patch 14.12

Same here, no effect whatsoever. Any setting that can be changed in the app does nothing to get it back to how it used to sound. If this had happened within my first 30 days I would have sent it back, no question. I think SONOS forget that we hear and live with their products day in day out. I am utterly astonished how this ‘update’ was approved and pushed out to devices. Must be a different team to those who originally released (the ARC) at least. I know everyone has different equipment, TruePlay, room conditions, tonal tastes etc but it’s very annoying. Anyway I might call up instead of keep ranting on here.

Well I’ve just been on to a very helpful person at Sonos, confirmed that they are indeed working on a fix for the problem. I hope it’s soon, I have 30 days to return. Such a shame that this once decent brand has taken such a nosedive. Mind you, I’ve tried so many other soundbars, all of them having problems. 

In most rooms, I’ve perceived little to no improvement, and in fact often leave TruePlay off. I do pay attention to speaker placement, and it does help when there’s not an ideal placement available. But to say that Android users are getting ¾ the experience seems to be a bit much from my perspective. I truly believe that if Sonos felt is was a “requirement” to get their speakers sounding perfectly, they’d have created a device, as suggested. The fact that they haven’t leads me to the supposition that it’s merely an “add on” without significant enough value to rate that kind of treatment. It’s nifty, when it works, but I also don’t believe that when it’s not there, you’re getting less. 

I do believe there’s mostly value in the other “self” tuning that Sonos does for individual speakers, but the fact that Sonos have not created a way for non-iOS users to achieve TruePlay is indicative to me that it’s not “all that and a bag of chips” . I do think people’s perception of the value there is overblown. 

I have sub and rears too.rMy experience is with Truplay off. Sonos is suggesting to disable trueplay temporarily. Seems they are working on fix for sub power wihile trueplay is enabled.

Did the update yesterday. Redid Trueplay, but I found the dialogs on the Arc to be rather worse than improved. I watched the latest episode of Better Call Saul on Netflix and it was like they were all in a box or something. Very muddy and not crisp at all. Maybe a coincidence. Will have to watch more to see if it was incidental.

Agreed 👍

That is really so sad. Sonos is a really, really great system when it works. Just before I updated to 14.12 I was regaining my love of movies, and more specifically, movies on a Sonos Surround setup. And now this issue during the holiday season.

I am going to see a) if they fix this and b) it restores the sound before I start hunting for a new system. But, very very sadly, if they don't then I will have to move on. (It will be back to separates and wire for me).

The Move has always been ok on S1, along with other issues on top that has made me very reluctant to move to S2 (and buy the Arc). 

Seems Sonos can't help but mess around with their systems, luckily S1 has been left alone recently.

For the sub…. I now have the sub-level @ +8, Loudness on, Bass @ -1 and treble @ +2 after Trueplay tuning.

Still not as punchy as before, but it gets closer to it. I think by lowering the bass in the equalizer and turning the sub-level up, it brings down the mid-range bass a bit and pulling up the low-range bass. Now it sounds like a balanced frequency response curve, so I don't have to raise and lower the volume constantly while watching a movie to prevent annoying my neighbour 😂

If you watch this video:
 

You will get a pretty understanding what’s going on at the moment. Although this was measured with only the Arc, without Trueplay tuning. It Brought me to the idea to lower the bass level a notch en increase sub-level drastically.

This doesn’t mean I’m satisfied with the result, but it’s better that it was since 14.12 in my opinion. I have reported the issue to Sonos a few days ago. First with the chat. I don’t know who it was, but she suggested that my iPhone was not working correctly and suggested to get another iPhone to redo Trueplay tuning. Yes, right… So they blame the iPhone instead of recognising their own mistake. I have heard that before. So I picked up the phone and called Sonos support. The employee was very happy with my feedback and promised me to report it straight to the Sonos engineers. He also told me, it can’t be my iPhone, because Trueplay works, or it doesn't. If the microphone of the iPhone isn't working properly, it will not finish the Trueplay, end of story.

I also noticed a difference in sound  reduction especially from streaming services,.. Also watching blu rays.

Tried his advice made me wince 😜

For those who are experiencing the significantly lower volume levels, I’m curious to know what your setup is. What model TV is the Arc connected to? What media devices are you using? Is the lower volume with both TV and music audio?