How to connect the WiiM Ultra to the Rega Brio MK7 and Rega Kyte

What you need

Already have

No cablethe Kyte box holds two rear feet and four screws, and that is all

Need to buy

Stereo RCA interconnectUltra to Brio MK7

Speaker cablesone pair, the same length on both sides

Rega's instruction on speaker cable is the shortest on this page and the one most often ignored: always use the same length to each loudspeaker. Not the same length as the gap, the same as each other. Work out the route the cable will actually take around the edge of the room, measure the longer side, add slack so the speakers can move once you have heard them, and buy a pair at that figure.

Where the Kyte goes is a matter of tuning rather than rules. Rega will tell you it works on stands, a sturdy shelf or a flat surface, and that both the imaging and the bass respond to how far the cabinet sits from the rear and side walls: closer to a structural wall gives more bass. How much depends on the room, the floor and the furniture, so their advice is to try a few distances rather than to follow a figure, and it is worth doing before the cable length is fixed.

One thing the box does contain. Two rear feet and four Pozi 2 screws come with the Kytes, one foot per speaker, and you will need a PZ2 screwdriver that does not. Fitting them is the first job, before anything is plugged into anything.

Connecting it

1. Fit the rear feet to the Kytes first, hand tightening two screws through each foot into the threaded holes on the back of the speaker. Rega's warning here is in capitals in their own manual and it is worth repeating: never place the speaker face down while you do it, or you will damage the drive units.
2. Before the screws go fully tight, stand the speaker on a flat surface with the foot attached and check it sits level, then finish tightening.
3. Position the speakers and live with them for a few days before you commit to a cable length. Moving them closer to a wall adds bass, moving them out reduces it.
4. Turn the Brio MK7 off and unplug it before the speaker cables go anywhere near it. Rega print that instruction in capitals too, and it applies every time you change a lead, not just the first time.
5. Connect red to red and black to black at the amplifier and at both speakers, and keep the two runs the same length.
6. Run the stereo RCA lead from the Ultra's line out to input 2, 3 or 4 on the Brio MK7. Those three are the line inputs; input 1 is the phono one and is not where a streamer goes.
7. Plug the amplifier in and switch on. A gentle click a few seconds later is the switch-on relay releasing, which means it is ready.
8. Select the input with the button on the front panel or the remote, keep the volume down while you find it, then bring it up.

Two phono stages, and which one to use

The Brio MK7's input 1 is a moving-magnet phono input with a grounding nut on the rear panel directly below it, and Rega say the loading suits most moving-magnet cartridges on the market. The Ultra has a phono input too, and it goes further: 41dB of gain for moving magnet and 59dB for moving coil, with its own ground terminal, and an RIAA accuracy WiiM quote as better than half a decibel across the audible band.

So a turntable could go to either. Into the Brio, the deck's phono lead goes to input 1 and its earth to the grounding nut, and the signal never touches the streamer. Into the Ultra, the deck's phono lead goes to the phono sockets and its earth to the terminal beside them, and the record then travels down the same single RCA interconnect as everything else. The second route is the one that suits a moving-coil cartridge, because the Brio's input is moving magnet only.

Two details decide it in practice. The Ultra's phono input is one pair of sockets switched between moving magnet and moving coil in the app rather than two separate inputs, so it takes one deck and not two. And if the deck is a Rega, there is no earth wire to connect at either end: Rega ground their decks through the phono lead itself, which is why the grounding nut on the back of a Rega amplifier is there for everybody else's turntables.

One piece of Rega's own setup advice belongs here rather than in the steps, because it is about where the boxes sit. If there is a turntable in the system, put the amplifier as far from the cartridge as the tonearm lead will reach, which keeps the amplifier's magnetic field away from it.

Running it digitally instead

Both boxes can turn the digital signal into an analogue one, and we do not rate either converter above the other here, so this is a preference rather than an upgrade. The analogue route is the one described above, out of the Ultra's line out, and the Ultra converts.

The other route uses the Brio MK7's two digital inputs. A coaxial S/PDIF cable runs from the Ultra's coax out to input D1, or a Toslink optical lead runs from its optical out to input D2, and in either case the Brio converts instead. Neither of those leads comes with either box, and the coaxial one wants to be a proper 75 ohm digital cable rather than a spare RCA interconnect. Try both and keep the one you prefer.