Is it just me or has it gotten much worse in the past month?

I used to be able to make the problem go away by playing around with the settings a few minutes and it would work until a power cycle happened (for example an electric blackout).

But since the past few weeks even fiddling around for hours doesn’t fix it anymore. I know there were some software updates on the TV (dunno if on Sonos) and it seems they’ve made it much worse now, and I can no longer make the problem disappear…

It’s not like this is the only problem the Beam 2 has either. The loud “pops” when using Atmos on the Xbox Series X are equally annoying.

I got the issue to disappear for a week by unplugging HDMI 1 lol. Issue appeared again, I’ve been tinkering for the past 2 hours, no luck. This product isn’t worth the hassle.

Idk if I’d even recommend Atmos for gaming on the Xbox on any audio system. It adds delay to the audio, at least it did as of a few months ago. I can’t comment on media apps though.

Unfortunately I have a Sonos ecosystem with 2 Ones and the beam 2, since they worked well with my previous TV. If it were just the beam I would’ve replaced it but I’m kinda stuck with it. Planned on buying the bass speaker but no way I’m gonna buy another Sonos product as it stands now.

Once I got the bug, I was never able to make it work again on any of my devices. Toggled all the settings suggested but no dice. From time to time, I would randomly test again (but without changing settings) and it just never worked. But I guess it’s pointless even if it did if it’ll just randomly bug out again.

This was supposed to be my gateway into the Sonos ecosystem. But even if this gets fixed now, I’ve been convinced to make it my first and last Sonos product. Disasterclass performance from the support staff. Customers have refunded and have been turned away. Hopefully this thread can at least save prospective buyers.

Just got off the phone with Sonos Europe tech support (over one hour call). I sent them the diagnostics and described the issue including all of the steps to reproduce it, faulty setup and everything everyone mentioned on the thread to solve it. I also gave them the link to this thread and asked that the support staff comment on it. He could not (obviously) help me solve the issue but he escalated it to L2 and they will look into it. I explained how frustrating it is that such a high end premium product performs so poorly, and how bad the lack of support and acknowledgment on their side is. I made them promise to respond in this thread to keep the community in the loop as they’re working to fix this issue, and keep me updated on the case.

Having had experiences with customer service before I cannot guarantee this will help in any way and this issue will actually get fixed, but at least it’s something, and maybe it’ll be the spark that will make them look more seriously into it.

So I noticed an odd thing just now that may be important:

When I’m on my ps5 and audio is playing, I turn on my Apple TV (without switching to its source) and the moment it turns on, the audio cuts, just as it does regularly. It returns moments later.

I have tested it several times and it’s consistent. I’m beginning to think that there’s some device trying to “reconnect” or turn on or do some kind of polling in sleep mode every minute or so, and this “draws the attention” of the TV, causing the audio to stop.

Definitely seems like it could be related to CEC.

Hi all,

I highly recommend that anyone looking for this issue to be resolved get in touch with our technical support team to have your case sorted out. While we of course forward any and all information from the community here, it will help us all if you ‘officially’ create a case with our support engineers.
Please don't expect an immediate resolution, but each case will add further information that could help us get a resolution in place.

I’ve been thinking this through a bit more this week with regards to isolating the issue. The problem is that I can’t observe what’s going on in the HDMI link between Beam2 and the TV:

• each HDMI cable seems to be an independently negotiated peer to peer connection
• the TV (dynamically) decides what EDID to present to its sources depending on the capabilities described in the EDIDs it receives from its sinks - this can cause screens to blank as it involves video modes
• CEC creates an addressable network across the individual HDMI cable links - it might be possible to sniff the whole conversation on a free port?
• eARC capabilities seem to be exchanged over the eARC CDC once the main HDMI EDIDs have agreed eARC is available. 
• 11111 on LG TV shows the HDMI link stats on the active input port, would be helpful if there was a port selector on this view to see what’s going on with the eARC port
• I haven’t identified any consumer level test equipment that displays eARC activity, it’s focused on the main video pins and CEC. Inserting something like an HDFURY inline may even “fix” the issue due to EDID or h/w proxying, so the faulty behaviour might never be observable. Only the TV or Beam2 internal logs would really help here. The HDFURY would show if the HDMI video link was collapsing, but probably not if the eARC link was re-handshaking (might account for the 1 second delay and the audio recovering)

I did try putting one of those CEC breaker dongles between the TV and Beam2 to try to isolate CEC from the equation (because the TV alway re-enables CEC when I switch it off because it knows the Beam is connected, but technically CEC isn’t actually required) but it just blocked eARC/ARC and froze the remote control function .

Did you try your ATV test without the Beam, if the audio drops when using TV speakers, then can probably eliminate that?

I also observed yesterday that ATV4k gen 3 on HDMI1 was not bugged (I haven’t managed to trigger the bug on this device at all yet), but PS5 on HDMI3 was bugged. I could flick between the two ports without the behaviour changing. This (and some of the temporary fix actions) still makes me think this is something to do with the persistence of EDID/eARC discovery inside the TV.

The other thing I noticed (based on one of the posts on another forum) was that pausing the source material doesn’t change the 59s interval, even though the Beam2 notes the change in audio format during the pause.

A number of users have already filed tickets within the last 8 months. And as we can see from this thread and numerous other similar threads here and in other forums (e.g. reddit, apple), this is a real problem worldwide and not an isolated issue. And the issue has been well documented by the users they have practically handed everything to Sonos on a silver platter.

Any decent company would have at least officially acknowledged the issue by now. But I suppose within Sonos Time 8 months is not immediate enough.

Ok, so can you explicitly confirm that you or your team have officially forwarded this particular concern/thread to the approriate engineers/support department? Of course no one expects you to solve the issue but this is the bare minimum that we expect from the forum mods.

Hi @yofalat611 

Thank you for your concern. Yes, I can officially confirm that we, the community team, are making our engineering teams aware of these kinds of topics. Just yesterday I updated the document in which we track all the relevant information from this topic, and made sure the engineering team is aware of it. During the update, I also noted that while there is quite a few users in this topic, there are not nearly as many registered cases, or, their community account is not the same as the account they use for their Sonos system. So again, I can only reiterate that if you’re experiencing this issue, please get in contact with our support team if you haven’t done so already.

Cool, thanks for communicating.

Sadly, I don’t plan on submitting myself to a 1 hr+ call with support. Several users have already done that and we already have this treasure trove of a thread. If Sonos engineers are still having trouble figuring it out after 8 months given all that, I don’t think I can be of help.

Surely Sonos can buy a PS5 and LG oled C series TV and test the problem themselves. Seems completely pointless opening a support case as it’s a problem that effects everyone with that combination of hardware. 

Yes I tried it. There is no audio drop without the beam when turning on the ATV (latest 4k model).

Plugging it back in restores the audio drops.

I received this email from the support agent I spoke with yesterday:

“I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to inform you about the issue you reported regarding the "Multichannel PCM 5.1 Dropping Out" on your Sonos system.

Firstly, please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused by this issue. We understand how important it is for you to enjoy uninterrupted audio quality, and we take all customer feedback seriously.

I am happy to inform you that our technical team has been investigating this issue, and I have personally escalated this to our other department for further investigation. We are committed to identifying the root cause and finding a permanent solution to this problem.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to resolve this issue. Our aim is to ensure that you have the best possible Sonos experience and we are taking all necessary steps to make that happen.

In the meantime, please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any further questions or concerns. Our customer support team is always available to assist you.

With best regards”

Heres hoping that finally someone is going to look into it and figure it out.

I am confused about how CEC operates alongside eARC. According to this diagram they share the same (group E) pins: 

https://www.multicominc.com/training/technical-resources/high-speed-hdmi-with-ethernet-vs-high-speed-hdmi/

Not suggesting that CEC is corrupting the eARC signal only for PCM5.1, but would probably explain why the CEC isolator dongle blocks the audio to Beam2.

EDIT: actually, that diagram doesn’t really make sense, don’t see how the purpose of the pins can be re-assigned between with and without ethernet. I think I'll find an alternative picture.

https://www.leadsdirect.co.uk/technical-library/pinouts-wiring-diagrams/hdmi-wiring/

Hola desde España yo sigo con el mismo problema ya encontrado alguna solución ya que solución alternativa se está utilizando actualmente sobre esto? 
Como veréis en la captura, yo tengo la opción compartir modo de sonido activado y parece que no hay cortes, ya que la señal se envía en Dolby digital y en Dolby Atmos no en LPCM 5.1 que sí que hay cortes no sé qué opináis. Gracias

Hola desde España yo sigo con el mismo problema ya encontrado alguna solución ya que solución alternativa se está utilizando actualmente sobre esto? 
Como veréis en la captura, yo tengo la opción compartir modo de sonido activado y parece que no hay cortes, ya que la señal se envía en Dolby digital y en Dolby Atmos no en LPCM 5.1 que sí que hay cortes no sé qué opináis. Gracias

Hola amigo! Gracias por la sugerencia!
El problema es que Dolby digital es peor formato porque es comprimido, y no tiene la misma calidad como LPCM 5.1. Queremos que la mejor calidad funcione. Esto es lo que estamos tratando de resolver.

Hola desde España yo sigo con el mismo problema ya encontrado alguna solución ya que solución alternativa se está utilizando actualmente sobre esto? 
Como veréis en la captura, yo tengo la opción compartir modo de sonido activado y parece que no hay cortes, ya que la señal se envía en Dolby digital y en Dolby Atmos no en LPCM 5.1 que sí que hay cortes no sé qué opináis. Gracias

Hola amigo! Gracias por la sugerencia!
El problema es que Dolby digital es peor formato porque es comprimido, y no tiene la misma calidad como LPCM 5.1. Queremos que la mejor calidad funcione. Esto es lo que estamos tratando de resolver.

Hola, muchas gracias por la rápida respuesta
Entonces la configuración correcta cuál sería en mi caso? Muchas gracias

Y disculpa por no informar de los dispositivos, en mi caso tengo:

• LG C2
• PS5
• XBOX X
• APPLE TV 4K 3 Gen Chip A15
• SONOS BEAM GEN 2

la configuración es:

TV LG : eARC , HDMI’S—>  BITSTREAM, / SALIDA DE AUDIO —> TRANSFERENCIA (PASO)

LA CONFIGURACION DE LOS DEVICES ES:

APPLE TV : AUTOMATICO ——> LPCM 5.1 (con cortes)

PS5: PCM LINEAL 5.1 (sin cortes)

XBOX: DOLBY ATMOS FOR HOME THEATER (sin cortes)

APPS DE STREAMING DE LA TV: Dolby digital plus 5.1 y Atmos

La configuración correcta es la que da como resultado LPCM 5.1, pero tiene problema con el sonido. Si Dolby digital funcione para tí, puedes quedarte con eso.

Adjunto la información que me da la aplicación Sonos
 

Me gustaría saber qué configuración tenéis vosotros de momento que funcione bien. Gracias

Adjunto la información que me da la aplicación Sonos
 

 

Esto es correcto. Si no te haces problemas quedate con esto.

Adjunto la información que me da la aplicación Sonos
 

 

Esto es correcto. Si no te haces problemas quedate con esto.

Pues tengo cortes, lamentablemente tengo corte de audio cada minuto es muy molesto así que tendré que pasar Dolby digital de momento..