Upgrade Ubuntu or not (strictly from the sound quality perspective)?

[hkphantomgtr]

Since the Ubuntu 16.04 is EOL and not supported any more, I was thinking of upgrading it.

For me, the sound quality is the most important aspect of using Snakeoil in the first place, so I'm postponing the update to the latest Ubuntu version since there is no custom realtime kernel for it yet.

Because of this, the upgrade to 18.04 seems like the obvious choice, but I'm concerned about the sound quality after reading this two years old post from @agent_kith :
 

Also there's distribution upgrades (do-release-upgrade). In my setup, 16.04.x sounds better than 14.04. But 18.04.x seems worse than 16.04. I'm sure if I spend some time and change a few things, 18.04 with some yet to discover tweaks will sound even better than 16.04.

What is the current situation regarding sound quality differences between Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04?
I'm using Snakeoil 1.2.1 firmware and LMS 8.2.0 with Squeezelite 1.6.4.

If decide to update to 18.04, what is the correct way to do it and to preserve all of the custom Snakeoil goodies that I have now in 16.04?

I see various tips on the internet regarding the correct way of upgrading, but I'm affraid that some of them will mess up the current custom Snakeoil instalation.

When I SSH to my Snakeoiled NUC, I get this message:

Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.7 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.9-rt17-snakeoil-x64 x86_64)
New release '18.04.6 LTS' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

It says that I should simply use the 'do-release-upgrade'  command, but some sites say that I should use much more elaborate procedure with more steps:

https://www.liquidweb.com/kb/how-to-upgr...ntu-18-04/

What to do, what to do!?!?

In the days when I ran Snakeoil OS for MPD, the sound quality of 16.04 is better than 18.0x to my ears.  Now I'm running Snakeoil OS as the exclusive music file server (as minim server) to my streamer, I found 18.0x produces much better sound than 16.04.  Even I've tried to upgrade 18.0x to 20.0x in months ago, it is bound to crash the system and I have to reinstall everything.  I'm not dare to update it to 20.0x since then.

Of course, you may try this in your system, whatever it happens, you just reinstall everything, it doesn't take long unless your music files are stored in the same PC and you've ruined them while installation. 

Good Luck and Have Fun!