@williewonka Rogue RP-1 is excellent. Look into it. Has a very nice built in phono that could potentially eliminate your outboard one…may be
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- 14 posts total
- 14 posts total
@williewonka Rogue RP-1 is excellent. Look into it. Has a very nice built in phono that could potentially eliminate your outboard one…may be |
Yes, the WiiM Ultra does include a built-in phono preamp for moving magnet (MM) cartridges. I have one, but it has not performed well in my setup — there is too much hum / feedback and noise when I connect my Fluance RT82 to it even I minimize the line level down to lowest. I have carefully inspect (1) grounding noise; (2) placing it away from any electronic / power supply, wifi, etc. (3) any acoustic feedback, etc. but could not identify the culprit. Finally, I purchased a Schiit Mani later and take care of the hum issue. No, Wiim Ultra built-in phono preamp is no good. Streaming quality is average too unlike many folks claim. Need a good but affordable preamp? Consider Saga 2, if you are under budget constraint, or Kara. Denafrips Hestia (used) is another better option. |
The Schiit Kara F preamp ($700) is good and has multiple inputs. The Schiit Mjolnir 3 preamp ($900) is also good, has multiple inputs, warmer than the Kara F. The Schiit Valhalla 3 OTL/OCL ($500) sounds better than all the preamps I owned in the past. I wrote a thread about this cheap unit on the following thread. Hard to use but I made it work for me in my office system. |
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Went with the WiiM ultra streaming preamp. So far I’m very impressed with the ease of setup, ease of use and most of all sound quality. One nice feature is that the sound level can be adjusted for each input. So the streaming input can be reduced to the same level as the phono stage. Linking to amazon and Alexa was very easy and works well The App seems comparable, look and feel wise, to BluOS but seems to have more features. The look and finish is very "Apple-ish" and very high quality. The app has a graphic equalizer with several preset shapes and you can customize shapes also to get your preferred sound. The sound is very detailed and clean and operation is very easy thanks to the included remote that provides for Alexa voice control. The internal phono stage works very well with my Audio-Technica AT-VM745xML VMx Phono Cartridge - just as good as the Fluance phono Amp, if not better All in all a very elegant and stylish solution to my requirements with some exceptional performance characteristics as well. |