I recently purchased the Wiim Pro Plus, but to talk about it I first need to talk a little bit about the Sonos Port, it is what I have upgraded from and it is what I am comparing to. Both devices are audio streamers and are roughly in the same price point, although the Port at $550 CA is $250 more than the Wiim Pro Plus.
Why did I buy the Port 3 years ago? Because the Wiim Pro Plus hadn’t been released yet. At the time, the choice for an affordable streamer was between the Sonos Port and the Bluesound Node. The Bluesound Node at $800 was more than I was willing to pay. I just wasn’t willing to spend that much cash on a streamer, I had bad experiences with Airport Express units cutting out, and I was listening to everything primarily on vinyl.
The Bluesound supports up to 24bit/192kHz while the Sonos Port supports 16bit/48kHz. Because the Port has a coaxial out I thought that I could hook it up to an external DAC and get better quality but the digital out is limited to 16bit/44.1KHz so using an external DAC can be worse quality.
So I saved money and lived with this 16bit/48kHz limitation for three years. I became accustomed to listening to streaming music upstairs instead of vinyl. Cueing up a record is less fun when you are walking through an obstacle course of toys. Streaming music is also more budget friendly than buying hard media although I haven’t completely stopped buying records.
But I was never fully satisfied with the sound of the Sonos Port. I knew that it was limited to 16bit/48kHz and Tidal Max and Apple Lossless and High Res Lossless have 24bit with higher kHz frequencies. My audio-nervosa was gnawing at me, I wanted better quality sound. But it wasn’t true audio-nervosa, at higher volumes I could hear a distortion or harshness to the sound. I highly suspected the Sonos Port was the cause of it. My amplifier is brqnd new and records did not exhibit the same sound signature.
I found out about the Wiim Pro Plus in the vogue manner, by asking ChatGPT a simple question. “What devices are similar to the Sonos Port with better sound quality?” And then peppered it with more questions until I was convinced it was a great replacement for the Sonos Port. I made sure to search the interwebs to validate ChatGPT’s info to avoid the possibility of having a mutual hallucination with an AI chat program.
The Wiim Pro Plus sells for $320 CA on Amazon. I checked my local audio dealer and it was the same price so I drove down and bought local. As luck would have it my local store was selling it for $300 and not $320. The dealer had lots of praise for the Wiim device (the parametic equalizer that can be customized by input source was a biggie) and not much good to say about Sonos (it’s out of date hardware that should be updated). Sonos had a huge debacle when they upgraded their software app last summer, they redesigned the interface and introduced some horrible bugs. One of them was playlists, he had 300 playlists and lost them all, so was burned badly by an “innocuous” software update..
I did not A/B test the devices because I use a pricey RCA cable and don’t have two to run the devices in parallel. Hopefully new purchasing bias has not clouded my ears. It was easy to test, on the Port if I turned the volume on the amp up to 45 range I would hear the harshness/mild distortion. I would turn the volume down to 40 most of the time as this was the best listening volume where the harshness wasn’t as prominent. There is no harshness on the Wiim at the any volume level that I could find. I don’t turn it past 45 because the stereo is just loud enough. This is a great feeling, setting the volume to what makes sense and not comprimising on the sound due to harshness/distortion.
One of the nice features in the Wiim software is that it tells you what bit rate and frequency the song is streaming at. This is enlightening as Tidal max could be many combinations of encodings. It’s like a manumatic car, an automatic car that lets you change gears manually and see the current gear when in automatic mode. You can’t change the encoding level but this extra information gives an added sense of control. This is helpful when there are multiple versions of an album with different encodings which can happen occasionally. Sleater-Kinney is a good example, they have a High (16bit/44.1kHz) version and a Max (24bit/96kHz) of most of their albums.
My favourite feature of the Wiim Pro Plus is the remote. It’s not an expensive remote, what do you expect for a $300 device, it’s very light plastic but it serves a vital purpose. One of my gripes on using the Sonos device was that it was completely controlled by my phone. What would happen to me is that I would sit down in front of the stereo and cue some music up, but since I had my phone in front of my face I would then check the news, and faceplant, and before I knew it an hour went by and I wasn’t really listening to the music. The remote has 4 preset buttons and you can set these to: a custom playlist, album, or radio station. For me this is groundbreaking. It means I can start my music listening session without looking at my phone and can skip tracks on an album without looking at my phone. This lends itself to more quality listening sessions. Currently I have the presets set to 3 different albums and plan to swap out the albums occasionally. The 4th preset is for my son so that he can listen to his favourite playlist of songs without asking me to cue it up for him.
There are some things that the Sonos Port can do that the Wiim cannot. The Port will natively stream Bandcamp and Apple Music and the Wiim cannot. The Wiim Pro Plus does do AirPlay 2 as a substitute but it’s better to get the device to stream direct from the server. AirPlay 2 means it will rely on your phone as an intermediary. If you get a phone call the streaming will be effected, it drains your phone battery, etc. I would recommend using Tidal or Qobuz with a Wiim. This may not be practical for people that are locked into yearly Apple Music contracts or packaged Apple One deals.
Like the preset buttons, another nice touch with the Wiim is favouriting albums. If you click the heart button in Wiim app the album is directly favourited on your Tidal account. This is not how Sonos works. In Sonos I would have to switch back and forth between the Sonos and Tidal apps so that I could favourite an album.
There are many features in the Wiim that I have not covered. It has an analog and optical input so you can use it as a switch. I have not tried, but I could easily hook up the optical out of my Sony CD player to the Wiim and use it as an intermediary DAC. It also has voice control which Amazon Alexa and Google Cast. Two services that I don’t use but I can imagine will be selling features for some.
In conclusion the Sonos Port has a worse DAC and worse audio quality than the Wiim but may appeal to some as it works well with Apple Music and is more affordable than a Bluesound node. The Wiim is crystal clear and a great value for the price if you are not completely in the Apple Music ecosystem.
Here is a tech spec summary:
| Device | Price | DAC | Max Bit Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sonos Port | $550 | Burr-Brown PCM5102 | 16bit/48kHz |
| Wiim Pro Plus | $300 | AKM 4493SEQ | 24bit/192kHz |
| Bluesound Node | $800 | Sabre ES9018K2M | 24bit/192kHz |