Snakeoil Salesman 2 channel setup

[agent_kith]

This is my 2 channel setup, effectively is the primary system I am using to tune how Snakeoil sounds. This seems pretty ridiculous from a software computing perspective really, but try out Snakeoil OS for yourself and tell me what you think.

The bookshelves I am using are tiny, so the bass output is sub optimal. Applying a pscyhoacoustic technique (missing fundamentals) does give me the perception of a deeper bass, but it's a YMMV thing.

Often times I will go and visit the other systems from the Snakeoil Squad to get a proper bearing on the effects of these changes.

Anyway, here it is:



Close up of the KillerDAC (Taiwan TDA 1541double crown in non oversampling mode, tube rectifier and tube output stage). Kudos to Doncentric for the great work (Read more in this blog article):


The entire system is made up of the following: 

• Marantz SC-11 S1 (Pre Amplifer)
  
• Marantz SM-11 S1 (Power Amplifier)
  
• Marantz SA-11 S2 (CD/SACD Player)
  
• Lenehan Audio ML-1 Ultras (Speakers)
  
• Audio-GD 2014 (Digital Interface)
  
• KillerDAC (Digital Audio Converter)
  
• Jetway 2600 + PPA USB (Computer)
  
• Modified Uptone JS-2 (Computer PSU)
  
• PSAudio P5 (Power Regenerator)
  
• PSAudio Quintet (Power Board)
  
• Acoustic Revive r-77 (Schumann Resonance thingamajingy)
  
• Crappy e-bay dual output PSU
  

Other Accessories: 

• 2x Bass traps (2 front corners)
  
• 3x Panel traps (2 front 1 back)
  
• ClearAudio Diamond power cables
  
• TuneStands (Speaker stands)
  
• AMG Toppers (Sits on top of ML-1 Ultras)
  
• IKEA chopping boards (Isolation)
  
• Kimber SilverStreak XLR (From pre to power)
  
• Achtung XLR (From SACD to pre)
  
• Achtung RCA (From KillerDAC to pre)
  
• Normal printer USB cable (from PPA to DI-2014)
  
• Normal network cable (From DI-2014 to KillerDAC)
  
• 1 Kg dumbell (sits on top of KillerDAC, to silence an annoying hum from a old transformer)
  

The room is very small (2.4 by 2.4), so I'm doing near field listening. I'm applying a lot of other psycho accoustics techniques when evaluating Snakeoil sound quality, the things I usually look for is

• Physical Placement: Identify the physical placement and seperation (i.e. localiation) of each vocal and instrument in the sound stage (360 degrees around me)
  
• Easy Listening: Just enjoying the music as it is, and get fully engaged with it
  
• Naturaless: How natural the decays of the dominant frequencies are (i.e. the harmonics). In other words I hear how the echos trails off. This in general gives me a sense of space, as well as the general recording space.
  
• Scale: When some instrument is playing or vocalist is singing, need to be able to visualise the scale of the sound (when a person is singing, does it sound like a normal person singing in from of you)
  

Short for PENS (there's no I in PENS ). Jokes aside the missing 'I' is actually important. The above is how I listen to music, and is the basis of Snakeoil.  But at the end of the day, everybody is unique. You need to exploare Snakeoil, make the changes, and find your own path that gives you that engagement. Hopefully I have make it easy enough for you to do so, please send me additional suggestions and comments on how to improve Snakeoil. Thanks