Beam (Gen 2) disorted / metallic sound w/ TV (eARC) and Night Sound Mode


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Similar to what is outlined here:

 

I experience in some cases a metallic / distorted / chirping sound on my Beam2. Happens with Panasonic and LG TV, so it’s not a TV issue.

The metallic sound is somewhat in the background, but clearly noticeable. It is also somewhat correlated to the original sound, seems to be directly „derived“ from it, like a distorted low volume copy.

For me only happens in night sound mode.

When i disable night sound, the issue disappears my.

Seem to happen more often on TV channels with PCM stereo. But I have not been able to relay reliably reproduce it. It happens quite often though.

Switching the channel can make the error appear or go away.

Wild engineering guess is some sort of Bitstream MSB/LSB alignment error. Re-init also means re-align and this can fix it. Possibly hardware not SW?

Anyone else experiencing this?

 

 


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I'm experiencing this too. Beam Gen 2, via EARC on HD Arcana. I was using it last night with no issue and noticed the metallic distortion in the background. It while watching BBC1 News this evening.

It seemed to disappear after switching the TV (Panasonic) off and on, along with the V6 box. 

Perhaps see the first paragraph in my earlier post, just in case you do encounter the issue again.

Just bumping this up:

Got a Beam Gen 2 last week and finding that I am getting the same issue after going through every setting on my LG Oled and working through with Sonos Support. Just received my new unit with RMA and still noticeable.

I find that it's really evident in Crowd and clapping scenes, very noticeable in the world cup games that are now on. When you go close to the speaker its definitely coming from the outermost speakers so must be how the sound is processed to the rear channels.

Have you had any further comms with the support team on a possible fix?

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Dear Erik,

 

it is indeed very interesting that this does not happen with rears. It proves that it is some upmixing going wrong.

 

That said, I do not second your conclusion that nothing can be done here. For one, if it does not happen with rears also on stereo, that means stereo is upmixed to multi-channel also.

This is also in line with the my experience that the metallic sound is coming from the sidewards pointing speakers. These are probably the speakers used to create „3D“. So for heavens sake, don’t use them on stereo!

This upmixing of stereo is a feature completely useless and could be disabled altogether IMO.

 

Also, upmixing for multi-channel - if played without rears - may be something people want to disable, if the inevitable (is it really??) result would be metallic sound.

 

So the solution is simple, give us an option to disable upmixing (use of sidewards pointing speakers) -or- refrain from doing it in situations like stereo content.

 

Cheers

Additionally it maybe of help but I have noticed if you use speech enhancement it brings the effect down slightly and also if you use the height setting and go to minus 6 or lower it brings it down. 

Have a play with the height setting while watching a game of football in the world cup and you will notice the difference in the robotic crowd effect.

Hopefully this can help you out 👍
 

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1. Yes sounds similar.

2. Sony x950h

3. Depends on what's playing. I've heard the sound in 2.0, 5.1 and Atmos. The app reports the correct format in each case. 

4. The problem doesn't change based on passthrough but I can't hear it when switched to PCM. 

Are you able to provide some examples @Shnakey that you use to reproduce the issue - it would be helpful if there was more than the YT Superman video, even better if the samples are perhaps available on the streaming platforms, like Amazon, or Netflix, Movies/Shows etc. 

Thanks 🙏 

I would be particularly interested in something that is multi-channel, e.g. 5.1. Which I have not found in my setup.

I don’t think the forum moderators are looped in on what the programming team is doing, and certainly we community members are not. 

Honestly, if you were to call in to one of the companies that I’ve worked with programming teams on, we would not have ever told you that we were working on something or not. There is always too much potential for a misunderstanding, from whether it could be resolved, to how long it would take to figure out, then how long to rewrite the code (and how much needed to be rewritten, just how pervasive in the codebase was it? Bugs are rarely one or two line fixes), then the whole QA process, then the beta testing process….and anywhere along the line is the possibility that the ‘fix’ didn’t work in the way that was expected, and has to go back to the beginning for reevaluation. And at some point, there’s the opportunity for some management type to say ‘this bug isn’t impacting more than a handful, and we can make more money by focusing our resources somewhere else’….

None of that data would ever be shared publicly, for what I hope are obvious reasons. 

Your best bet, to have your complaint heard and passed on, is to call in to customer support, preferably with a diagnostic number handy, so that they can pass your ‘real world case with data’ on to the team. 

Understood, but no one in this community would have an ‘answer’ for you. You’d still need to get that directly from Sonos. As painful as that may be.

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Same problem here.

standalone beam gen 2, Apple TV connected via the feintech. So we can rule out the tv.

A good example is Slow Horses on Apple TV+ (Atmos audio). Listen to the opening theme, that usually starts some minutes later. It’s a Rolling Stones track. Listen that on headphone on stereo and it sounds really different.

Technically you can describe it as a phasing issue, it’s like a very short delay that sums up to the original audio and cause cancellation in some frequencies, giving that “metallic sound”. It’s probably due to decoding issues BUT phasing can also be purposely used to create psychoacoustic effects to recreate space, so I’m not sure it is a problem or a features : ) maybe some people are more sensitive then others and are not tricked into believing that fake “space” but just ear phasing. I’m into this category.

I don’t have rears but my believe is that with rears you don’t have this problem, because you have real speakers to create space and you don’t need this kind of audio treatment. Probably it happens only with sounds that should came from the rears, but having no rears the beam decode them in this (not very pleasing) way. But I don’t have rears to test it so I cannot confirm it.

you can definitely making it less apparent setting height to 0. I set mine to 8 some time ago and from that moment I’ve started noticing the problem. 

it’s audio processing not well tuned. I really hope Sonos will refine it in the future, but I’m the only in the family that has noticed it, so probably is not an issue for many.

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Update:

I think I have a conclusion for this topic. I have a pair of One’s here for a while and I’ve used them as rears together with the Beam gen. 2

I’ve listened to the same movies that has the metallic sound problem. with surrounds, the metallic sounds are not there anymore. In the opening theme of Slow Horses the music come both from the beams AND the rears, and I think this is what generates the issue. When all the channels that contains the music are played from just the Beam, the channels sum up into the beam speakers, but because there is some differences in the content of the channels (L, R, RL, RR) the sum is not perfect and generate delay/phasing issues (the metallic sounds). this also can happen when you listen to a stereo music track in a mono speaker, for the same reason.

I’m not an audio engineer but, if this is the problem, I don’t think Sonos can do anything about it. it just depends on how the audio is originally mixed through the channels. this also explains why the problem is not always present but just on some particular scene, when the same sound is delivered both from the front and the rear.

 

I am experiencing the same issue with appleTV 4K, Beam Gen 2 and Sub mini. First I thought it’s because of my Samsung TV only being capable of arc instead of eARC but I also notice it via the vax0101A. I feel like it happens less when running Atmos, but it constantly happens when playing PCM 5.1 multi channel. Currently forcing 2.0 via the vax to prevent it from happening. I think it’s less prominent for me with stereo.


I recently noticed the phasing behaviour in the movie „Barbarian“ (tw: crazy horror movie) on Disneyplus with English audio. I slightly noticed it during the movie in some scenes with rain in the background but it really stood out when the credits started and music kicked in at the end.

 

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I am facing this issue right now with the Beam Gen 2 without surrounds. Can anyone confirm that adding surrounds resolves this issue?

for me, and for that specific problem, yes, totally. be sure to understand what this specific problem is, it seems that just a few people (including me) was sensitive to it.

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@Ken_Griffiths 
P.S.: I cannot hear any distortion in your recording. Maybe worth doing the recording in direct proximity to the sidewards pointing speakers again.

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Thanks for your response. I get metallic sound problem when playing games on a desktop PC.

I don’t get this metallic sound problem when I set the audio output to Stereo PCM mode - app shows “Stereo PCM”.

All other sound modes I tried (Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Atmos, Multipcm 5.1 / 7.1) will have this issue.

Do you get this metallic audio problem in Stereo PCM mode without surrounds?

No, at list I cannot remember of it. The only cases I clearly remember was Atmos or 5.1 movies. Never with stereo music. Now I have rears so I didn’t experienced it anymore

I'm experiencing this too. Beam Gen 2, via EARC on HD Arcana. I was using it last night with no issue and noticed the metallic distortion in the background. It while watching BBC1 News this evening.

It seemed to disappear after switching the TV (Panasonic) off and on, along with the V6 box. 

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I can confirm that playing with the “height audio” level setting changes this bogous metallic effect.
I cannot however make it go away using height audio settings … just change its “presence”.

What is especially astonishing is, that height settings also changes the metallic effect with audio that is only stereo, 2.0 (e.g. Dolby Multichannel PCM 2.0).

Astonishing as 2.0 audio does not in itself carry anything that could be directly interpreted as “height” or even ambient audio.

This again points to some advanced audio processing that is going berserk.

 

It is really strange that there are so few people realizing this or are complaining. I am on the brink of returning my beam as this effect is extremely annoying.

 

Benny, did you also have the change to check with non-LG TVs? As mentioned earlier, I had a Panasonic before which also exhibited the issue… but I guess we could use some more data-points on this one.

 

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I spent an hour or so on youtube and netflix to find some material that is longer then a few seconds clearly reproducing the issue… its more diffcult than I thought.

 

So for now, I have been falling back to testing with our superman video.

 

One thing to add, I disabled eARC on the LG TV, which leads to the audio channel falling back to “Dolby Digital Plus 2.0”.

I think I can say that the phenomenon is also clearly audible in this mode. So its not only „Dolby Multichannel PCM 2.0“.

Ken, I think this is the mode you also had, but an additional Feintech in the middle. So it would be really interesting to hear what taking the Feintech out of the loop would bring.

 

On the other hand, I played various 5.1 and Athmos tracks and in none of them heard anything like the distortion I have in 2-channel audio.

Call me old fashioned, but its kind of irritating anyway how many variants of “stereo” there are these days.

Anyway. In “Dolby Digital Plus 2.0”, with eARC disabled, also the sidewards pointing speakers are emitting audio also. So its pretty clear the Beam is doing some upmixing magic even on two-channel audio.

 

I’ve got an LG C9 OLED TV with Arc and another (older) LG TV with a Feintech VAX04101A audio extractor to provide DD+ Atmos, used with the Beam (gen2).

Both have Surrounds/Sub (gen3) and am happy to try to see if I can hear the metallic audio issue, but not sure what I’m looking for?

Are there any examples (Netflix/Amazon sources perhaps?) that you could post and state a place in the movie/show where (and what) to listen for and the settings you have in place in the Sonos HT room (just need those outside of the HT default settings). 

Always happy to try to test these things, whenever I get a chance that is - so please supply the detail and I will happily test and report back if I hear it.

I assume what you’re hearing is something ‘similar’ to Auto-Tune as used in the late 90’s by Cher on her ‘Believe’ track, but please correct me if I am perhaps misunderstanding things here.

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@Shnakey

 

Can you help us out here:

  1. does the error on your end sounds similar to what I recorded (see above)?
  2. what is your TV model?
  3. What is the Sonos App showing as the audio format, at the time you reproduce the error?
  4. if you had an LG tv, is the error also going away if you disable pass-through and switch to PCM?

 

Cheers!

1. Yes sounds similar.

2. Sony x950h

3. Depends on what's playing. I've heard the sound in 2.0, 5.1 and Atmos. The app reports the correct format in each case. 

4. The problem doesn't change based on passthrough but I can't hear it when switched to PCM. 

I spent an hour or so on youtube and netflix to find some material that is longer then a few seconds clearly reproducing the issue… its more diffcult than I thought.

 

So for now, I have been falling back to testing with our superman video.

 

One thing to add, I disabled eARC on the LG TV, which leads to the audio channel falling back to “Dolby Digital Plus 2.0”.

I think I can say that the phenomenon is also clearly audible in this mode. So its not only „Dolby Multichannel PCM 2.0“.

Ken, I think this is the mode you also had, but an additional Feintech in the middle. So it would be really interesting to hear what taking the Feintech out of the loop would bring.

 

On the other hand, I played various 5.1 and Athmos tracks and in none of them heard anything like the distortion I have in 2-channel audio.

Call me old fashioned, but its kind of irritating anyway how many variants of “stereo” there are these days.

Anyway. In “Dolby Digital Plus 2.0”, with eARC disabled, also the sidewards pointing speakers are emitting audio also. So its pretty clear the Beam is doing some upmixing magic even on two-channel audio.

Ok, I will try the things mentioned and will let you know if I am ever able to reproduce the issue here.

By the way you mentioned earlier about the Surrounds/Sub being disconnected, which I’ve been doing, but do you not notice it when you have your surrounds and/or sub enabled, even with that Superman video?

1. Yes sounds similar.

2. Sony x950h

3. Depends on what's playing. I've heard the sound in 2.0, 5.1 and Atmos. The app reports the correct format in each case. 

4. The problem doesn't change based on passthrough but I can't hear it when switched to PCM. 

Are you able to provide some examples @Shnakey that you use to reproduce the issue - it would be helpful if there was more than the YT Superman video, even better if the samples are perhaps available on the streaming platforms, like Amazon, or Netflix, Movies/Shows etc. 

Thanks 🙏 

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I spent an hour or so on youtube and netflix to find some material that is longer then a few seconds clearly reproducing the issue… its more diffcult than I thought.

 

So for now, I have been falling back to testing with our superman video.

 

One thing to add, I disabled eARC on the LG TV, which leads to the audio channel falling back to “Dolby Digital Plus 2.0”.

I think I can say that the phenomenon is also clearly audible in this mode. So its not only „Dolby Multichannel PCM 2.0“.

Ken, I think this is the mode you also had, but an additional Feintech in the middle. So it would be really interesting to hear what taking the Feintech out of the loop would bring.

 

On the other hand, I played various 5.1 and Athmos tracks and in none of them heard anything like the distortion I have in 2-channel audio.

Call me old fashioned, but its kind of irritating anyway how many variants of “stereo” there are these days.

Anyway. In “Dolby Digital Plus 2.0”, with eARC disabled, also the sidewards pointing speakers are emitting audio also. So its pretty clear the Beam is doing some upmixing magic even on two-channel audio.

Ok, I will try the things mentioned and will let you know if I am ever able to reproduce the issue here.

By the way you mentioned earlier about the Surrounds/Sub being disconnected, which I’ve been doing, but do you not notice it when you have your surrounds and/or sub enabled, even with that Superman video?

I think it is a difference in our setups.

i have no sub and no surrounds. Not even configured nor set up, so I don’t need to disable them either. Could it be this changes upsampling behavior?

I think it is a difference in our setups.

i have no sub and no surrounds. Not even configured nor set up, so I don’t need to disable them either. Could it be this changes upsampling behavior?

Yes possibly... maybe some others here with standalone Beams will chime in. I will test that too, when I have the chance. 

It can just be a bit of a nuisance bonding/unbonding surrounds & sub and having to re-truplay the room, so I’ll hang on and do that later perhaps, maybe after @Shnakey, or others here, post some further audio examples to perhaps test too.👍

I’m getting the same issue. Connection wise I’m going from beam>HDMI>Opitcal adapter>tv. Not sure if that’s the root of the problem. Going to try HDMI arc with a different tv tomorrow (the one I’m using now doesn’t have arc input)

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Hi Ken,

would be great if you could try to reproduce it.

That said, I am glad I can say that it is in no way similar to that song nor reproducible using Cher.

For a moment I was really afraid I that I would have to listen to it over and over again. ;-)

 

I think Elton John’s farewell Show on Disney+ is what Benny mentioned earlier in this conversation.

As I do not have Disney+, I cannot confirm from my end but will look for something on Amazon or NetFlix.

 

Also, I have posted a link to an actual recording of the issue here.

 

But in general, anything with a crowd in the background seems a good choice. For me the effect is most audible when enabling “night sound” in scenes with low overall volume/density and a crowd (e.g. background clapping or chatting). It is clearly coming from the two outwards pointing speakers on the Beam.


It only seems to happen with audio input from the TV.

 

Will let you know as soon as I have identified a sample to reproduce from my side.

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Hi Sonos, anybody out there?

i think this was the same:


Anyone working on this?