We were first introduced to the Wiim Pro by the lovely Ralph of the distributor, Henley Design. He told us all about it on the phone and persuaded us to take a couple into stock, promising that other, better informed Audio T staff had given it their seals of approval.

“It’s like Blackpool Zoo on mackerel day Ade, all these approving seals.”

“Alright Ralph, I’ll bite, send us a couple.”

The Wiim arrived a little while later and we immediately unboxed one. It looked attractive enough with its (now standard, thanks to Apple) radiused corners, is nicely made & feels pretty solid, considering its lightweight. Having demonstrations and customers to serve, I put it on a shelf where it lay, quietly forgotten, until Ralph put in an appearance at Chez Swansea about a fortnight later.

“How are you getting on with those Wiim Pros?”

“Ah..it’s on this shelf here look, but we haven’t plugged it in yet. Sorry Ralph.”

“For shame, Ade! Have you got five minutes? Enough time to make a brew..?”

Taking his cue from Ralph’s raised eyebrow, Andy beetled off to put the kettle on, whilst I connected the Wiim Pro up to its power supply, an ethernet cable and a pair of RCAs into our resident Rega Aethos integrated amplifier and Dynaudio Special 40 loudspeakers.

Downloading the app took literally two minutes, as did logging onto the app and “finding” the player on our network. Another minute to synchronise my Qobuz account and we had tunes.

THE WIIM APP DISPLAYING THE QOBUZ MUSIC ‘NEW ALBUMS’ LIST

Five minutes, fair play.

I did faff about for another minute wondering why the level was a bit low before I found the Line Level function in the analogue output menu. (We’ll call it operator error.)

We let it run for a bit, had a sip or two of tea and started listening in earnest. First impressions are good – the Wiim Pro sounds open and clear, but a bit lightweight and two-dimensional when it’s compared to a Bluesound Node, but then it is less than a third of the price. It does however clip along a good rate, supplying enough musicality to get heads nodding and toes tapping. It isn’t harsh or shouty, nor is it muted and dull, it’s a credible music player and perfectly enjoyable. For a hundred and fifty quid, one cannot complain.

ooo look, Evanescence have reissued an album. — ooo look evanescence have re-issued another album

A long-standing customer (we shall call him Chris) came in as we were playing and asked if we had an affordable way of getting radio into his conservatory system. He’d moved his old hi-fi gear in there as they use it as a family room during Christmas and thought it would save him from playing CD DJ.

“Well now, Chris. What do you think of what’s playing now?”

“Sounds nice Ade, as always - what are we listening to?”

“That little Wiim unit there. Network streamer, hundred and forty-nine quid.”

“Oh aye? Cute looking thing. Does it do Radio 6?”

“Give me a minute…”

that non-exhaustive list of music sources

I opened the Wiim app again, found TuneIn in the list of music sources and after a short amount of faff trying to remember exactly how Auntie Beeb spells ‘BBC Radio 6 Music’ (not the Wiim’s fault but TuneIn’s algorithm, or possibly mine,) we had the enthusiastic Scouse brogue of Craig Charles introducing Chaka Khan’s “I Feel for You.”

“Yes Chris, it does do Radio 6.”

“That’s exactly what I’m after Ade, have you one I can buy now?”

“Yes I do.”

“Then take my money.”

one needs to select one’s desired output format

After Chris (Thank you Chris!) had left, I plugged the Wiim into the coaxial digital socket of our Rega Elex Mk4 amplifier. Changing the output on the Wiim from RCA to Digital Coax (not all the output sockets are live, all of the time,) the sound noticeably improved. With the Rega’s onboard DAC replacing the Wiim’s one and even though we’d dropped two grades of amplifier, the sound was appreciably better; fuller, warmer, greater weight and scale, an extra half-octave of bass and a sweeter top end. Well worth remembering. Again, compared to our Bluesound Node, it was lighter in weight and closer to two-dimensions rather than three, but still very enjoyable with no hint of the coarseness that one might expect at this price. Bravo Wiim, this is a bargain!

digital formats all the way up to 24bit 192khz. (although stapleton here tops out at 96)

You can link multiple Pros together to make a multiroom system, they’ll play with Siri, Alexa & Google Voice Assistant, you can set them to wake you in the morning and with the full-size optical digital input, you can run your TV/PVR/Playstation audio through it. Although you will probably need to play around with the lip-sync function of your telly.