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It has been almost 2 weeks since I got the new Arc, Gen 3 sub and 2 Sl set. It has been a long headache. Here are my problems.

  1. The sound coming from this supposedly high end speakers is so tinny and squeaky (or metallic or low bass). No matter which old iphone/ipad I use to trueplay, the end result is a sound barely better than that coming from my TV set.
  2. The volume coming from the Arc surround set is so low I can barely hear dialogues. Of course, if I blast the speaker level all the way up to 39 or 40, I can hear it, but this is not an ideal situation.
  3. Interestingly, the volume increases suddenly whenever a commercial is on. The sound level is not constant.

I am not sure if Sonos is doing anything to address these issues. Their bass update did not correct my problems. Man, I was so eager to get the Arc and now I feel cheated. It looks like Sonos used me and several others to beta test an unfinished product.

On issue #2, dialogue is not supposed to be coming through the surround speakers.  It’s rare for sources to play dialogue over rear channels, and will mostly come for the center channel. If you’re having trouble hearing dialogue, you should look into turning on speech enhancement.  

You might also consider adjusting the volume of your surround channels.

On issue #3, the Arc has no way of knowing whether the current content is a program or a commercial.  The possibilities are either the volume changed at the source, or the codec changed from a surround format to PCM stereo perhaps.  Not sure what could be done about that.

 

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