I bought a Sonos Beam sound bar two days ago. I love its robust sweet sound and voice clarity. I was disappointed when I brought it home and connected to my television. I am using an HDMI arc cable for connection. I chose not to load any apps on the sound bar because all I watch/hear is on my internet driven television. As you know, the sound bar’s’s volume is driven by the television remote.. Here is the issue: When I open Netflix, Prime Video and Disney Plus apps, and watch a movie, I need to turn the volume on the tv almost all the way to the max to get almost adequate sound coming out of sound bar. When I open my You Tube, Apple TV, ABC News Live, CBS All Access and Spotify, I get a range of adequate volume depending on the app. Spotify plays perfect at a volume level of 20 out of 100; You Tube needs to be upped to about 40/100; Apple TV and the news apps need to be in the 50 out of 100 volume range. I also have a Sony Blu Ray player that is connected to the television via a HDMI cable on the non arc connector. Same problem playing movies of concerts from DVD player - turn volume all the way up to get almost adequate sound. It concerns me that I have to turn the television volume all the way up to get almost adequate sound for most of my movie channels. I fear it will eventually damage my television. I feel that something is not right. I have had two other soundbars with this television earlier this year, and neither of them had this problem, and they were connected the same way. I followed the “robust information” in the set up book that Sonos provided. I finally found the right Sonos app (out of 8 Sonos apps) to DL to control EQ, etc. I am older and not a very tech savvy person. I feel that I had set up correctly, but something is funky. Anyone else had to deal with issue? How did you correct it?
Hi
Apologies for the delay. The apps you mentioned here - are they inbuilt apps to the TV or are they coming from an external source? If the latter, that device may have its own volume control that you can change in the settings. Take a look to see if there’s a fixed/variable option in there, and try setting it to fixed. Make sure you turn down your Beam’s volume first as fixed will set the volume to 100% on the source device. If it’s inbuilt apps, I don’t know exactly why there would be that much disparity between them, that would probably be a question to pose to the TV manufacturer. Or perhaps other community members have the same TV as you and can offer some advice.
Thanks James for the welcome. No apology needed. The remote that came with tv has a button for Netflix and Google Play only. There is a Google assistant button which I use for voice commands. First look at tv Home Screen only had Netflix. I also subscribe Prime Video and Disney plus using my home WiFi controlled by my desktop. I did need to add those two apps to the tv. I also added the other apps like You Tube, ABC News Live, etc which are free services. So, it seems like Netflix is the only one built in. Also playing blu ray video volume is very low. I can also access my Netflix account through my desktop tv, So, should I open up each streaming network on my PC and try to adjust volume from there? I believe that is what you are suggesting. Thanks for your advice.
Ah okay, that information helps a lot. No, you do not need to open each service on your PC and adjust the volume as that level will be independent of your TV.
Is your Beam connected to your TVs HDMI ARC port directly or are you using the optical adapter? If the latter, I’d suggest setting the TVs system volume to Fixed mode. If, however, you are definitely connected via HDMI ARC then do not do this, as it will remove volume control completely (to be honest, I’m not even sure it would let you do this.)
Take a look through your TVs sound settings - see if there is anything related to system volume limits or volume scaling and if so, try increasing it.
If none of this helps, I recommend submitting a system diagnostic while playing one of these sources that has low volume and get in touch with our customer care team who can take a closer look at what might be going on with your Beam.
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