Hope the cats are getting royalties 
Meatman jumper-wearer of the year nomination sorted.
Nice review.
I’ve no regrets regarding my £100 Wiim Pro, but the Ultra does have a certain I-wantability about it. In particular, that touchscreen floats my boat.
The addition of a phono stage went straight into the box marked ‘I bet it sounds shit’ so I’m pleasantly surprised that you found it decent.
Does anyone know if the HDMI output on the Ultra provides any visual info, or is it audio only?
Edit: It appears that the HDMI was intended as an input from a TV and doesn’t offer any other functionality. A missed opportunity IMHO. Maybe one for future firmware updates…
What do you want for £350 ?
The moon on a stick.
And I’m still waiting for prices to drop further.
A great time to be a hifi buyer, I think.
Edit: to add context, my eldest (26) is a music fanatic, has no record/CD collection (and has never felt the need to start one), and thinks £350 is a fuckload of money to spend on something like a Wiim Ultra. His mates are of the same mindset - Stream it from your phone to whatever is available where you happen to be.
I have no idea what the future may bring for the hifi industry, but it will be very different to the experience I grew up with.
And then you’ll no doubt complain when there are no hi-fi companies left 
A few years ago an engineer from a company that makes decent network streamers told me that they were all set to add this to a complete generation of products a few years ago. They then realised that the overlap between people who bought their stuff and OLED TVs (which aren’t wildly keen on having still images held for hours on them) was so high that most of them wouldn’t be used so they didn’t bother. Volumio makes a few models with this feature IIRC.
I was editing my post while you were replying to it, I suspect.
Sadly, I don’t feel optimistic for the hifi industry as we have known it. The future is all about streaming, and that technology is cheap.
And youngsters these days increasingly seem to see music as a throwaway commodity. I don’t think any of my kids are familiar with the idea of listening to an album all the way through.
But I’m just an old cunt.
Makes sense.
Is screen burn still a thing?
Image retention is an overstated but nonetheless repeatable issue on emissive displays. You’d have to be mechanically unsympathetic but it can still be done.
My LP collection has always been on full display in the lounge, whereas my CDs were ripped into Itunes lossless a long time ago, before being put in boxes and stored out of sight.
My kids have never had any reason to question the purpose of vinyl, but it did make me chuckle when the rare introduction of a CD into the lounge prompted my youngest (probably 12 at the time) to ask ‘what’s a CD?’
When considering the future of hifi, that’s an outcome that really hadn’t occurred to me…
So am I, probably older in fact. All bar 1 of my kids (4) listen to music via their phones on buds / phones and that is the way it will be. Wiim, though, are making a really decent fist of trying to bridge the gap.
If all of us old tight fisted (when many don’t need to be) cunts keep on expecting the moon on a stick they won’t last long. Only have ourselves to blame.
1 Like
Fuck, that’s lost me.
Good point.
Hifi companies that hope to survive will need to think very carefully about what they sell in the coming years. I can foresee many casualties along the way.
But it’s nothing new, really. Move with the times or be trodden underfoot.
If I were starting out now, I wouldn’t be buying LPs or CDs. I love having them, but it doesn’t make sense for the current generation when you can have access to every tune ever recorded (and mostly in hi-def sound) for less than the cost of a single LP per month. I’ve no idea how that is a sustainable model for the music industry, but even if subscription costs increase significantly, it will still be crazy cheap.
If Wiim were to release an all in one system that looks fantastic, comes bundled with a really good pair of bookshelf speakers and meets their current pricing policies, they could quite possibly clean up. I’d buy one for sure.
2 Likes
They certainly would.
Not sure where any money is for the creators
Musicians need to eat too…
If you pay nothing for the music and don’t go to gigs you are left with AI and manufactured shite from tv talent shows.
I don’t understand the mentality of someone who will pay £70 a month for a phone but thinks all music should be free.
5 Likes
Amen to that.
The thought of generations of musicians unable to afford a proper drug habit bodes ill for future classic albums.
Edit: I’m not kidding, as even a cursory glance at my record collection would confirm.
2 Likes
Our v old plasma tv has a blue oatch in the middle of the screen which i am told appears to be a 6 music logo 