WiiM into Outboard DAC

Through the set ups in my home, I have two WiiM  pro plus units and three ultras. I love the WIIM products. Two ultras are going through external DACs (Benchmark DAC2 HGC and SMSL DO100). All sound really good to me, but the two  going through external DAC’s sound a touch better, especially the benchmark. It is also set up in a higher performing system.

The main difference I found between the WiiM units, had to do with Wi-Fi connectivity. In one set up in an upstairs bedroom far from my router, I was getting drop offs and connectivity issues with the pro plus. When swapped out with the ultra, those issues disappeared.

i have found the china made linear power supplies to be well made and a very good value, after all these oem’s make the branded ps’s for lhy, auralic, small green computer and so on (and pretty much all the euro made branded lps’s use mostly chinese parts in their products)... these ps's have very low measured ripple and are rock solid stable in use

there are several standard models of various va capacities on offer on the various chi-fi retailing websites (ali, ebay etc)... it is best to get the lps’s WITHOUT a front panel voltage display -- as that display has been shown to add measurable noise to the dc output

there is no doubt that to hit the low price point, wiim, bluesound and other mass market brands necessarily pinch pennies on the costlier bill of goods items like power supply, output stage components, clock... the power supply front is a no brainer user upgrade if it can be done cost effectively

@hdm can you provide links to the cables?

Power cable here:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008171334981.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.3.7651Ai2RAi2RHE&algo_pvid=fed5b4cd-48cd-40fe-9282-f1160248b7aa&algo_exp_id=fed5b4cd-48cd-40fe-9282-f1160248b7aa-2&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22order%22%3A%22-1%22%2C%22eval%22%3A%221%22%2C%22fromPage%22%3A%22search%22%7D&pdp_npi=6%40dis%21CAD%2153.95%2139.38%21%21%2137.58%2127.43%21%40210318a717643438359841230eb91b%2112000044089534648%21sea%21CA%210%21ABX%211%210%21n_tag%3A-29910%3Bd%3A93c1f249%3Bm03_new_user%3A-29895&curPageLogUid=4ybGVFyBjkST&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A%7Cx_object_id%3A1005008171334981%7C_p_origin_prod%3A

DC cable here:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006200242033.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.23.1c871802MsDxsV

I only paid about half of that price for the DC cable though! So you might have to watch for a sale price on that one or something similar. 

I am also considering buying one of the wiim devices to use as a streamer to connect to my Grimm MU2. While I will be using Roon/Tidal to connect to the MU2 directly, I wanted something my family could use to connect easily (AirPlay, Chromecast). An interesting point to note is that the Wiim Ultra doesn’t support AirPlay, AFAIK.