[deshipu]

I recently had to do some traveling, and as a person who's sensitive to sounds, I need a music player for such ordeals. This was the first time I traveled with Tangara as my player of choice, and I'd like to share some grievances I had, in the hope that this will prove helpful for future development. Please remember that this is a very personal thing, many of the problems stem from my own habits, and this is not supposed to be a review of the product. I still think it's amazing that a thing like Tangara was possible, and I have no regrets in supporting the project.

I had several different headphones with me: Google's Pixel Buds Pro, and B&O Beoplay Portal both as bluetooth as with a cable. I don't normally use bluetooth headphones, because I prefer to have a dedicated device for music and not my phone, but since Tangara gave me the option, I decided to try it.

The Pixel Buds were a complete disaster. The music kept stuttering whenever I moved, and they disconnected frequently and would not reconnect until I placed them in their case, held down the pairing button, went into settings in Tangara, unpaired them, and paired them again. They would also disconnect if there was no music for several seconds (for example if I paused the music to hear announcements). It doesn't help that Tangara would reset whenever I disabled bluetooth. In the end, I spent more time fiddling with the buds than actually listening to music, and when I had to take them off to pair them, I also was exposed to the noise around me.

The B&O headphones were slightly better in that I only had to pair them with Tangara after switching Tangara on, they didn't disconnect randomly, but it would still be great if Tangara could remember the pairing and reconnect automatically after being switched on. There was less stuttering, it mostly happened while I was walking, with Tangara in my knee pocket, it was better while I was sitting.

I ended up using the cable most of the time. The music from Tangara was very quiet even on full volume, but the B&O headphones have their own amplifier, so I was able to get the volume to reasonable level. I'm a bit worried that it resulted in shorter battery life for the headphones, though.

Now, about the user interface of Tangara. I normally have my music sorted into subdirectories, and I pick one directory to play at a time. This doesn't work with Tangara, because while I can browse the files, and play an individual file, it doesn't automatically play the next file in the directory, like all other players that I have used do. There is also no "play all" button in the directory browser, like there is for the database browser. I'm also missing a "go to the next directory" button.

So I was forced to use the database browser, but since I had to move between the settings and the browser so often, I ended up only listening to albums that start with the letter A, because scrolling down the list was just too fiddly. If I tried to scroll too fast, it would often click by mistake or exit the browser, and I would need to start from the beginning. I can't see myself ever getting down to Z. The author and genre browsers are pretty much useless with the kind of music collection I have — I like to listen to whole albums, not random tracks.

It was impossible to operate the player without looking at the screen, which is a big step back from my previous player.

The battery life was decent, it lasted for two days of travel.