Music Players

Linux uses Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) for music playback.

ALSA in tandem with direct audio hardware access provides audio quality that will surpass that of Windows or OS X out of the box. Despite this superiority few audiophiles are adopting Linux as their OS of choice. For many Linux is a beast that's difficult to tame!

Snakeoil OS attempts to bridge this gap and break the barrier by making it easy for you install and try out the various excellent music software that's freely available in the Linux ecosystem.

In the music player page of the Snakeoil WebApp, you can easily choose the music player and the associated audio output device with a few easy clicks. The GUI will abstract you from all the complications one usually associated with the Linux world.

Software Players

Some players come preinstalled with Snakeoil. Others can be installed either from the command line, or via the Snakeoil page (activated required).

Please refer to the music players section for more details.

Bundled Software Players

The following music players comes pre-installed for every Snakeoil PC:

• Music Player Daemon (MPD)
• Squeezelite

Additional Software Players

• Lyrion Music Server
• JRiver Media Center
• Clementine
• deadbeef
• qmmp
• HQPlayer
• HQPlayer NAA
• RoonBridge
• RoonServer
• Spotify Connect (??? Still working???)
• Minimserver
• Upmpdcli
• And more....

Snakeoil PCs running the free edition can also add these players by logging in to the Snakeoil PC (console or shell). Note also the free edition supports one audio device only.

Any players that were running previously will be automatically stopped when you select and start new players. This ensures only the right players are running, thus preventing unnecessary wastage of system resources, or potential conflicts and other random oddities.

Unfortunately activated or free, some software will require additional configuration outside this Web App. This will be discussed in detail in the next chapter.

The above shows the music players page - broken down into 4 sections: Software, Output Devices, Available Music Software and  Configuration of player. This page we will explain the UI of selecting and configuring the audio output. For a more in depth look into individual music players, please refer to the next chapter - How To Play Music.

Software

This panel shows the current music player(s) that are running in your Snakeoil PC.

• Status: A green tick will be showing when running.  If it is a red cross, please look at the log.
• Name: Music player currently running
• Remote: Some setups include a web based remote control (e.g. LMS or MPD). When one is detected it will be shown. You can click on the link to start the web remote.
• Logs: If there is an error with the music player, click of the log which may help solving the problem. Otherwise, please post issue on the SnakeOil forum.

Output Devices

Below the fields are all the audio output devices that are currently detected by Snakeoil OS. The sample rate will b e displayed if the device is playing music. You can use this information to ascertain if you are outputting 'bit perfect' audio to your device. The information in this status may not be up to date as it is only shown on demand. You can click the 'reload' button on the top right to get the latest update.

Available Music Software

Here you'd find a list of software players.

This is the easiest way to start.  Just select one of the above options, configure the player (see below) and save.

If you click on the top right hand side, there are more players available. In the Expert panel, you have the option of selecting a version of the music player (they can sound different!) as well as the combinations to use. 

Here, there are 3 software components in use (in an Activated setup).
You can use the flexibility of SnakeOil to run a 2 PC setup. For example one high power, high storage machine for LMS, and one low power machine for Squeezelite.

Player Configuration

If you are find no audio playing, or if the volume is too low, you can try and click the button Set Volume to 100% and see if that helps.

Many of the players require further setup.
Here's a brief description of the fields:

• Audio Output: Select the hardware output to use
• Custom Audio Output: This allows advanced users to further customise the output.
• Streaming Mode: Select 'DSD over PCM (DoP) Support' if your audio device is a DSD DAC. Select this also if you are going to use mpd-dsd-rt and add the native_dsd_type option in the extra options box. For other DACs, select PCM mode. DSD material will be converted to PCM via software and sent to the audio card. WARNING: Do not use DoP if your audio card is not a DSD DAC as damage to your system may occur.
• Options: Here you can specify additional parameters to tweak the selected software. Refer to the Extra Options section later in this chapter for more information.