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Hi All

I wanted to make you aware of an experience I am having with both Sonos and Samsung. I am on my second Samsung tv (replacement q95t) and the following letter to CEO’s of both companies should explain. Be interesting to know if any members of this community are aware or have experienced these issues.

Dear Patrick/Sang Ho Jo gwi-ha

 

Apologies for the direct approach, however I must make you aware of a situation with regards to two of your companies top consumer products.   I have been a loyal purchaser of both Samsung and Sonos products for a number of years now, and most recently have purchased your Sonos Arc Soundbar and Samsung Q95T television products.   On receipt of these products, I have noticed a compatibility issue between the two aforementioned products around the eARC connectivity. Simply put, once eARC is enabled on the Samsung device, no sound is transmitted via the Sonos Arc. Once Disabled however, sound is apparent.   From a samsung perspective, I have been issued a second device which has had the same issue, and no further known resolution to fix has been offered with technical advising its not a Samsung issue. From a Sonos Perspective, the response from technical has been to "confirm that the issue you are experiencing has been raised with the right teams who are looking into it, regarding e-ARC needing to be off to get audio from this TV. We don't have a timescale on a resolution at this time".   From a loyal user, this is far from perfect with no eta to fix, or even a guarantee that it will be fixed and no clear view on where the issue resides, with Samsung or Sonos?   On looking at the Samsung forums, this appears to be an issue not just for myself but for many other users now. The following is one example of feedback from Sonos on the Samsung Forums:  

"It does look like there may be some issues arising when the eARC function on the TV is enabled. DD+ is capable of carrying a compressed ATMOS signal, so you should still be able to experience ATMOS from your Arc. In the mean time however there's no fix for this.

 

I'm not able to give you a solid answer right now unfortunately, however the Arc is known to work with other TVs so my inclination would be that this is a Samsung issue. We are certainly aware of this however and we are reaching out to Samsung in order to get this resolved.

 

I would expect this to be fixable via a Firmware update, however I can't guarantee this unfortunately.

 

We are reaching out to Samsung in order to get this issue resolved. Due to the huge number of TV models and manufacturers, issues such as this do sometimes arise - in any case we are looking in to getting it resolved and we are happy to assist any customers which are affected by this issue.

 

So basically SONOS are blaming Samsung because the ARC works with other TV's. No firm promise of a fix, not very impressed with SONOS at this point as Samsung could be classed as a major supplier of global premium TV's, you would have thought that they would have ensured their premium soundbar would work with the new Samsung Flagship range, but apparently not."   So my ask is simple - please can your organisations work together to resolve this issue as opposed to the blame culture that has been our experience - Many users have purchased both devices on the strength of this eARC capability, and this is clearly advertised as a function of your devices.  My retailer in the UK is on standby to take these products back if we can't get to a resolution which would be a major disappointment so I hope you can find a solution to this issue for me.   Kind Regards   Mike

Hi @Mikelev, thanks for reaching out and sharing this with us. Appreciate all the efforts as well and we understand where you’re coming from. We greatly appreciate reporting it to Samsung as well but we have reported the issue to Samsung and are assisting them in resolving the issue. For now, as Dolby TrueHD Atmos content is not affected, if you utilize True HD (Atmos) content from an external device ( such as Blu Ray / Xbox etc) you’ll need to turn eArc back on when playing this content. We apologize for the inconvenience but we’ll surely let you know once this has been fixed. Thanks! 

Hi Krishna

I tried this today and still no sound, I will try the audio settings on the PS4 to double check.

To assist further, another report has come in from a user who returned the Q95T for a Q90T:

Q90t arrived. EARC possible now without any problems, Arc is shown as HDMI EARC Receiver. Interestingly the sonos app now shows Input: Dolby Atmos instead of DD+ (Dolby Atmos), when watching a show on Netflix in Atmos.

so i think it’s really a one connect box issue.

Hope this helps

Hi @Mikelev, thanks for replying. We greatly appreciate that and yes, we’re also receiving reported issues upon playing content from PlayStation4 with eARC switched on. For now, disable eARC on the Samsung 55Q95T TV for Inbuilt DD+Atmos Content. Thanks!

@Krishma M any update on this. It seems like this has been a well known problem for months now. I’m just wondering if there is any realistic hope of a fix. Surely by know engineers on either side would at least know what the problem is and whether it can be fixed via software? Really keen for an update on the issue, just to help inform a decision around product return...

I initiated a warranty claim on my Samsung 75 Q80R.  And I was surprised how quickly they chose to refund my money.  It’s as though Samsung is aware that their HDMI-ARC port is defective.  The process took almost 3 months.  But they came and took back the TV and my money was deposited into my bank account a few days later after that.

P.S. I replaced it with a Sony X950H.  It works great.

Hi @Mr Ben Logan, thanks for reaching out. We understand that some of the users here experiencing the above issue and we have reported the issue to Samsung and are assisting them in resolving the issue. We highly encourage the users here to report the issue to Samsung also the same as @MSterling. Anyway, thanks for sharing and reporting the issue @MSterling with Samsung. Please let us know if there’s anything else we can help you with. We and the community are always here.

I initiated a warranty claim on my Samsung 75 Q80R.  And I was surprised how quickly they chose to refund my money.  It’s as though Samsung is aware that their HDMI-ARC port is defective.  The process took almost 3 months.  But they came and took back the TV and my money was deposited into my bank account a few days later after that.

P.S. I replaced it with a Sony X950H.  It works great.

What did you claim under warranty? I think I am having same issue with same TV. I might also try it.

Hi folks. Here's an update for all users using Samsung 2020 QLED (LS03T) Range in the US.
Samsung released a firmware update version 1402.1 that may assist in mitigating the issue.
Currently, the update appears to only be available for US models and via a manual USB update.
Reach out to Samsung for further assistance and hope this helps.
We and the community are always here to help.

Hi folks. Here's an update for all users using Samsung 2020 QLED (LS03T) Range in the US.
Samsung released a firmware update version 1402.1 that may assist in mitigating the issue.
Currently, the update appears to only be available for US models and via a manual USB update.
Reach out to Samsung for further assistance and hope this helps.
We and the community are always here to help.

@Krishma M  So, it is only for 2020 models. Any idea if they plan to give updates for the 2019 QLED series? I am having issue with Q70R 2019 one.

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