Snakeoil OS: The Blog

I mentioned something about my primary DAC in a previous blog article (UpTone JS-2). This article describes in more detail how this unique, one-of-a-kind DAC come to be - an origin story! The KillerDAC is an old school DAC:

• DAC chip is a 16 bit TDA1541A S2 double crown (Taiwan) chip
• Tube rectifier (1x 5U4G)
• Valve output stage (2x 6DJ8/ECC88)
• I2S and S/PDIF inputs

The KillerDAC cannot decode DSD, nor can it play anything higher than 96 kHz/24 bits. This is old school red book DAC, and it sounds amazing to my ears. A device with no fancy marketing gimmicks, and it’s role is to solely playback beautiful music that can touch my soul.

Here it is in it’s current form:And to my eyes it looks stunning in the looks department too. But it didn’t start off like this.

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Introducing the first 64 bit release of Snakeoil! Many things are changed under the hood (refer to the forum threads for detail Changelog). The highlights of the current release are:

• Focus on 32 bit and 64 bit now (instead of Atom vs generic). You can still upgrade to a customised kernel after installation to take full advantage of your current CPU
• Firmware and Kernel upgrade feature should be relatively well tested and deemed stable. These two features are now out of beta test and available in the System tab
• RoonBridge support if you install Snakeoil 64 bits (requires manual installation)
• HQPlayer Network Audio Adapter support (requires manual installation)
• Tired of the default colour scheme? Change it in the System tab.

And for the beta testers:

• Ability to install deb packages (1 file at a time for now)
• Ability to change boot kernel and parameters

Please go to the forums for further details:

Forum post for 0.1.4 ISO

This is the first release of the 64 bit Snakeoil, so expect issues. Please leave comments below, or post in the forums and describe the problems you are facing.

One of the most powerful feature of Snakeoil is the ability to easily upgrade your Snakeoil machine by uploading firmwares and modules. Modules/firmwares can change how the computer behave, and thus may influence the sound quality. And you do all this via the easy to use web interface - no need to master Linux at all! Just watch the video at bottom of post.

This is the interim firmware for the next release (havn’t decide on a code name yet). To apply this firmware upgrade you’d need a computer that’s already pre-installed with Snakeoil OS. You also need to to apply the activation code to enable the beta features.

If you don’t have a Snakeoil machine yet, download the ISO and install this great sounding OS now. 

Download Snakeoil 0.1.4-prelease firmware (05 May 2016)

This firmware will work on 32 bit Snakeoil computer only.

Click on Full Story to see changelog.

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The Snakeoil tab contains several obscure configuration options, one of them would be the Change Priority. This control is used to redefine how CPU(s) juggle running processes, an example of how to set this up is shown here:

This blog post will quickly run through how you can use this to tweak your Snakeoil machine.

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