“What’s in a name?” Juliet Capulet once asked. Far be it from me to argue with the Bard, nor one of his most famous characters, but my answer to that question would be a simple one: “A lot.” Especially when it comes to a product like the WiiM Amp Ultra (US$529, CA$739, £499, €599).
I’m reminded of a game that my friends and I fell in love with in the mid-1990s called Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. Given my group’s history with the Street Fighter series on which this little puzzle game was based, we assumed this PlayStation disc I stumbled upon in the used bin at Babbage’s must be something like the fifth iteration of the series. Turns out, that mouthful of tacked-on title bling was merely an homage to Super Street Fighter II Turbo. This competitive puzzler, unbeknownst to us, was—at least at the time—a one-off.
When we discovered that, we debated for hours (while baked out of our gourds, no doubt) what the title of the inevitable sequel would be. None of us could have predicted that no sequel would come for 20 years, and that when it did, it would simply be called Puzzle Fighter.
Which makes me think that when Linkplay Technology eventually releases a follow-up to the WiiM Amp Ultra, the company should just call it Amp. Not WiiM Amp—that’s already taken. Just Amp.
I’m joking. Mostly. But that bit of non-humor does serve to point out that WiiM is setting high expectations by hanging an appellation like “Ultra” on its latest streaming integrated amplifier. What does it do to earn the title? In other words, what sets it apart from the WiiM Amp (US$299) and WiiM Amp Pro (US$379) before it?
First and most obviously: the WiiM Amp Ultra boasts the same 3.5″ glass capacitive touchscreen as the company’s Ultra streaming preamplifier. It also features more powerful TI TPA3255 class‑D amps delivering a specified 100Wpc into 8 ohms, 200Wpc into 4 ohms, and stability down to 2 ohms. THD+N is specified as ≤0.005%, with signal-to-noise ratio exceeding 120dB. The company calculates the damping factor of the Amp Ultra as a very respectable 94.
In a sense, you can think of the WiiM Amp Ultra as an integrated version of the Ultra streaming preamp, but with speaker-level outputs and somewhat limited I/O in other respects. It features a single optical digital in, no coaxial digital connectivity at all, line-level stereo RCA input but no output, no trigger connectivity (logically), but it still boasts an HDMI ARC port (not eARC, sadly) and a rather dated 100Mbps ethernet port (although, honestly, that’s all you really need for music streaming).
Wireless connectivity includes Wi‑Fi 6 (upgradable to 6E) and Bluetooth 5.3, with support for SBC, AAC, and LC3 codecs. As with all of WiiM’s Wi‑Fi 6 products, though, it does not support AirPlay 2, nor will it group with HomePods, nor does it support Siri.
But Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are baked in, and it does Chromecast Cast, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, DLNA, LMS, and of course supports the WiiM Home app for Linkplay multi-room streaming.
What’s more, it’s Roon Ready, and although it’s not listed in the specifications, it supports Qobuz Connect just fine. Services accessible from within the WiiM Home app include Amazon Music, BBC Radio, Calm Radio, Deezer, KKBOX, Napster, Pandora, Lex, QQMusic, Radio Paradise, SoundCloud, SoundMachine, Soundtrack, TuneIn, YouTube Music, iHeart, and vTuner. You can toggle all of the above on or off so your home screen isn’t cluttered by services you don’t actually use.
Setting up and dialing in the WiiM Amp Ultra
As I said in my unboxing blog post, one of the coolest things about the WiiM Amp Ultra at first blush is its speaker-level connections. By default, it doesn’t feature binding posts, but rather flush ports for banana plugs. And I’m fine with that, because I was raised right and I think all speaker cables should be terminated in bananas.
If you prefer bare wire or pins or what have you, though, the package comes with adapters that sort of serve double duty as binding posts and/or add-on banana plugs, depending on how you view them (or, I suppose, depending on whether you plug them into the amp before inserting your speaker wire).
Am I making a bigger deal out of this than it deserves? Maybe. But I’m a hi‑fi nerd, and nerdy hi‑fi stuff butters my biscuits. I’m completely smitten with this approach and wish all audio companies would embrace it at every price point. It simply classes up the joint and adds a bit of elegance to the hookup process.
As for the rest of the physical setup, I plugged in my Paradigm Studio 100 v.5 tower speakers to the other side of my SVS speaker wires, connected my SVS PB‑1000 Pro sub to the subwoofer out, plugged in my Oppo BDP‑93 via the optical in, and opted for the Wi‑Fi 6 connection to the internet because my mesh network gives me 600Mbps up/300Mbps down, which exceeds the bandwidth limits of the Amp Ultra’s wired network connection.
When you fire up the WiiM Amp Ultra for the first time, a QR code appears on the touchscreen, leading you to a download link for the WiiM Home app, which walks you through network setup and pairing of the WiiM Remote 2, a voice-capable metal clicker that looks gorgeous but is vulnerable to scuffs and scrapes. The best thing about the remote, though, is that it charges via USB‑C, and an appropriate cable even comes in the box, along with a really beautifully built HDMI interconnect, RCA cables that shame those I’ve seen packed in with significantly pricier gear, and a chonky but super-flexible optical digital cable that AudioQuest would sell for nearly the cost of the whole WiiM Amp Ultra if it were in its lineup.
Setup options from within the app are plentiful, and I won’t dig through them all. I’ll merely gloss over the preponderance of options such as per-source ten-band graphic and parametric EQ, as well as fine-tuning of the character of the volume control, with your choice of five levels of precision. One thing worth digging into a little deeper, though, is a setting called Squeezelite, which allows you to configure the WiiM Amp Ultra as an endpoint for a Lyrion Music Server setup.
I managed to get that working on the Windows 10 partition of my dual-boot system, but only by using the Squeeze‑LX player on my desktop and setting the WiiM Amp Ultra as the endpoint. I could not access the library from the WiiM Home app.
I also got Squeezelite installed on my Linux partition running the Pop!_OS Cosmic beta, but configuring it proved to be above my hacker pay grade, so I gave up on it. But it’s nice to see WiiM supporting open-source solutions such as this, and if the amp were my own, I’d put in the effort to get it up and running as a way of accessing my own music library.
There’s also a full-featured subwoofer setup section in the WiiM Home app, including your choice of crossover point between 30 and 250Hz (in 1Hz increments, no less!), and the ability to convert that into a high-pass for the sub without low-passing the speakers, in the event you wish to run your mains full-range with a sub.
There’s also WiiM’s own basic room-correction system, RoomFit, which can be set to measure your speakers individually or together. Frankly, it’s a little limited given that it only allows for one measurement position, and it relies on your phone’s mike. But it certainly doesn’t do any audible harm, which is my main concern with most entry-level room-correction systems. Overall, I’d categorize its effects on my system as a minor amelioration of some standing wave issues between 50 and 500Hz that are audible if you know what you’re listening for, but subtle enough that most casual listeners might miss them. Furthermore, I got better results when I ran RoomFit at lower volume levels. There is no gain control of the sort you see with Dirac, and the WiiM doesn’t give any guidance on proper loudness levels. Whatever you do, though, don’t freak out at RoomFit’s before-and-after graphs of frequency response, because their seeming roller-coaster amplitude plot is way out of proportion with what I’m actually hearing.
How does the WiiM Amp Ultra perform?
WiiM makes some big claims about the Post Filter Feedback Technology (PFFB) baked into the output stage of the amp, which the company says “overcomes speaker-load dependency.” There are, of course, objective ways of testing that, but given that I don’t know as I’m writing this whether we’ll be putting the Amp Ultra on the bench, I went for my sure-fire subjective test: I turned off the sub and reverted to a purely two-channel configuration, cued up George Michael’s “Freedom ’90!” (Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, 24‑bit/44.1kHz FLAC, Sony Music CG / Qobuz), and cranked it to 11.
Actually, I cranked it to 77 (out of 100), which was as much as I could tolerate in my listening room, resulting as it did in 106dB peaks and consistent 86dBA SPLs. At this sort of volume, what I listen for with this track is a thinning of the bass, of which this song has barely enough, especially in the frequency range where the impedance of my Paradigm Studio 100 v.5 towers dips a bit.
Simply put, the WiiM Amp Ultra performed as well with this song as any amp I’ve pumped it through into these speakers. Bass wasn’t shy in the slightest, dynamics were everything you could ask for, and I didn’t hear a single audible artifact requiring any sort of apology for the price of the product.
It got me curious how the Amp Ultra might compare with a similar-form-factor amp: the Marantz Model M1 I reviewed for Simplifi a few months back. Level matching them as best I could—which wasn’t easy given that the WiiM Amp Ultra’s volume control doesn’t seem to be wholly linear—I couldn’t detect any meaningful audible difference when using Filter 2 on the Model M1. (For what it’s worth, the Amp Ultra doesn’t have selectable reconstruction filters, but I’m guessing it’s a linear-phase filter with a sharp roll-off, which is the default on the WiiM Ultra streaming preamp).
Bringing the volume down to sane and sustainable listening levels—somewhere around 65 percent—and leaving the A/B comparisons behind to explore the WiiM Amp Ultra on its own terms, I found myself impressed by its handling of the imaging and soundstage of “Freedom ’90!” Image specificity and the stability of the soundstage were particularly noteworthy, despite the fact that this track isn’t really renowned for either.
As such, I turned to something a bit more challenging in those respects: “Darling, Angel, Baby,” the second single from Dodie’s Not for Lack of Trying (24/44.1 FLAC, Decca (UMO) / Qobuz). This ditty features oodles of overdubbed and layered vocal tracks, along with doubled acoustic guitar as a through-line. It’s still a song I’m getting to know, but I can tell you this much from my time with it so far: it’s going to be a go-to test track for those reasons and more.
Mess with transient response in any meaningful way, and I’m absolutely positive this one will start to either fall apart or get a little wobbly, although my evidence for that boils down to “trust me, bro” at this point.
What I do know for sure is a lot of the sonic character of the song relies on precise attack and unfettered decay, and any temporal wonkiness should affect the former, with any audible noise or distortion impinging upon the latter. The song was, frankly, perfectly delivered by the WiiM Amp Ultra. As was the lounge‑y vibe of the album’s first single, “I Feel Bad for You, Dave,” especially in the poppy percussion and the tinkling piano that starts to work its way into the mix around the one-minute mark. All of it sounded simply marvelous. Bass was authoritative and nuanced. High frequencies were rendered without edginess or harshness, but with oodles of detail.
All of the above listening was done via Qobuz Connect, but I also did some testing via the WiiM Home app and found that all of my observations still rang true. But it has to be said that, while I rely on Qobuz for most of my sit-down critical listening, I also rely heavily on Apple Music for day-to-day music enjoyment, since I like the app, I like its UX, and that’s where all my playlists live.
WiiM Home doesn’t feature Apple Music integration, though, and as stated above, it’s my understanding that Apple withheld certification for Linkplay’s Wi‑Fi 6 products, including the Amp Ultra, so there’s no AirPlay. Which left me having to rely on Bluetooth streaming if I wanted to pump Apple Music into the system.
For some direct A/B comparisons of that approach, I fired up the new remaster of Buckingham Nicks via Qobuz and Apple Music, relying on Connect to stream the former and Bluetooth to stream the latter.
I was a little surprised to hear how well the Bluetooth connection held up—mostly, I think, as a consequence of the Amp Ultra’s AAC codec support. Even after resampling the hi-rez audio to fit into a limited-bandwidth pipeline, and even transcoding it to AAC, “Crying in the Night” came through as an entirely enjoyable and distraction-free listening experience. More than that, even. If I left a ten-or-so-second gap between A and B, I could hardly tell the difference.
Switching between them more quickly, I noticed that the crisp acoustic-guitar strumming in the song’s intro lost the tiniest bit of sparkle and a bit of its texture. But shockingly little. And when it comes right down to it, the sonic differences all but disappeared the instant the air conditioner—two rooms away, mind you—kicked in.
Before this, I would have told you that the lack of AirPlay 2 was a deal-breaker for me personally. After having heard the difference, I could easily live with Bluetooth as a way of accessing Apple Music. It’s a bit of a bummer in principle, but sort of a non-issue in actual practice.
What other systems should you consider in this price range?
I think the biggest competition for the WiiM Amp Ultra comes from WiiM itself in the form of the WiiM Ultra streaming preamp (US$329) and the WiiM VibeLink Amp (US$299). Combined, they cost US$99 more than the WiiM Amp Ultra, but the extra coin gets you more inputs, including a phono stage, which the Amp Ultra lacks, and plenty more customization options, including seven selectable reconstruction filters for the DAC.
If you’re looking to avoid the Linkplay ecosystem altogether, a good alternative would be the generation-four Bluesound Powernode (US$1199), which lacks the Ultra’s sexy touchscreen, but does move you into what I consider to be a more elegant multi-room streaming audio ecosystem in the form of BluOS. It also gets you AirPlay 2 support, a headphone output, and LCR speaker-level outputs, which may be persuasive if you’re integrating your stereo and A/V systems.
If you’re willing to give up the screen but you don’t want to spend that much, you should also consider the SVS Prime Wireless Pro SoundBase (US$699.99), which sounds great, is easy to operate, and makes similar use of presets. But it’s built on DTS Play‑Fi, which is just awful, meaning you’ll mostly be relying on AirPlay or Chromecast for wireless music access unless you just hate life and yourself in equal measure.
TL;DR: Is the WiiM Amp Ultra worth the money?
How much does AirPlay support mean to you? That’s really what it boils down to here. If that wireless protocol is your ride or die, then nothing the WiiM Amp Ultra does otherwise is going to convince you. I get that. I thought I was one of you. But the shockingly good Bluetooth performance of the Amp Ultra with Apple Music has all but eliminated those concerns.
I do wish I’d had a chance to check out the multi-zone capabilities of the Linkplay ecosystem during the course of this review, and I do have a capable speaker coming in for Wirecutter testing soon. But it didn’t make it in time to include here.
I also wish WiiM would put as much effort and attention into the feel of its combination volume knob / select button as it does every other aspect of the amp’s construction. This swanky-ass amp combined with this janky-ass knob feels a bit like having a 2025 Lexus RZ with door handles from a late-1990s Toyota Camry hot-glued onto the body.
But the company makes up for that with a pack-in remote that’s simple, elegant perfection in every way.
So is it worth the money? You bet it is. Unless you’re running some thirsty speakers in a large room, its output is almost certainly more than you’ll ever need. It sounds amazing. It’s easy to operate. It’s nice to look at, even in standby mode. It supports a gazillion streaming music services. And it’s tweakable as all get-out. In my opinion, you really have to get up to the level of the twice-as-pricy Bluesound gear before you find much meaningful direct competition.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
Associated Equipment
- Speakers: Paradigm Studio 100 v.5
- Subwoofer: SVS PB‑1000 Pro
- Sources: iPhone 16 Pro Max; Oppo BDP-93
- Speaker cables: SVS SoundPath Ultra
- Power conditioner: SurgeX XR115
WiiM Amp Ultra streaming integrated amplifier
Price: US$529, CA$739, £499, €599
Warranty: One year, parts and labor
Linkplay Technology Inc.
8000 Jarvis Ave., Ste. 130
Newark, CA 94560
Email: support@wiimhome.com
Website: www.wiimhome.com
