RoomPerfect works brilliantly (and brilliantly simple).

Yes, it could be... I was more extensively meaning about the concept of any real effective correction system. Don't know about RoomPerfect but I can absolutely trust Dirac.
My previous post should have been: "Or go with a good correction system"...

 

[BowsAndArrows]

I'm not a huge fan of room correction just because it tends to narrow the sweet spot by the nature of how it works... + the fact that room acoustics are also pretty dynamic in practice - e.g. many issues can be corrected by bringing in a couple human flesh + blood bass traps (preferably with some partially filled glass resonators in their hands!!)

I think that positioning and room acoustic treatment options should be exhausted before trying room correction.

And obviously if there are narrowband "suckouts" that persist in your room then it's very difficult to fix that with EQ because increasing amplitude will do nothing to correct the reflection/phase issues that cause these problems in most cases.

 

[merifon]

I think that positioning and room acoustic treatment options should be exhausted before trying room correction

Yes but I completely trusted what can does Dirac, after witnesses how much it can improves even on a well known and well prepared showroom, in my town...

 

[Fender]

Yes but I completely trusted what can does Dirac, after witnesses how much it can improves even on a well known and well prepared showroom, in my town...

It was not much what Dirac improved, but for me it was the last and finally crucial step. With the standard tools my devices gave me it was more or less frustrating. One step forward, two steps back. Never really finished. Now it is fixed for months and every new check for curiosity confirmed the status quo. A result I got never without Dirac.

 

[harkpabst]

I'm not a huge fan of room correction just because it tends to narrow the sweet spot by the nature of how it works... + the fact that room acoustics are also pretty dynamic in practice - e.g. many issues can be corrected by bringing in a couple human flesh + blood bass traps (preferably with some partially filled glass resonators in their hands!!)

I think that positioning and room acoustic treatment options should be exhausted before trying room correction.

And obviously if there are narrowband "suckouts" that persist in your room then it's very difficult to fix that with EQ because increasing amplitude will do nothing to correct the reflection/phase issues that cause these problems in most cases.

My experience is the exact opposite.

 

[merifon]

My experience is the exact opposite.

I agree, after timing correction among subwoofer and speakers, room's resonance nodes are less invasive and the before wery tight "sweet point", it's now acceptable even for people sitting beside me and I got no more, excessive boomy points.

 

[BowsAndArrows]

haha, fair enough lads, that's why we share our experiences on here... it's interesting to hear you say that it's widened your sweet spot because all of the 9 measurement points are centered pretty closely to the listening position (makes sense tbh).


but even in the "wide imaging" mode with 17 measurements, the focus is clearly on the optimal listening area.

maybe it's just the case that your room acoustics were already decent enough (mostly broadband issues and fewer narrowband/phase-related issues) that only needed minor EQing to compensate for. who knows? (as @Fender says - "final touches")

i just see some of the EQs people have posted on here with the room correction beta and i'm seeing like + or - 5/6 dB !! i mean, that's got to be too much colouration of the overall sound??! most of those issues detected are either transient artifacts potentially (when measuring) or really narrowband "suckouts" that can't really be fixed with EQ and that usually have not a huge effect on overall SQ (not always)...

 

[merifon]

I can only say that my room (L shape and 6.40 m long) has some acoustic drawbacks that I have no permission to manage.
Before Dirac, I used the mini's PEQ to correct a couple of narrow holes around 50 and 70Hz and some over reflection around 1kHz. The results were encouraging but the missing separate channel PEQ and the impossibility to move the subwoofer to align time response, avoided to get optimal maximum results.
Outside sweet spot, I had some extra boomy points and others with bass canceling, forcing me to stay in a precise point for listening.
Now, Dirac did different settings for both channels and for the sub, giving a far more natural and pleasant experience. The node points are also less extreme and more widely distributed, so no more annoying points while moving in the room.
I really hope that final WiiM amp room correction, could do something like this...

 

[harkpabst]

haha, fair enough lads, that's why we share our experiences on here... it's interesting to hear you say that it's widened your sweet spot because all of the 9 measurement points are centered pretty closely to the listening position (makes sense tbh).
View attachment 6639
View attachment 6640
but even in the "wide imaging" mode with 17 measurements, the focus is clearly on the optimal listening area.

maybe it's just the case that your room acoustics were already decent enough (mostly broadband issues and fewer narrowband/phase-related issues) that only needed minor EQing to compensate for. who knows? (as @Fender says - "final touches")

i just see some of the EQs people have posted on here with the room correction beta and i'm seeing like + or - 5/6 dB !! i mean, that's got to be too much colouration of the overall sound??! most of those issues detected are either transient artifacts potentially (when measuring) or really narrowband "suckouts" that can't really be fixed with EQ and that usually have not a huge effect on overall SQ (not always)...

The above was the very, very short version, so let me explain in more detail.

First of all I'm not using Dirac, I'm using RoomPerfect (RP). RP works by taking only one measurement in the MLP. All other measurements are taken at totally random points in the room (not outside the listening space, though). The intention is to capture the room's characteristic, not to concentrate on the sweet spot. All I can say is that in daily use this is working very well. In addition, RP has two different main profiles, named "Focus" and "Global". Global puts even less emphasis on the sweet spot and more on what's perceived in the entire listening space. And if that still isn't enough for you, RP allows to add different "Focus" positions (for each MLP) any time. Brilliant!

When dealing with stuff not supporting RoomPerfect (read: anything that isn't Lyngdorf, Steinway Lyngdorf or McIntosh) I try to emulate a similar approach. I do measure in the MLP (mic pointing at the center between the speakers) and add as many room measurements (mic pointing 90° upwards) as I feel necessary, mainly interested in those measurements differing from the previous ones. I then average those measurements (adding the MLP measurements to the mix three or four times to give it some extra weight) and carefully apply some correction to address the defects visible in the result. So far, I've been very satisfied with the results.

I'll go as far as admitting that a good thick rug on the floor is always a good idea. Choose a listening space where moving youre head just a few inches won't result in totatlly different results. Place your speakers in a way that avoids early reflections disturbing your listening experience. I'm fine with all that. But that's about it.

That's been the practical part. Now on to some theory and philosophy. Bass traps are incredibly inefficient. Dampening and diffraction might be helpful for a glass and concrete hipster loft, but isn't really needed for the average living room. Music is not recored, mixed and mastered to be replayed in an unechoic chamber. The late famous swiss sound artist Jürg Jecklin (calling him a sound engineer would be wrong on too many levels) gave a great lecture on the history of concert halls in 2015. Unfortunately, there is no English translation that I am aware of. I am not entitled to provide a summary, but I will take the freedom to elaborate on my own conclusions and how they can be applied to music reproduction: Our brain has a good concept of typical rooms and it is well able to distiguish between the original sound event and the rooms contribution, if we give it a chance to do so (leaving out the finer detail of early reflections vs. late reflections).

 

[Ian B]

Agree 100% with this.

I was using the WiiM Amp and the Atoll IN100 Signature in the same room, connected to the same speakers, and although the Atoll is not high-end by any means, sound from it was significantly more detailed, more dynamic and better balanced than with WiiM Amp. On the other hand, Atoll is a 4 times more expensive piece and commands an additional DAC and streamer.

But, there is also a question of a baseline: WiiM Amp in my opinion is quite a good baseline for those of us who don't aspire to get some crazy high-end sound in our rooms. It sets the bar high enough, both in terms of sound quality and especially in terms of features. Measured by that, other gear needs to be really good in order to show a clear and significant increase in sound quality which might justify the price difference (usually very high difference).

Very well said.

 

[layer9]

I am now going to replace my Elac BS 404.2 bookshelf speakers with Elac FS 409.2 floorstanding speakers as I want more gain and dynamics. I will also test both the NAD and WiiM Amp with them and will report my experience once they arrive. For the 409.2, Elac recommends an amplifier between 40W and 450W whereas for the 404.2 Elac only recommends 40-200W. Also, the 409.2 is rated with 89db sensitivity and the 404.2 with 87db. It will be interesting to see which amplifier performs better, especially at higher volume levels, and if the WiiM can drive them well (the NAD is rated with 300W impulsive power and should have no problem).

 

[BowsAndArrows]

The above was the very, very short version, so let me explain in more detail.

First of all I'm not using Dirac, I'm using RoomPerfect (RP). RP works by taking only one measurement in the MLP. All other measurements are taken at totally random points in the room (not outside the listening space, though). The intention is to capture the room's characteristic, not to concentrate on the sweet spot. All I can say is that in daily use this is working very well. In addition, RP has two different main profiles, named "Focus" and "Global". Global puts even less emphasis on the sweet spot and more on what's perceived in the entire listening space. And if that still isn't enough for you, RP allows to add different "Focus" positions (for each MLP) any time. Brilliant!

When dealing with stuff not supporting RoomPerfect (read: anything that isn't Lyngdorf, Steinway Lyngdorf or McIntosh) I try to emulate a similar approach. I do measure in the MLP (mic pointing at the center between the speakers) and add as many room measurements (mic pointing 90° upwards) as I feel necessary, mainly interested in those measurements differing from the previous ones. I then average those measurements (adding the MLP measurements to the mix three or four times to give it some extra weight) and carefully apply some correction to address the defects visible in the result. So far, I've been very satisfied with the results.

I'll go as far as admitting that a good thick rug on the floor is always a good idea. Choose a listening space where moving youre head just a few inches won't result in totatlly different results. Place your speakers in a way that avoids early reflections disturbing your listening experience. I'm fine with all that. But that's about it.

That's been the practical part. Now on to some theory and philosophy. Bass traps are incredibly inefficient. Dampening and diffraction might be helpful for a glass and concrete hipster loft, but isn't really needed for the average living room. Music is not recored, mixed and mastered to be replayed in an unechoic chamber. The late famous swiss sound artist Jürg Jecklin (calling him a sound engineer would be wrong on too many levels) gave a great lecture on the history of concert halls in 2015. Unfortunately, there is no English translation that I am aware of. I am not entitled to provide a summary, but I will take the freedom to elaborate on my own conclusions and how they can be applied to music reproduction: Our brain has a good concept of usualy rooms and it is well able to distiguish between the original sound event and the rooms contribution, if we give it a chance to do so.

Thanks for sharing your experiences in detail, this is the kinda thread that people will enjoy reading back years from now because of posts like yours!

I agree with most of what you said - indeed perfect room acoustics does not mean a dead, anechoic chamber. The room's contribution to the sound is absolutely essential to the overall experience (amazing lively reverb in the case of concert halls for example). and yes the auditory system is designed to detect these aspects of sound automatically in real-time...

I also agree that studio-targeted solutions for acoustic treatment are not feasible for many people because of the amount of space etc. So when I say room treatment I don't mean those massive diffuser panels etc. (unless you are crazy like some of us) I just mean like functional things like a rug or bookshelf, some photos on the wall, etc).

The great thing about DSP-powered room correction is that it's easily reversed if you don't get the desired results, so I'm going to give it a go once I've optimised all the stuff in my system that I'm tinkering with now... Snake oil update incoming!! I thankfully don't seem to have any obvious room modes like @merifon despite suboptimal acoustic treatment - so let's see what a round of detailed measurements can do to help me

 

[layer9]

Guys

After all, I actually sold the NAD M10v2 and kept the WiiM Amp. Even though Dirac is a nice one, the NAD is too expensive compared to the WiiM. I am very satisfied with it.

Michael