Okay, fine, I’m getting a streamer

After stripping everything down to minimalism to comfortably host Thanksgiving this year, I’ve decided to redo my reading/listening station. Getting rid of the IKEA side table, the clusterfuck of cables, etc., and getting down to basics. Moving the Schiit stack to the built-in bookshelves, which aren’t deep enough to comfortably host the Mac Mini, let alone the shelf I built. Also ditching the iPhone 12 setup, since I just never really used it. But I still do want streaming capability. (I tried, I really tried, to use / like the Logitech Media Server setup on the mini, but, alas.)

Wiim Pro
Wiim Pro


Enter the streamer

After too much research, and considering the Arylic S10+ and LP10, and the Eve Play, and some other devices, I settled on the WiiM Pro, especially once Amazon dropped it from $150 to $125, a pretty good price. If I ever use Spotify, it integrates (though I probably won’t), and apparently it works with the Pandora and SiriusXM I do have ... But mostly I anticipate using it to Air Play 2 music (bought, and streamed via Apple Music) from my iPhone, and, it will apparently mount my NAS and play ALAC and FLAC (etc) files over SMB. (The Arylic also supports NAS streaming, but only via DLNA, and I’ve had shitty experiences trying to get DLNA working reliably and comprehensively. Samba is stable and working perfectly and it’s one less thing I have to configure and then worry about. Also, many reviewers report the Arylic software in general just isn’t quite there.)
 
The streamer will also replace the blafili b3 Bluetooth receiver I had in the old stack, which I really, really like a lot, but at the end of the day it’s Bluetooth, lossy and finicky and just not what I want for this setup.
 
I have a surplus Anker 351 Power Strip, which, while it has anemic USB power (the 20W USB-C PD port is basically worthless if any USB-A port is also being used[2]), that will feed the relatively modest setup of:

I’m also going to run with this headphone stand from UpLift, ’cause it’s sexier than anything else in the price range.

Fate of the mini

It’s going to live in the AV unit in the living room, connected to Ethernet, the last available HDMI port on my Marantz, and a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard with trackpad (or maybe something smaller, since I really won’t be using it much), for RockSmith 2014 (bought a while ago, came with the cable[1]) and Yousician (currently 50% off) for gamification of guitar “lessons” and practice encouragement.
 
 
 
 
[1] Though apparently you can use an audio interface, like my PreSonus AudioBox GO, or presumably even the NUX MG-300 MKII I have at home, with the Mac and RockSmith, by creating a 48 kHz Aggregate Device in the MIDI app, and naming it “Rocksmith USB Guitar Adapter” – but I haven’t yet personally tried this.
 
[2] “USB-C: 5V 3A/9V 2.22A/12V 1.67A (20W max) USB-A: 5V 3A (2.4A max per port)； 2 USB-A ports and 1 USB-C port share 5V 3A ... 20W USB-C charging is only available when the 2 USB-A ports are not in use ... Quick Charge and Power Delivery technologies are not supported on the USB-C port when using both ports simultaneously ... The USB ports of this product are not compatible with laptops ...” Sigh. Better than nothing, I suppose, and when I got it there wasn’t really anything better at the price point.

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