[µpod]

I just picked up a Tangara second-hand, and am quite excited about it! Today was my first day using it, and i encountered a… troubling, transient issue: when playing music, i noticed some significant distortion in the output.

Here's what happened:

First, my headphones are Sony WH-1000X M3. I noticed this distortion:
* When connected via cable through an external volume-control potentiometer (with and without active noise cancellation);
* When connected directly via (a quality) cable (with and without active noise cancellation);
* When connected over Bluetooth (which forces active noise cancellation) [a rude surprise that this change didn't affect the situation!]

The distortion is hard to describe; it was just sort of a general buzzing whenever music was playing. Silent parts were silent, but when there was sound, there was kind of a… halo of buzzing hum around and within it, almost a kind of frying sound distortion, and it was /very/ distracting. I just switched from a cheap generic player, so it was kind of a shock that the sound being produced from the Tangara was a definite step down from this!

That said: this issue has since disappeared.

I ended up disassembling the unit to investigate whether there was anything obviously wrong. In this process, the unit was switched off for… perhaps thirty minutes, and—perhaps crucially?—i reseated the cable connecting the two boards.

Mostly: is this a problem anyone else has noticed? Is it the sort of intermittent thing i should have a prepared workaround for? Is it conceivable that i might have accidentally resolved it in the disassembly / reassembly process? Are there obvious places to troubleshoot if it occurs again?

So far i do love the unit—i've listened to several hours of podcasts already ^^ (this issue was probably present but not notable when the only sound was voices speaking; and anyway, podcast recording equipment is, of course, of highly variable quality anyway, so the listening experience is much more forgiving). I'd just like to have something ready in my back pocket should this arise again. Thanks so much in advance for any help and/or thoughts!

[µpod]

Additional info: it happened again. The conditions that cause it to begin producing distortion are unclear, but a power cycle cleared it up. That is: i turned the display off by toggling the hold switch, waited for whatever duration of time is needed for the device to go into a deeper sleep / shut down, and when i turned it back on the distortion was gone.

Thus, three questions:
1. Any suggestions on what might be causing this?
2. What additional troubleshooting could i do / is there more info i could provide?
3. Is there a way to force a reboot, other than just waiting with the display off?

Thanks again for any thoughts!

I just picked up a Tangara second-hand, and am quite excited about it! Today was my first day using it, and i encountered a… troubling, transient issue: when playing music, i noticed some significant distortion in the output.

Here's what happened:

First, my headphones are Sony WH-1000X M3. I noticed this distortion:
* When connected via cable through an external volume-control potentiometer (with and without active noise cancellation);
* When connected directly via (a quality) cable (with and without active noise cancellation);
* When connected over Bluetooth (which forces active noise cancellation) [a rude surprise that this change didn't affect the situation!]

The distortion is hard to describe; it was just sort of a general buzzing whenever music was playing. Silent parts were silent, but when there was sound, there was kind of a… halo of buzzing hum around and within it, almost a kind of frying sound distortion, and it was /very/ distracting. I just switched from a cheap generic player, so it was kind of a shock that the sound being produced from the Tangara was a definite step down from this!

That said: this issue has since disappeared.

I ended up disassembling the unit to investigate whether there was anything obviously wrong. In this process, the unit was switched off for… perhaps thirty minutes, and—perhaps crucially?—i reseated the cable connecting the two boards.

Mostly: is this a problem anyone else has noticed? Is it the sort of intermittent thing i should have a prepared workaround for? Is it conceivable that i might have accidentally resolved it in the disassembly / reassembly process? Are there obvious places to troubleshoot if it occurs again?

So far i do love the unit—i've listened to several hours of podcasts already ^^ (this issue was probably present but not notable when the only sound was voices speaking; and anyway, podcast recording equipment is, of course, of highly variable quality anyway, so the listening experience is much more forgiving). I'd just like to have something ready in my back pocket should this arise again. Thanks so much in advance for any help and/or thoughts!

[ailurux]

Additional info: it happened again.  The conditions that cause it to begin producing distortion are unclear, but a power cycle cleared it up.  That is: i turned the display off by toggling the hold switch, waited for whatever duration of time is needed for the device to go into a deeper sleep / shut down, and when i turned it back on the distortion was gone.

Thus, three questions:
1. Any suggestions on what might be causing this?
2. What additional troubleshooting could i do / is there more info i could provide?
3. Is there a way to force a reboot, other than just waiting with the display off?

Thanks again for any thoughts!

I just picked up a Tangara second-hand, and am quite excited about it!  Today was my first day using it, and i encountered a… troubling, transient issue: when playing music, i noticed some significant distortion in the output.

Here's what happened:

First, my headphones are Sony WH-1000X M3.  I noticed this distortion:
* When connected via cable through an external volume-control potentiometer (with and without active noise cancellation);
* When connected directly via (a quality) cable (with and without active noise cancellation);
* When connected over Bluetooth (which forces active noise cancellation) [a rude surprise that this change didn't affect the situation!]

The distortion is hard to describe; it was just sort of a general buzzing whenever music was playing.  Silent parts were silent, but when there was sound, there was kind of a… halo of buzzing hum around and within it, almost a kind of frying sound distortion, and it was /very/ distracting.  I just switched from a cheap generic player, so it was kind of a shock that the sound being produced from the Tangara was a definite step down from this!

That said: this issue has since disappeared.

I ended up disassembling the unit to investigate whether there was anything obviously wrong.  In this process, the unit was switched off for… perhaps thirty minutes, and—perhaps crucially?—i reseated the cable connecting the two boards.

Mostly: is this a problem anyone else has noticed?  Is it the sort of intermittent thing i should have a prepared workaround for?  Is it conceivable that i might have accidentally resolved it in the disassembly / reassembly process?  Are there obvious places to troubleshoot if it occurs again?

So far i do love the unit—i've listened to several hours of podcasts already ^^ (this issue was probably present but not notable when the only sound was voices speaking; and anyway, podcast recording equipment is, of course, of highly variable quality anyway, so the listening experience is much more forgiving).  I'd just like to have something ready in my back pocket should this arise again.  Thanks so much in advance for any help and/or thoughts!

Hi,

That's really odd, I can't say I've heard of that happening before. Mostly when people have mentioned a distinct buzzing noise it has been because the cable wasn't quite plugged in properly, but over bluetooth as well is strange. What firmware version are you using?

You can force a reboot by using the hard reset function: https://cooltech.zone/tangara/docs/get-s...hard-reset (Holding both power buttons and toggling the lock switch off and on again).

[µpod]

Hi,

That's really odd, I can't say I've heard of that happening before. Mostly when people have mentioned a distinct buzzing noise it has been because the cable wasn't quite plugged in properly, but over bluetooth as well is strange. What firmware version are you using?

You can force a reboot by using the hard reset function: https://cooltech.zone/tangara/docs/get-s...hard-reset (Holding both power buttons and toggling the lock switch off and on again).

Ah, sorry for not saying so sooner! I'm using firmware version 2.0.0 (the latest at present). In case it's relevant, i'm also using version 6.0 of the SAMD21 "coprocessor" firmware.

Thanks for the tip on resetting! Sorry i didn't discover this on my own—i appreciate your taking the trouble to find and pass that link along.