$60 Hifi Hack makes WIIM Ultra Destroy Gear 3X the Price

0:00 how do you take one of the most well-regarded most affordable streamers out there it's really a preamp and make it better make it truly a giant killer make this truly compete with products costing three four five times as much I know I say that a lot well you buy this it's a little $60 Mystery Box we're going to talk all about it today so sit down grab a cup of coffee and let's talk about buying $60 worth of mystery Electronics to make your weam ultra sound like it's a $2,000 streamer [Music] mhm you all know the weam ultra by this

0:47 point it's a $330 streamer with a touchcreen has analog inputs has trigger outputs has Optical outputs has an HDMI in it has a USB in or out there's all sorts of stuff has a phono stage which isn't really that great but it's okay okay it's okay the point is this probably is the highest value piece of Hi-Fi equipment that you can get however there have been some criticisms levied against This brilliant borderline perfect product and now we need to get into the weeds just a little bit because while this thing is perfect from a software standpoint and a feature standpoint sometimes it can fall short

1:34 on the Sonic's standpoint well not anymore again this is the smsl PO 100 this is basically a USB to iqu S to coax to Optical output so you plug in a USB and you can either output Optical coax or i squ s so basically it's kind of like a USB digital adapter I am not using this probably how they intended it to be used I am using this this $60 actually it's $70 plus a 20% off coupon and there's

2:21 only six left in stock so if you have a weam Ultra and you want to try this little hack you should probably buy this $2 today I think there is another product out there a Duke audio product out there that can do some of the same stuff we're using this as a USB adapter so I'm taking and this is why this only works on the weam ultra because on the weam ultra you have a USB that you can use as an output and that is the key thing here so we're taking USB output from the weam ultra going into the smsl PO 100 and and then we're outputting you can output whatever you want I output Optical the reason why is because this

3:07 now acts as an external reclocker and that has been one thing that a lot of people a lot of people in the know my patrons included have told me just how terrible the internal clock is in the weam I think I don't even think the weam mini has an internal clock if that makes any sense the takeaway here is that the clock coming out out of all of the wing products isn't great and then if you buy a $60 product it makes it significantly better trust me I thought it was a bunch BS I didn't think this would work at all I thought I would if there was a difference it would be marginal at best but I am a true believer that either a the wian product has absolutely abysmal

3:53 clocks or B this does a really really good job of reclocking or C I'm hearing things and I'm going going crazy you can obviously use the smsl P1 100 for other things and it's fairly simple your USB goes in here and then your i squ s comes out right here coax comes right here and your Optical comes out right here and the weam itself Powers this little device now I don't really know much about clocking and how to explain it but I did watch a really cool video by Paul McGaw over at PS audio and he basically said whenever there is a digital signal coming in through a streamer it has to be fixed and then passed out and sometimes some

4:38 clocks are better than others so the wings taking stuff in from the interwebs from the cosmos making them into music and then passing them out I have it pass out digitally because I have an external deck and that's another key important point this will not work unless you have an external deck that external deck Maybe Standalone deck that external deck may be the Dack in your integrated amplifier the point is that this needs to go in between the weam and your DAC or your integrated amplifier and this only passes a digital output Optical coaxial i squ s which will then go in your external deck or in your integrated amplifier but with clocking issues if

5:23 you get a if you get a bad signal out it's got Jitter and this is a well-known thing like companies manufacturers people that are recording music know all about Jitter and how bad it can be so they fix it generally in my experience I usually I don't too go too crazy about this Jitter thing Jitter timing thing and there are dedicated products out there relockers that are way more expensive than $60 now I don't necessarily think this was intended to be a reclocker but because it has its own X Moss chip inside it is acting as a budget as our cheap reclocking hack for the weam ultra

6:10 so had USB coming out of the weam ultra into this this going into the jelli labs j2s with the 44.99 chipset on these chipsets there's also some reclocking going on within the deck itself but according to Paul Macwan you really can't have too much reclocking this whole idea for this video came from Ed over at old guy HiFi because he understands this stuff a lot and I've asked him to explain it like three different times and and I still don't quite understand it something to do with an asynchronous clock coming out of the USB that's why you have to have a USB output to use this to clean up the clock to clean up the Jitter really not really cleaning up the clock you're reclocking which is then improving the

6:57 Jitter there's a whole bunch of stuff with sampling over sampling hopefully Ed will make a video that explains this in detail but I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer and I just asked him flat out okay listen does this make it sound better for $60 and he said yes and I said okay I'm going to buy one and I'm going to listen to it and then I'm going to make a video about it if it does it does so I've been running this for about 3 or 4 days out in my living room the first thing that I really did some I wouldn't say hardcore testing but some really intentional testing was on the going through the advanced Paris new elac debut 3.0 but it's the 5 and A4 inch version so now I have not only the 6 and 1/2 inch version which I've already done a video on which you can

7:43 check out but I also have the 5 and a/4 in version of the elac debut 3 those speakers the characteristics of those speakers have always been a little bit rolled off on top so you're not getting a ton of detail so I thought the 5 and 1/4 in version of elac debut 3 would be a perfect test bed for this thing because you're already lacking a little bit of detail at all so if this thing only works a little bit I shouldn't be able to hear much of a difference on the elac debut 3 the 5 and a/4 inch version because I'm not getting a ton of detail out of there anyway don't take that for me saying these speakers don't sound good they sound great and that video will be coming out soon so that's a great reason to like And subscribe to this channel so you don't miss that

8:29 video anyway there would have to be a fairly big Improvement in the sound to be able to hear a difference in the sound from those elac debut 3 5 and a/4 in version and there was and I'm not talking about like a little I'm talking about a big big difference the two tracks that I listen to the most and it's because I thought I would be able to hear differences if there were was atan maret uninvited the live MTV Edition and then Nina Simone centerman it's a really long song there's a lot of high hat there's a lot of vocal there's a lot of air in both of those songs uh here's the takeaway uh you get way better instrument separation there's a

9:14 point in the Atlanta Mar set Uninvited the live version where there's a Harmony and I don't think I ever heard that before and I only heard it when I was listening to this I think it's a male vocal that is singing with her actually it's not Uninvited it's king of pain now there's also separation layering of Separation there is also less smearing between the instruments so the instruments now seem more divided within the Sound Stage but most importantly for me like the thing I love the most is that Clarity in the air and so when there's any acoustic guitar ding it hangs out a little bit longer I know I I literally didn't think this thing would work I thought it would just sound the

10:00 same but it doesn't the high hat on centerman so much different when I had this in the chain so much more separated so much crisper it it's kind of like just a fog just like there's a little bit of a fog in there and then you put this in and it's just like or it's like cleaning your glasses and here's the reason why I love it is because well I'm going to save that for later um so talk about my final thoughts final thoughts um this is absolutely a Nob brainer now what I would do is if you have but you need an external Dack or you need to use the

10:46 Dack in your integrated amplifier and then you need to use the USB output on the weam ultra and that's super easy to do the only thing that you have to do is plug something into so you plug this into to the USB output and it will automatically show up in your weam app as an option for an output and then you just use that then I ran an optical into my deck okay so you need all those things here's what I would do is if you have an external deck if you have a weam Ultra and you want to try this out buy it today get it plug it in and if you don't hear a difference then send it back because it is spectacular I just looked it up I think there's six left on

11:31 Amazon but there is the U2 Pro from duke audio that supposedly does something similar I'm just getting this just in from old guy Hi-Fi I think the smsl uses a better x x Moss chip not sure though okay so you can also run the risk if this is not in stock anymore on Amazon you may still be able to order it it'll take longer to get here but hopefully since you order it through Amazon you get a better a more liberal return policy you can also check out the YouTube Pro from duke audio which I will link in the description as well um what I love about this is it's an incremental Improvement upon the wiam so you can buy one thing and make it better over time

12:18 for not a lot of money so you buy the wing for $330 or whatever it is use the internal Dack you're rocking and rolling listening to music having a great time having one of the best streaming platforms at your fingertips touchscreen albamar all the stuff right and then you want to step it up a little bit so you buy an external deck that external deck could be an smsl su1 for 70 bucks and then you buy this the PO 100 and now you're cleaning up the clock going into your external deck so you don't have to do this all at once you don't have to pay for all at once and you get to try it out for yourself to see if I'm full

13:03 of it or if there's actually a difference I am so excited when I find things like this and thank you Ed from old guy high five for bringing this to my attention and trust me I was a I was a reclocking skeptic I thought it was thought it was like the moon landing thought it was bit of a conspiracy theory right I was like eh okay fine I'll order it and I'm glad he kind of pushed me on it he's like you're going to hear a difference you're going to hear a difference I'm like mhm yeah I'll hear a difference I heard a difference and I'm super excited because this is not $600 and some Rec clockers can be 600 they can be $6,000 and this again not really marketed as a reclocker but that's how we're using it so for 60 bucks you're going to get a big Improvement on your

13:51 music with the weam ultra I'm just amazed over the mood tickled pink so if you like this video make sure to check out my video on the weam ultra I'll link it right here or here check out my patreon patreon.com AI man best high-fi community in the world we're going to have a zoom tonight Zoom meeting tonight so if you sign up today you can hang out with me tonight at 9:00 central time links are in the description for these products those will be affiliate links which means if you click and you buy get a commission doesn't cost you any more so it's a great way to support the channel thanks so much for watching share this video to someone you think that might like it bye