[00dani]

hi! i've had my tangara for a couple of weeks now, and there've been some teething issues getting things to work smoothly. for example, it doesn't want to mount as a usb storage device and has a frustrating habit of rebooting itself during playback for whatever reason - but i figure these are firmware issues and should be sorted out over time, since the firmware's still in active development.

however, i have also noticed the audio output from the tangara's internal DAC has a quiet but noticeable hiss, kinda like an old compact cassette. there is no such hiss when listening over bluetooth, most likely because the tangara's DAC isn't being used. the hiss is also gone when no song is currently being played, but i assume that's simply because the tangara doesn't send anything over the headphone output at all when it's not playing a song.

i've tested the tangara with several sets of headphones, and then tested those headphones with my laptop, and it's definitely only a problem with the tangara's headphone output. so - is this a known issue? and is it likely to be a hardware problem? i'm not really equipped to test the internal components myself and track down anything faulty, i'm more of a software gal.

[rdsh]

I noticed the same on my pair of Moondrop Chu II. There is a post on Crowd Supply that talks about the noise floor being picked up by such devices: https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zo...io-quality. See "A Hack for Budget IEMs".

Perhaps this is the "hiss" you are talking about. It can be fixed by soldering two small resistors as described in the post.

Personally it doesn't bother me much, and it's only slightly audible during quiet parts of a song.

[00dani]

hmm, it's possible my test devices are in that second "easy to drive" + "very sensitive" group, but i'm not sure that's likely? i'm not using high-end audiophile gear: my regular headphones are just a pair of sony wh-1000xm4 noise cancelers, and i've also tested my tangara with extremely basic desk speakers like the logitech z150 set

i would've expected these devices to fall into the first "not very sensitive" category, since they're absolutely not targeted at the audiophile market, but maybe i'm mistaken? i did have a look at the spec sheet for the wh-1000xm4 but couldn't really work out how to compare it against that tangara blog post.

[jacqueline]

Hi! Sorry about your issue!

You might be quite surprised actually about the sensitivity of 'low end' headphones these days. In general AFAICT the industry trend here is using very sensitive but low quality speakers (or transducers or w/e... the bit that turns the AC signal into a noise you can hear!!), and relying on various tuning tricks to shift the frequency response into a sensible-looking curve. The spec you want to look for is some value in terms of SPL (in dB) per watt. SPL per volt is also fine if there's a nominal impedance listed for your headphones.

So far we've had a few folks reach out for support with an audible noise floor, and each time it's turned out that the Tangara itself has been operating fine (knock on wood). Happy to help you look into it further though! And of course soldering a couple of resistors into your mainboard will probably sort out your noise floor issues either way.