Lost surround and sub ( after update ?)

Sonos has just a single escalation engineer in the ANZ region from what I have been told. He has gathered several diagnostics and we even tried changing the Arc as a whole but didn’t help. Upon asking, he said we have a lot of detail from your system and do recognise the problem but don’t have a fix in place. Now, I have had this much earlier than yourself ( 4 weeks now ) , so given the fact there may be others like myself or people who don’t use the community but have provided the diagnostics, I would reckon Sonos has the data they need but can’t determine where the problem is. There is a lot of money spent in buying the entire system and surely they need to stand up to it. Honestly, I have a JBL go worth 50$ and has never caused problems whatsoever. Sitting with data for weeks isn’t going to help anyone either.

Just an FYI for Apple TV users. The best way to avoid sound loss seems to be to change the Apple TV audio out setting from ‘auto’ to ‘Dolby 5.1’. This means all audio output is transcoded to Dolby 5.1 and this seems to stabilize the audio output with Sonos speakers connected via HDMI ARC/eARC. Speculatively, there seems to be something going on whereby audio codec changes seem to be causing issues. This can manifest by changing sources i.e from Cable Box to Apple TV etc. or even within Youtube (in my case) where different videos are encoded with various codecs etc.

Clearly they haven’t figured it out given the issue is still seems to persist after today’s firmware update. I just don’t wish to go into subjectives/comparitives based on intent/value as I find it unproductive.

16.4.2 most likely wasn’t released to address this issue. with a loose understanding of software development this release was probably already in the testing stages before this thread was even created assuming they do their due diligence and take the time to properly test

I’m starting to think that the update broke something in our systems and it can’t be solved. I’m so disappointed and frustrated. I no longer have warranty and no one would buy it from me at this condition.

I sincerely doubt that is the case

You still think they have testing stages prior to a release? I highly doubt this

I also doubt this is the case.

The most likely scenario is that there is functionality in 14.6 (and higher internal builds) that is required to enable product launches that are either out now (new Sonos Roam colours) or coming very shortly (rumoured min-sub, headphones, etc).

As a result, Sonos can’t simply issue a new firmware that is functionally a ‘rollback’ of 14.6 without removing code that other teams in the company absolutely NEED to be live and in production right now.

I’m sure they’ll find a solution to the problem. It just sucks this wasn’t found in testing and that we’re stuck with problematic systems in the meantime.

This doesn’t track.

I have a 2nd gen ATV 4K, which functionally decodes everything (except Atmos) to LPCM 5.1. It doesn’t deliver bitstream the TV/Arc at all in ‘auto’ mode. My PS5 does the same thing (LPCM 5.1 only). I am still seeing drop/sync issues, with all devices ONLY outputting LCPM 5.1.

Effectively, changing my Apple TV to force DD5.1 encoding would actually CAUSE me to be switching codecs when I change devices, not prevent it. Like I said, I’m still seeing the issue.

Also fwiw, YouTube audio is always decoded to LPCM by your player,  as it’s encoded in either Opus or AAC format. The Arc (and basically all soundbars and HT receivers) don’t support either format bitstreamed so it needs to be LPCM. Basically, playing YouTube videos won’t ever change the audio codec streamed from the player (always decoded LPCM).

Just curious, I know we’re experiencing this issue across many source devices but among those experiencing it, who doesn’t have an Apple TV at all? If not what devices do you have?