Tweaks to Do Music Your Way

Introduction

Out of the box, SnakeOil will likely sound very good and some of you may be content to leave it as it is. However, others chose SnakeOil because of the philosophy of doing music your way. This discussion brings together the things and tweaks that you can try with SnakeOil.  You then decide what works for you.  

Backup before tweaking

While many tweaks can easily be reversed and are not permanent, it is still possible to accidentally make your system unusable. For your peace of mind, please backup your:

• Music if stored on the SnakeOil instance
• SnakeOil configuration in System tab, useful if you rebuild your system from scratch.
• microSD card if using a Pi computer
• Instance of your AMD computer using a tool like CloneZilla

Tips

Player tweaks

1. Try the various music players including MPD and LMS/Squeezelite.  Even versions of the players may sound different. Discover for yourself that software players are NOT the same.
2. If you have more than 1 computer, experiment using a separate server and endpoint.
3. Look at music streaming services and compare with local music.
4. If you have music stored on various devices, compare the music from different devices, e.g. USB drives, normal hard drives, SSDs, network storage (NAS). Setup discussed in music library. If you have issues setting up the library, please look at Adding Music.
5. Compare your stored music with music in ram. Enable RAM disk in SnakeOil/Hardware tab, use File Manager (Browse tab) to transfer music to RAM disk, and play music from Ram.  A bit fiddly, but has potential to provide the best sound quality while doing critical listening

System tweaks

1. Enable CPUSets in SnakeOil/Hardware tab.  This isolates your music players from the rest of the system.  Something easy to do but overlooked by many users.
2. Compare a standard kernel with Ubuntu real time kernel.  There are also kernel options and clock sources to try, see SnakeOil. While it is usually safe to change Ubuntu kernels, doing a custom kernel, and changing boot parameters may require you to recover from a failed boot.
3. Explore room correction software. The room has the biggest influence on sound quality and to properly correct for the room does require effort and expertise.