BEAM buzzing and humming. Sonos say there's no fault?

HI @iaink.

Welcome to the Sonos community and thanks for bringing this to our attention. Allow me to provide my recommendations to put an end to this issue.

We apologize for the experience with our Support team. I would like to recommend the same situation of contacting our technical support team for more in-depth troubleshooting steps. If you feel that the Support team does not meet your expectation of service provided, please do not hesitate to ask for assistance from our tier 2. They have additional tools necessary for testing and conducting further evaluation and investigation about this concern. This is for our engineering team and our tier 2 team would be made aware and conduct an investigation of this is a bug, a glitch, or an issue that needs to be taken care of by our engineering team. This is not a normal behavior, however, we have received a similar situation of having crackling sound on the Sonos Beam. Turns out that there was another Wireless capable device that affects the Sonos Beam’s performance and causes wireless interference. Allow me to share with you a thread here in the community that possibly have almost the same issue as your Sonos Beam and may find his solution helpful. Another would be the guide on how to reduce wireless interference. Please feel free to commend and ask questions on the topic I have shared.

I hope this helps.

Please let me know how it goes. I’ll be more than happy to help if you have any other questions or concerns.

Thanks,

Hello Paul A

Thank you for your detailed message, I appreciate it.

Youre right, I don't feel I've had the best experience with the support team, so I many contact 'Tier 2'. However this is unlikely -  I think I am just going to sell the Beam. Even if there IS a fix available, I really don't have the time or desire to spend time dealing with technical support, trying to figure out what the problem is. I work, and have a family which demands my time when I'm not working, then there are the household chores to do etc etc. It really frustrates me that I have to spend this time with Sonos support to get my speakers working as they should.

I did try to look at the thread you sent me a link for, but when I click on the link, I am presented with a Log In page for something called 'Insided Sonos Community', which doesn't recognise the log in details I use for this site. So I can get no further.

On Saturday the Play 3 in my bedroom disappeared from the app on my phone, meaning I couldn't control it. So I unplugged/plugged it in, and it reappeared. Not ideal, but ok...Sunday morning, and it's disappeared once more. Again, I don't have the time to be unplugging/resetting/messing around changing wireless channels or whatever it takes to get it all to 'just work'. There are many advantages to owning Sonos, but the inconvenience of these glitches outweigh them all or me I'm afraid.

Maybe it's all down to me, or interference from other stuff in my house, I don't know. But I've had a Sonos system all working pretty seamlessly for 10 plus years, and all of a sudden it's going wrong and annoying me too much, so I think I'm better off with something simpler now. I know there are other ways of getting great sound from my TV, it doesn't necessarily have to be part if a multi room system with Alexa - just something I plug into the back of my TV, which works, without any further effort.

I have exactly the same issue as Iain. My sonos beam is connected to my Samsung smart tv (along with a pair of Play Ones). Everything works fine all the time with the exception of one thing - when i’ve been watching YouTube on television for, say about 30 minutes or more, and I select a new video to watch, I suddenly get the same buzzing interference that Iain mentions. I’ve found the only way to get rid of it is to unplug the beam at the power socket and then power the beam back up. I have a sky wireless connector box next to my beam. Is it this that is causing the interference?
 

Like Iain, i’m unable to access the link to the thread you refer to. 

Pog - I have a Sky HD TV box within 3 feet of my Beam, but as I no longer subscribe to Sky I have unplugged the wireless dongle from it. So I can't see that being the issue in my case. I have no idea what might be causing any interference.

Hi @iaink.

Thanks for the update and immediate feedback. The link above on the thread I have shared has already been corrected. Feel free to re-visit the page and comment. I would also suggest try seeking assistance directly from our tier 2 if that is the case. I’ll recommend giving it one more try and I would like to ask for that chance to give it another go and see what happens. I would suggest contacting them during the weekdays office hours. The root cause of this redundant issue should be addressed so that Sonos can work seamlessly with your network.

I hope you can still give it one last try and let me know how it goes, Keep me posted.

Thanks,

Hi @Pog.

Welcome to the Sonos community and thanks for reaching out to us. I have corrected the link. It should be accessible on your end by this posting. I would also like to quote my recommendation just in case you have the same situation with @iaink.

I hope this helps.

Please let me know how it goes. I’ll be more than happy to help if you have any other questions or concerns.

Thanks,

@iaink if they say it is your TV’s Arc port that is the problem then it probably is. Why not follow their advice and switch to the TV’s optical output instead? It does sound like it is the TV that is not working properly, not your Beam, and if the TV is sending garbage out of the Arc port I’m not sure what your expectations of the Beam are to “fix” that.

Hi controlav. From the discussions that were had, I think they were too quick to put the blame on the TV, without exploring other avenues. But hey, what do I know. I could well be wrong. In any case, I can't use the optical output because it means I have to reach for the Sonos app every time I want to change the volume of the TV, for me that's highly inconvenient. But thanks for your advice, and the passive-aggressive tone in which it was dispensed, it is much appreciated. I've switched back to the HDMI Arc to see how it goes, and thankfully no issues for a couple of weeks. 

Why can’t your TV remote control the volume when using optical? Is it not an IR remote?

I mentioned it to Sonos and they said that it's normal that the TV remote won't control the volume when using optical. If you think different then I'm interested to know more. AFAIK its infra red, I wasnt aware there were any other types tbh. It's a standard Samsung TV around 3 years old

I have two Playbars, one uses the Samsung remote codes, the other uses LG. No problems at all. Some TV remotes use Bluetooth (only), and those cannot control any Sonos HT devices. Details of how to set it up are here: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3402?language=en_US

I sometimes despair when I see some of the things the “new” Support folks tell Sonos customers.

Thank you controlav, I will have a look at the link as soon as I get chance. I have no problem using optical if I can use my TV remote to adjust volume. 

Hi all,

I’m also experiencing the same problem as @iaink & @Pog have mentioned and shouldn’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m also connecting the Beam to a Samsung TV using the HDMI ARC.

I’ve had the Beam since March 2020 without this issue but over the past few months (similar timescale to @iaink thinking about it) there have been several times where a buzzing occurs.  Sometimes it’s immediate and others when I’m switching between the Smart TV Apps.  Each time I need to pull the power plug and restart the Beam to stop the buzzing.

Given that I’m connecting the Beam via HDMI, logic tells me that it’s not wireless interference which is causing the issue otherwise it would still happen after the Beam has been powered back on.  As far as I’m aware there hasn’t been a firmware update on the TV.

Happy to speak with any technicians to resolve the issue.

Richie.

My update is as follows: As of about 3 weeks ago I disconnected the Beam using the Optical adapter as that meant I couldn't adjust the volume using my remote, which is just far too inconvenient. I plugged the HDMI Arc back in, fully expecting the old problem to reoccur, but 3 weeks later I have had no further problem with the buzzing. This is definitely progress as prior to my original post on here, it was happening twice a week at least. I have not (knowingly) made any adjustments to the TV settings or the Sonos settings - simply switched back to using HDMI ARC. I'm not getting carried away but so far so good.