The WiiM Mini’s glossy black top has touch-sensitive controls for volume and play/pause, with an LED indicator for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other status notifications. Kurt Elling’s supporting vocals also became more prominent. McGarry’s voice immediately pushed much farther out from the speakers, and with greater clarity. As a quickie test, I played Kate McGarry’s “O Cantador” from Girl Talk at CD quality, streamed from Qobuz first directly from the WiiM Mini connected to the speakers, and then from the WiiM Mini to the DAC connected by a Toslink cable. You’ll nonetheless do better even with a $100 external DAC, which is about what I paid several years ago for the Topping D30 that’s still sitting on my desktop with a pair of M-Audio powered speakers. “We’re evaluating other options from (Burr-Brown manufacturer) Texas Instruments.” “This DAC has very good cost-to-performance,” says Zhao. The WiiM Mini has a high-quality Burr-Brown PCM5121 onboard, but that standard budget-streamer DAC is nearly a decade old now. This is how the WiiM leaps ahead of the competition with 24/192 and AirPlay 2 support. The A97 has a more powerful processor (dual core instead of single core), double the memory (128MB), dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4- and 5GHz), and hardware security features. The Andover Songbird uses Linkplay’s A31 module. Instead, it built the equivalent of its A97 module onto a printed circuit board assembly. The WiiM Mini, a black puck measuring 2.7 inches in diameter, is so small that Linkplay could not fit one of its off-the-shelf modules. (After a recent update, the resolution also displays in the WiiM app during playback.) With the first notes of Bill Evans’ “Stella by Starlight,” from At Shelly’s Manne-Hole on Qobuz, a blue light emerged from my Chord DAC connected to the WiiM, confirming the track’s 192kHz resolution. In late May, bit-perfect AirPlay 2 arrived at CD quality. WiiM added bit-perfect 24/192 and gapless playback via its Toslink output in February: It delivers digital signals up to that resolution exactly how they’re received.
The Songbird uses a previous-generation Linkplay module that supports up to 24-bit/192kHz streaming, yet downsamples all higher-resolution signals to CD-quality 16-bit/44.1kHz through its Toslink optical output, as is typical of most low-cost streamers. Linkplay’s hardware and app are also built into a Yamaha soundbar, Harman and JBL Alexa-enabled speakers, and some Marshall Wi-Fi speakers.
Linkplay Technology is an unfamiliar name whose modules are found in more familiar low-cost streamers, including the Andover Songbird and Audioengine B-Fi as well as lesser-known models from Arylic, Taga Harmony, and Hall Audio. The WiiM Mini music streamer is equipped with 3.5mm analog AUX inputs and outputs, an optical Toslink digital output, and a USB-C port for power.
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