A couple months ago I subscribed to Tidal music streaming service. The music selection is great, everything streams at CD quality or better, and the price is right ~$12 per month.
During the two months I've been streaming Tidal to my Squeezebox Touch via Lyrion Music Server (LMS) using a plugin, it has been a little less than ideal. Tidal has a lot of features accessible through the Tidal Android app, that doesn't work with the LMS Tidal plugin. I don't think LMS allows the high res streaming, but I'm not entirely sure, so don't quote me. Anyway, I wanted to use all the features in Tidal, especially lyrics display, so I started looking at streamers that support Tidal natively.
I looked at streamers by Eversolo, Bluesound, Cambridge Audio, Wiim, and a few others, up to about $2k. The SB Touch taught me that I don't need the streamer to have much of a UI on the box -I can't read the display across the room, and it sits low in my equipment rack and I don't want to bend over to touch the buttons. I decided a graphical UI, which tends to drive up the price on units like the Cambridge Audio and the Eversolo players, was unnecessary.
That said, there's a strong case to be made for a local (on the box itself) UI in a streamer. If the box has no local UI, it is entirely dependent on an app that runs on a phone or tablet. In 10 years time, will we still be running apps on phones/tablets? What will happen to the streamer if there's a phone/tablet OS update that breaks the functionality of the streamer? Will streaming music services still exist? Will it matter? Will I care? The only thing I know for sure is that a bricked $200 device is preferable to a bricked $2k device.
After comparing specs and checking reviews I decided on the Wiim Pro Plus (WPP). It supports Tidal natively, so I'll be able to use Tidal Connect with it. It also has SqueezeLite built in so it works with LMS. There are about a million subjective reviews of the WPP (and other streamers) on the web, and one detailed technical review with measurements at Audio Science Review. The measured performance is very good, even compared to many more expensive units. The Wiim Pro Plus costs $220. The user manual is here.
When the WPP arrived I replaced the SqueezeBox Touch with it, using the analog out from the WPP to connect to an aux input on my Advance Paris A12 amplifier. I connected the ethernet port on the WPP directly to the mesh router that it sits next to on the equipment rack.
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| The SqueezeBox Touch, Wiim Pro Plus, and router. The Wiim box is connected to the router via ethernet to ensure reliable connection, especially for high resolution audio streaming. The Wiim box is replacing the SqueezeBox Touch that will be moved to the bedroom system. |
The first thing I did was to check to see if it showed up as a player in LMS. Sure enough, it showed up, but as two players. I tried sending some music to it and both of them worked, but only one at a time. I posted messages at the LMS forums and Wiim forums and quickly found out that I had to turn off the CastBridge and/or UPNP plugins in LMS. I had CastBridge on because I previously used a ChromeCast dongle and a sound bar with ChromeCast built in as players.
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| This is how the WPP shows up in LMS. I have only one WPP but it shows up twice because I had the CastBridge plugin enabled in LMS. |
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| This is how it looks after disabling the ChromeCast plugin in LMS and restarting the server. All good! |
Next I installed the Wiim Home app on my phone and went through the full setup process, starting with firmware update, setting up the remote control, and finally linking it to my Tidal account. Everything was very easy to do and there were absolutely zero problems. The Wiim people seem to know what they are doing software-wise!
Finally, I installed the Tidal app on my phone and tried it out. Again, no problems were encountered. This whole thing has to be the easiest setup of a relatively complex piece of hardware/software I have ever experienced. Super easy, start to finish!
Note: the Wiim box has a few buttons on the front panel. They are mostly there for convenience if you happen to be standing close to the box and want to adjust playback volume (which you could do by turning the volume knob on the amplifier), pause playback, etc. You can select one preset for playback- not sure if that means one song, or one source, like Tidal.
You can select music to play on either the Tidal app, the Wiim app, or the LMS app, but you only get the full Tidal experience by using the Tidal app. If you use the Wiim or LMS apps you can't see song lyrics, for example. When you select music to play on the Tidal app, it will try to play on the phone or tablet you're using the app on. You send it to the Wiim box by clicking the TidalConnect icon on the screen:
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| The red circle is the TidalConnect button that sends the music to the Wiim Pro Plus. Clicking the green circled button turns on lyrics display on the phone/tablet as the music is playing. |
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| This is how lyrics are presented. With most songs the lyrics scroll to keep up with the music and get highlighted as above. I noticed that if you missed what was sung, you can tap the lyric and the music will jump back to that point and play again from there. |
Remote Control Consolidation (or not)
I've been juggling five remote controls to operate my TV and sound system, and the Wiim box adds a sixth. This is getting ridiculous! I ordered a Broadlink RM4 Pro Wi-Fi enabled IR blaster and it arrived on the same day as the Wiim box. The RM4 is a universal (well, almost- no Bluetooth LE) IR and RF (433 MHz) controller that can learn codes from a large online database and from the remote controls directly, in case they aren't already in the database.
My intention was to set up an Android tablet with Tidal and RM4 apps so I can use the tablet to control the system and select music on Tidal and display album art, lyrics, etc. To that end I also ordered a Google Pixel tablet.
I was able to set up the RM4 on my network and install the phone app and get it talking to the RM4 without too much messing around. Then I set up my TV from the RM4's own database. My Advance Paris A12 amp wasn't in the database, so I set that up myself. The RM4 app allows you to add any device not in the database and to select buttons and program them by pointing the remote control at the RM4. The UI is a little tricky, but once you figure it out it's not too hard to use.
Once I had the amp set up, I programmed a macro so one button will turn on the TV and amp and switch the amp to the TV. That's when I realized that my dream of a single, graphic UI remote to control everything was maybe not going to come true.
I use a Shield TV Pro on the TV instead of the TVs built in youtube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime functions because the Shield TV Pro upscales to 4k better than the TV does. Unfortunately, the Shield TV Pro (and the Wiim Pro Plus) uses Bluetooth LE remote control. Even though my phone has Bluetooth built in (as does the Pixel tablet), the RM4 app doesn't have any means of controlling the Bluetooth radio in the phone/tablet (WTF?). That means I still have to juggle multiple remote controls. That is exactly the problem I'm trying to fix.
I returned the RM4 to amazon and ordered a SofaBaton X1S. It will control everything, including BT LE devices, via its remote control, but not via an Android tablet. That means I'll have to juggle just the SofaBaton remote and the Android tablet when I want to listen to music from either Tidal or LMS. It's not ideal, but it seems to be as close as I can get to controlling everything from the tablet. Setting up the handheld remote is done via an Android app- why not controlling everything, too? WTF!
The SofaBaton has some very powerful features that are accessible through an API. This video, by a very fast talking Scot (?) is interesting:
I am amazed that what I am looking for doesn't already exist. Maybe Broadlink's next gen hub will include BT LE control, or SofaBaton's next app release will include a web interface to control things without using the handheld remote control device. Either would work fine for me.
I'll update this post when the SofaBaton arrives and I've had a chance to play with it.
The Tablet
I looked at a lot of tablets- I wanted about 9-11" display for easy holding and reading, up to date Android OS, and some assurance of future updates. I was hoping for an OLED display, but all those tablets were a bit too pricy. Then I checked the Google Pixel tablet. I had looked at it in the past, but it was a bit too expensive for my uses for a tablet at that time, so passed it by. When I took a look again, it was on sale, and I had a store credit from Google from when I bought my phone two years ago, so it ended up costing $200. I looked at other $200 tablets and none came close, so I bought the Pixel. It should have 3 years of updates coming, so I won't have to think about it much for a while.
I put the tablet on my network, updated it to Android 15, installed the Tidal, Wiim, and Squeezer LMS apps and it was ready to go. One very nice feature is that it has a fingerprint sensor on the power switch, so I don't have to log in to use it. All I have to do is pick it up and turn it on.
I can control volume by using the volume buttons on the tablet, so I think that once the system is turned on and switched to the Wiim input via the remote control, I'll be able to do what I need with just the tablet, until time to shut the system down. Then I'll have to pick up the remote control again. It's still juggling, but what else can I do?
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| Tidal on the Pixel tablet. |
Check back here again for updates on the SofaBaton remote control and anything else I run into using the system. I'm going to keep searching for other remote control options that can be controlled entirely from the tablet. If I find one, it will show up here.
Update 2/25/25
I received the SofaBaton X1S remote control. It can do IR, BT LE, and Wi-Fi (for just a few things including Roku). I started setting up remote controls for all my stuff. The IR stuff was fine, and my Advance Paris A12 amp already had an entry in the database, though I'm not sure I like how the keys were assigned (that can be edited), and it had the BT LE remote for my Nvidia Shield TV Pro ready to go.
The SofaBaton is a complex device and it will take me a while to figure out how to configure everything correctly. If I run into any major issues, I'll post them here. One thing I discovered immediately was that I can't set up the SofaBaton using the tablet- for some reason SofaBaton requires a GPS radio (that the Pixel tablet doesn't have) for location sensing. Why does a TV remote control need to have GPS? I used my phone to set up the SofaBaton.
When it was time to set up the Wiim Pro Plus BT LE remote control, I couldn't get it to work, so I chatted with someone from SofaBaton and they said they did not have the codes for the Wiim remote control, so no can do. But don't worry, all is not lost!
I played with the tablet a bit and found that the WPP can be turned on via the tablet. When I select music to play via Tidal, it starts to play on the tablet until I hit the cast button to send it to the WPP. If the WPP is off, it turns on and plays as intended. Likewise, the Squeezer app has the ability to turn the WPP on and off and play music from LMS. It seems that the Wiim's remote control is about as useless as the buttons on its front panel. I may not be able to turn the WPP on via the SofaBaton, but I can via the music players on the tablet, so it's all good!
I have some motorized curtains that I was hoping to be able to control using the SofaBaton. It apparently can control either 433 MHz and 315 MHz devices. I tried to set it up to control my curtains but it doesn't seem to see the signal from the curtain remote control. I'm not sure what frequency the curtain transmitter uses- more research is required. Anyway, if that never works, it's not a deal breaker for me.
Update 2/26/25
I've been playing with the SofaBaton and had some setup problems, but I think I've got it figured out now. The first step is to set up all your individual remote controls. I ignored SofaBaton button assignments and just entered functions for each button on the original remote control, and once those were done and working I went in and assigned buttons on the SofaBaton to those functions that made the most sense. My CD player's remote control has >20 buttons, but there aren't that many buttons on the SofaBaton. The most basic functions are assigned to the buttons on the SofaBaton but if I want to use one of the other functions of the original remote, I select "devices" on the SofaBaton menu, then scroll to the device, then select the original function I want to operate using the scroll wheel, then push down on the scroll wheel to activate that function. It's sort of like juggling remote controls but in software instead of hardware.
Here's a pretty good tutorial about setting up the SofaBaton, and there are about 100 others on Youtube:
I ran into two functions on my amplifier's remote control that the SofaBaton just couldn't learn for some reason. One of them is the ability to switch speakers (A, B, or A+B) and the other is switching to the CD input via a single button push (I can still step through inputs to get to CD). I'll be talking to tech support about it.
My LG TV has a gyroscopic remote control that's used to point to and select menu items. I have to figure out how to bring up the input menu and step through them using just button pushes, then set that up in the SofaBaton. It's a little confusing, but doesn't require a degree in rocket science.
Update 2/27/25
I set up the TV and Shield pro controls from the SofaBaton database today.
I also managed to get the SofaBaton to recognize the CD input button on the A12 remote control. That's important because when I set up activities on the SofaBaton, I have to be able to set the specific input that the activity requires on the amplifier. There's no way to do that directly because the amp remote control doesn't have dedicated buttons for each input (there are 20 of them!), except for the single CD input. So it serves as the starting point to access other inputs by stepping through them one by one, using the Input +/- buttons.
For example, I set up an activity to watch TV via the Shield Pro. The command sequence is to turn on the Shield Pro, turn on the TV, switch the TV input to HDMI 1 (that's where the Shield pro is plugged in), turn on the A12 amplifier, wait 30.5 seconds (for tube warm-up), then switch its input to CD, then rotate through the inputs using 9 presses of the "Input -' button to get to the Optical 3 input that I use for the TV sound. The delay is required because the amplifier can't respond to any input during the 30 second warm-up.
From that point, the volume and muting controls for the A12 are handled by the SofaBaton volume and mute buttons, and all the other SofaBaton buttons are assigned to the Shield Pro control. When I want to watch Netflix, YouTube, or prime Video, those selections are all done via the buttons on the SofaBaton. I don't really need to have a dedicated activity for watching Netflix and another for YouTube, etc.
One other point- I disabled the CEC control in the TV so that its power on/off are not controlled via the HDMI cable connected to the Shield Pro. In order to have reliable control via the SofaBaton, each device has to have its own power on/off controlled only by the Sofabaton. The SofaBaton keeps track of which devices are on and which are off at any given moment. If a device gets turned on or off without the SofaBaton, it doesn't know, and might end up turning something off when it should be turning on.
Update 2/28/25
I set up a couple simple activities on the SofaBaton and they are working as intended. It took some messing around to get the amplifier input switching working right (because the amp has no direct input switching). I also noticed that if I switch from listening to music to watching TV the system is smart enough to skip the power switching in the amplifier (because it is already on), but not the 30 second delay that's used in the Music activity to allow the amp's tubes to warm up. So when I switch to TV from Music, there's an unnecessary 30 second delay before the amplifier switches its input to the TV- i.e. no TV sound for 30 seconds. I think I can live with it.
Now I'm thinking about the possibilities of adding other controls. I have some table lamps in the living room that switch on at sunset. They are reflected on the TV screen, so when I watch TV, I frequently turn them off. I also have a very large window behind the couch that reflects on the TV screen, with a motorized curtain. It would be nice to set it up so that when I switch to TV, the curtain would close (if it's open) and the table lamps would switch off (if they are on).
More study is required!
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