patch 14.12

IMHO this is an excellent update. I have an Arc, Ones and Sub and have always found this quite poor with music - way too in your face and bass heavy. The tweaking of the arc in this newest update gives a WAY better overall sound. Instead of having bass at -3, treble at +3, loudness off, sub at -5...and still having the music thudding off my concrete walls, I now have well-balanced sound with bass at -1, treble at +1, loudness on and sub at 0. The arc has always been good for classical and jazz, but I found too intrusive for pop and rock. This update gets a big thumbs up from me.

My home theater setup: Arc, Sub Gen 3, (2) One SLs. I loved my system before the 14.12 update. After the update, my Sub output was drastically reduced. I would liken it to someone turning the gain 70% down on a car audio subwoofer amplifier. Or potentially, hooking a sub up to an amp with a high-pass crossover turned on preventing the sub from being able to perform in the sound frequency range it was designed to.

Here is what I did to attempt to rectify the issue: 

Removed sub from home theater group, disconnected sub and reset it, ran trueplay multiple times, adjusted manual sub audio and bass equalizer settings (all the way up), also tested with and without trueplay tuning. For reference, pre update my home theater group equalizer settings were: Bass +3 and Sub Audio +3.

In the end, my sub output is still a fraction of what it was before this update (even with bass and sub audio levels all the way up. Bass +10 & Sub Audio +15).

Someone mentions this might be a gen 3 sub issue. Been noticing that affected users seem to be on Gen 3 rather than 2? Might be worth confirming. 

This 14.12 update ruined my system! I’ve spent a lot of money because I love sonos products but everything is significantly lowered now during music and movies since this update. It turned my bass down to almost nothing, the bass isn’t what it used to be. Please Sonos fix these issues!

You do know you can manually tune the Sub and surround levels, right?

Yes, of course but even then it is still not the same, this update has screwed up the way the sound system sounds as it has for many others.

I have a Sub Gen 3 and it sounds just as good as it did before the update. If anything, it sounds less boomy than it did before which is a good thing.

I have two sub Gen 3s and I am experiencing issues as well. Seems like the update lowered the bass tremendously and it now sounds flat. Hopefully Sonos fixes the issues soon.

My setup is Arc + One SL (x2) surrounds. I don’t have a Sub.

Before the 14.12 update this is how my system was setup:

The Arc was tuned with Trueplay alone but the system was not Trueplay tuned after the surrounds were added. After much experimentation this setup seemed to produce the most balanced sound for me. Bass was deep but not overpowering. My EQ was set to bass +8. Height audio was +8. Surrounds music setting +4, ambient mode.

After the 14.12 update I tried tuning with Trueplay multiple times, also with and without the surround speakers connected. There is definitely a big difference in the way the system sounds overall:

• The surround speakers now sound a lot louder in all modes: Atmos movies, stereo music in ambient mode, etc. Even when listing to stereo TV the surrounds are a lot more noticeable. When listening to stereo music (surrounds in ambient mode) they also seem to produce more bass than before. This is even with surround volume for music now set to 0.
• Probably due to the higher surround speakers volume now content in Atmos and 5.1 has a very distinct channel separation. E.g. I can clearly tell when a sound is playing from one of the surrounds. I’m not sure yet if this a good or bad thing. It feels like Atmos sounded more subtle, atmospherical and enveloping before while now it is very clearly directional.
• Bass overall is lower but it also sounds different in general. When listening to stereo music bass sounds very unbalanced and muddy. Occasionally it completely overpowers the sound but overall it really lacks definition and sounds thin. This is not as noticeable and bad with movies but there is definitely less bass. Lower overall volume makes the issue worse with bass nearly completely disappearing.
• Dialogue appears to be somewhat clearer now but this seems to be at the expense of higher treble overall. High frequencies can be almost piercing now especially at higher system volume.
• There seems to be a difference with the Arc’s volume levels but I can’t quite put my finger on it. For example I had to increase the height audio setting to +10 from +8 before the update. I’m also having to put the overall system volume higher than before with some content but I can’t find a clear pattern yet.

My overall impression of the changes in 14.12 is very much negative. My system sounds unbalanced and bass is lacking. Trueplay doesn’t seem to make a significant difference with the issues and if fact I’d say it makes them worse.

I don’t have a Sub in my setup because I generally dislike very loud, rattling bass especially with TV and movies. Before the 14.12 update I found music to be perfectly bass-y and balanced with just the Arc and surrounds. Movies and TV had just enough bass to send vibrations through my sofa but not so loud as to rattle my windows and annoy the neighbours. I think it is telling that even someone like me who prefers balanced bass finds the system very thin and unbalanced after 14.12.

I appreciate Sonos’ efforts to enhance their products through software updates and usually I’d consider this a good thing. However, it is also extremely annoying that they would release buggy updates and updates that occasionally change the sound profile of their products in such drastic ways. As other commenters have said: if something is not broken (and nobody is complaining about it) perhaps it would be best not to change it.

Here’s to hoping Sonos will address these issues ASAP.

P.S. Decided to report the issues directly with Sonos too just to add my case/voice to their backlog. The chat agent (Horea) was very courteous and informed. They advised me that Sonos has indeed recognised this as an issue and are working on a fix. Fingers crossed!