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topilouf
Contributor I
April 23, 2022

Lost surround and sub ( after update ?)

  • April 23, 2022
  • 1604 replies
  • 81295 views

Hi 

I don’t know if my issue is related to the 14.6 update but I noticed today that I had no sound from my surround (play 3) and my sub (Gen 2), only the Arc is working They are still present in the app under the my System view but now sound which every sources

When I reboot each of them, the sound comes back temporary, but when I switch to another source or audio format, thé Sound disappears again. Tried several times, same behavior

Thanks for your help

 

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    1604 replies

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    LukeB95
    Lyricist III
    May 23, 2022

    Foxis wrote:

    You do not even appear to be experiencing the issue by your own description? Do you just hang around other threads defending Sonos for free? Hardly.

     

    No, I’m not experiencing this issue, but it doesn’t mean that I would not try to help others here try a few things to perhaps try to resolve the issue. Oh and ‘yes’, it was all for ‘free’.

     

    Ken, this one might be above your pay grade. 

      Foxis
      Enthusiast II
      May 23, 2022

      @Foxis may I ask what Sony TV you have?

      A KD-55XE8505. I have toyed around with the various settings on the TV itself and on the Apple TV. Currently I have the TV set to not touching the audio format or compression and setting the Apple TV to change the format to Dolby 5.1 plus.

      That has worked flawlessly before and been the best experience I could get out of the setup (as I can’t get Atmos to work through the TV since it lacks eArc).

      Since the problem I have tried setting the Apple TV to not change the audio format (which just gives me PCM from the TV to the Arc) and fiddling with the Sony TV settings, none of which has helped.

      If someone has any idea regarding settings on the TV or Apple TV 4K I would be happy to try them out, but as it stands I don’t think it will make a difference to the sound or the problem.

      do you have any other sources or is it just Apple TV?

      The TV itself and a PS4 and a PS5. When the problem occurs it remains on all of them, and even with music playback started with the Sonos app.

      The system has to be manually hard restarted (powering down/up the Arc) or be asleep for a while (hours) for the problem to go away. After which it will return as soon as I pause, change media from the source (ie. switch content on the Apple TV) or switch source. The symptom can be:

      • Total cutout
      • Delay from the rears and sub
      • Random short dropouts, to be followed by one of the above

      Setup worked well before 14.6.

      As others I link the problem to codec switches. For example, when playing a movie on the Apple TV I can see that the system receives Dolby 5.1, whereas moving back to the netflix menu (for example) will drop the system back to PCM and then up to Dolby 5.1 again once Netflix plays a trailer or a new series/movie. That switch (and any action that triggers a codec switch) will trigger the problem 90% of the time.

      interesting. with my workaround on my TV I have “digital audio output” set to Auto 1 which in fact takes Stereo PCM and outputs it as Dolby Digital Plus 2.0 so with this current setup I’m always seeing Dolby Digital Plus 2.0/5.1 or Dolby Atmos (still DD+). I wonder if because its never switching to PCM in my case that's why it avoids the issue

      I have the same setting. Auto 1 on the TV, and the Apple TV 4K set to change audio to Dolby Digital. I get 5.1 indicated in the Sonos App and all seems to be well. However, after some switching of content I can get the problem to appear.

      On thing that never fails is to play a Spatial playlist via the Apple Music App on the Apple TV. Sounds awesome until I switch tracks or pause/resume. Instant trigger of the problem.

      (And this is something I have been doing a lot prior to the 14.6 update, as Spatial Audio sounds awesome on the system. I really recommend it. Well, when the Sonos system works again...)

        ban25
        Enthusiast I
        May 23, 2022

        I’ve also emailed Chris Welch at The Verge (welch@theverge.com) to hopefully increase the visibility of this issue.  I encourage others on this thread to do the same.

        Hi Chris,
         
        I am hoping to bring to your attention an issue that is affecting Sonos home theater users since the introduction of the 14.6 firmware on April 19th. This issue is a serious audio desync/dropout issue resulting in echoing of Subs and Surrounds attached to the Arc, as well as full drop outs.  I and many others have suffered with this issue for over a month — an issue which makes my home theater system completely unusable given the only way to stop the echoing is to unplug my devices roughly every 10-15 minutes when attempting to watch a movie.  There's a 20+ page thread on this issue here:
         
         
        A Sonos engineer (Corry P) acknowledged the issue on May 2nd, only to walk that statement back 2 days later:
         
         

        Edit, May 4th: Hi all, I was a bit premature with posting the original best answer message in this topic. While we have been investigating Topilouf’s issue, we have not seen an increase in surround audio errors and do not see anything that suggests that you all will experience the same issue following the recent update. If you do experience issues while listening to your Sonos system, we always encourage you to contact us and we will do our utmost to support you.

        Hi All

        Just to let you all know, we have now identified an issue whereby some Sonos Home Theatre satellites will experience audio interruptions after the latest 14.6 update.

        We are investigating the situation and hope to resolve it soon. At present, we have no further information to share.

        I hope this helps.

        Since then, the only statement from Sonos has been that audio dropouts can occur and to contact support (James L. on May 23rd):

        https://en.community.sonos.com/home-theater-228993/lost-surround-and-sub-after-update-6868561/index19.html?postid=16594139#post16594139

        Hi all,

        We understand the frustration any customer feels when your experience isn’t what it should be.

        We equally understand the frustrations around and apologise for the recent communications that have led to confusion about the 14.6 update.

        Please be assured that your listening experience, the sound quality, and the performance of our products is and will remain our absolute priority.

        If you experience a dropout or any other issue on your system, please contact support with your diagnostic report from within 10 minutes of the drop-out occurring and we will look into it right away.

        There are different reasons why drop outs may occur, and we want to make sure that we can help you.

        Seeing as this topic is not resolved for those commenting, I have removed the ‘best answer’ until further notice.

        Sonos customers have been struggling with this issue that has effectively made our home theater systems useless since the firmware update was released last month.  We've spent countless hours talking to L1, L2, and L3 support staff and submitted countless diagnostic reports to no avail. Without direct acknowledgement of this issue, introduced in 14.6, there can be no certainty that it will *ever* be addressed.  Since you've covered Sonos in the past at The Verge, I'm hoping you'd be willing to report on this issue as escalation through Sonos' normal customer support path appears to lead to a dead end.  As for myself, I've moved on, making the painful decision to replace all of my Sonos hardware with Bluesound, but I still want to see this issue addressed for everyone else out there, especially those who may not even notice when their subwoofer drops out randomly.
         
        Cheers.
         
          Freddy45764
          Enthusiast II
          May 23, 2022

          just an update to my current workaround. for the time being I’ve been setting my Apple TV to “change format: dolby digital 5.1” and had eARC off on my TV in and this has avoided the issue thus far. for atmos content I would manually change the apple tv audio back to “auto”

           

          yesterday I was tinkering around with my TV settings (sony a9g) and I discovered if I leave eARC off and turn passthrough mode OFF I can leave my Apple TV audio on auto and now get the source DD5.1 plus signal is correctly sent to sonos and atmos will play automatically as well. this is actually my ideal set up now as I didn’t really like how Sonos handles LPCM especially the lower volume. so while this bug is still not fixed it has actually lead me to a better set up for my preferences in my living room system. Obviously this only works for me because I exclusively use Apple TV in this room and now have no need for eARC

           

          crossing my fingers I continue to not encounter the issue in my game room system

          Thanks for posting this. I haven’t had a dropout in a few days but had this idea in the meantime. When I tried it though, atmos appeared blocked which didn’t seem correct to me. I probably just needed to do something to force an HDMI re-handshake. I’m going to put this idea back in the toolbox for next time

          Freddy45764
          Enthusiast II
          May 23, 2022

          just an update to my current workaround. for the time being I’ve been setting my Apple TV to “change format: dolby digital 5.1” and had eARC off on my TV and this has avoided the issue thus far. for atmos content I would manually change the apple tv audio back to “auto”

           

          yesterday I was tinkering around with my TV settings (sony a9g) and I discovered if I leave eARC off and turn passthrough mode OFF I can leave my Apple TV audio on auto and now get the source DD5.1 plus signal is correctly sent to sonos and atmos will play automatically as well. this is actually my ideal set up now as I didn’t really like how Sonos handles LPCM especially the lower volume. so while this bug is still not fixed it has actually lead me to a better set up for my preferences in my living room system. Obviously this only works for me because I exclusively use Apple TV in this room and now have no need for eARC

           

          crossing my fingers I continue to not encounter the issue in my game room system

          What I think happens is the Apple TV still sends multichannel PCM but the tv prefers re-encode to Dolby and transmit to Sonos. I was initially not liking the idea of all the extra processing that was happening but if this works, I think it’s a pretty small compromise. Interestingly when I was talking to Sonos support they said they usually recommend leaving the tv in some kind of auto mode rather than pass-through

          JohnnyDo123
          Lyricist III
          May 23, 2022

          just an update to my current workaround. for the time being I’ve been setting my Apple TV to “change format: dolby digital 5.1” and had eARC off on my TV and this has avoided the issue thus far. for atmos content I would manually change the apple tv audio back to “auto”

           

          yesterday I was tinkering around with my TV settings (sony a9g) and I discovered if I leave eARC off and turn passthrough mode OFF I can leave my Apple TV audio on auto and now get the source DD5.1 plus signal is correctly sent to sonos and atmos will play automatically as well. this is actually my ideal set up now as I didn’t really like how Sonos handles LPCM especially the lower volume. so while this bug is still not fixed it has actually lead me to a better set up for my preferences in my living room system. Obviously this only works for me because I exclusively use Apple TV in this room and now have no need for eARC

           

          crossing my fingers I continue to not encounter the issue in my game room system

          What I think happens is the Apple TV still sends multichannel PCM but the tv prefers re-encode to Dolby and transmit to Sonos. I was initially not liking the idea of all the extra processing that was happening but if this works, I think it’s a pretty small compromise. Interestingly when I was talking to Sonos support they said they usually recommend leaving the tv in some kind of auto mode rather than pass-through

          Could that introduce lag though?  Dependent on the tv and how fast they can process and re-encode? 

          Freddy45764
          Enthusiast II
          May 23, 2022

          Could that introduce lag though?  Dependent on the tv and how fast they can process and re-encode? 

          Latency maybe which could be a problem for gamers but audio and video should probably still be in sync I think. Something to watch maybe

          Brad Porter
          Enthusiast II
          May 23, 2022

          The system has to be manually hard restarted (powering down/up the Arc) or be asleep for a while (hours) for the problem to go away.

          This is interesting to me and I noticed this myself. i.e you cannot get your rears and subs back but if you leave it overnight (or a very long time) then it suddenly start working again.

          I wonder what the Sonos system does in standby that could ‘reset’ the issue. 

            Freddy45764
            Enthusiast II
            May 23, 2022

            The system has to be manually hard restarted (powering down/up the Arc) or be asleep for a while (hours) for the problem to go away.

            This is interesting to me and I noticed this myself. i.e you cannot get your rears and subs back but if you leave it overnight (or a very long time) then it suddenly start working again.

            I wonder what the Sonos system does in standby that could ‘reset’ the issue. 

            One possibility is a refresh of the HDMI edid info. Makes me wonder if unplugging and replugging the HDMI cable from the arc would be a quicker way to clear a dropout than power cycling. Probably lots of  other things get reset too

            kuwarrulz_11
            Enthusiast II
            May 23, 2022

            Hi all,

            We understand the frustration any customer feels when your experience isn’t what it should be.

            We equally understand the frustrations around and apologise for the recent communications that have led to confusion about the 14.6 update.

            Please be assured that your listening experience, the sound quality, and the performance of our products is and will remain our absolute priority.

            If you experience a dropout or any other issue on your system, please contact support with your diagnostic report from within 10 minutes of the drop-out occurring and we will look into it right away.

            There are different reasons why drop outs may occur, and we want to make sure that we can help you.

            Seeing as this topic is not resolved for those commenting, I have removed the ‘best answer’ until further notice.

            I had a pre-arranged SONOS - Ampac call with higher level support after spending hours with regular support. I have submitted over 10 diagnostics. I have all the diagnostic numbers still.

            I was informed I would hear back from support on May 10th after the issue had been discussed internally. Never heard back from support. No email, No phone call. Nothing. Details below. Kindly, tell me exactly how much more time I should spend talking to support. How should I proceed?

            Date and Time: Saturday, May 07, 2022 - 4:00PM EDT
            Preferred Phone Number: XXXXXX
            Alternate Phone Number:  
            Confirmation Number: G196288M
            Case #:

            03872226

            Usually when the issue is escalated, you get a link and need to select a time slot and then a Level 2 engineer will call you at the nominated number. I was tricked initially but then finally didn’t let go of support until the link was sent on my email. 

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