After thousands of dollars and years of troubleshooting, I sought out an alternative streamer platform. I decided to try out a Wiim Mini as it was on sale for $78 down from $90. To my surprise, the Wiim Home app is almost identical to the 4STREAM app, but way better! For starters, it recognized and controlled my Arylic products, it has way more features (full EQ not just bass and treble) and music services (like SoundCloud and YouTube music which Arylic has been saying it will add for over a year). Wiim has Airplay 2 on both its products and is compatible with Chromecast and Alexa. It has touch controls, 5G Wi-Fi and Spdif out. Their $150 pro model has spdif in and out, HD DAC, a finished case and remote control and more.
But the biggest shocker was the Amazon seller is….Arylic. WTF! They are selling a superior product for less money while they still peddle their buggy app, long list of “upcoming” features, nickel and dime you for extras like cases, buttons , inputs and push out stuff that just doesn’t work out the gate (like the spdif boards) and don’t provide a solution or refund/recall program.
Question: does Arylic own Wiim or vice versa? If they don’t, I’m entirely switching to Wiim. If they do, I just may go back to Sonos because how disgusted I am with how they’ve treated the Arylic/DIY consumer.
The aps look very similar. But with my Plate Amp and the S10, I can’t access the EQ settings with the WiiM app. But I can select the audio sources, which is not possible with the 4STREAM app.
I also found it a bit strange that you can find additional EQ settings in the web interface of the Arylic devices that are not available in the app. hopefully this will be developed further.
Can you get devices from Arylic and the Wiim to play in sync?
I find that the Arylic gear is quite suitable for my needs as a constructor, they have a good range of DIY products which are adequate for my application.
It appears that Wiim only have a couple of product options currently, I think you will find that the most, if not all the extra items that the Wiim Pro offers will be available in the Arylic 2023 new product lineup.
I’m led to believe that Arylic R&D are also working on some new and innovative projects.
So for me, while the product suits my needs, I’ll stay here.
If I was going to start afresh I would go for something that is Roon compatible, there are plenty available from a lot of well known and high end brands.
In my case with DIY, I think that I would go Pi based with some kind of hat, of which there are plenty available online, but for me that’s not on the horizon at present.
I’ve noticed the majority of Wiim items work with the 4Stream software and vice versa, obviously the app is either cross-platform or there are hardware similarities. I’m guessing both, we need a Wiim amp teardown from YouTube to be sure, but I think the latest Wiim amp is a B50 in a posh dress. I bought the Arylic version today even though I do have auto-silencing problems at low volume with my A50 I’ll give this one a go, the sound is great on these little amps with my Q-Acoustics, but I digress. I’ll keep an eye on youtube for a teardown and come back here.