Sonos Arc audio keeps cutting out.

After a couple of weeks of _not_ experiencing the intermittent audio problem with the Arc, I may have discovered a contributing factor.  CAVEAT - I have a Samsung Frame TV, and I see several people in this topic with non-Frame TVs, so not sure if I’ve actually discovered a smoking gun.  In any event…

Since my last post, in my efforts to troubleshoot, I switched on the “TV Autoplay” setting for my Sonos Arc in the app.  Since that time, I have not experienced the intermittent audio problem.  However, yesterday afternoon I switched TV Autoplay back to OFF, and that evening, when I turned on the TV, the intermittent audio problem resurfaced. I’m thinking that’s not a coincidence.

So, why would I switch off TV Autoplay in the first place?  As those of you with Frame TVs are likely aware, the TV has a motion sensor that will turn off the standby art display to save power.  If I’m playing music through my Sonos Arc (from any source other than the TV) and the TV art display has turned off due to no motion in the room, as soon as motion is detected, and the TV resumes the art display, Sonos apparently thinks that the TV has been switched on (i.e. the HDMI/ARC port comes back to life) and the Sonos music playback stops  (which is behaviour you’d probably expect from Autoplay if you were actually turning on the TV).  I noticed this  back when I had my Playbar connected to this TV, which is why I initially switched Autoplay off.  I found it annoying that everytime my art display came out of sleep mode, it would kill the music playback.

It would seem Sonos is probably doing exactly what it’s designed to do - detecting the state of the HDMI/ARC port into which it’s connected - but only when you have TV Autoplay switched on.  The Samsung TV is apparently shutting down that HDMI/ARC port when it shuts down the art/standby display (due to the motion sensor), and wakes the port up again when the display wakes up, even though the display is only the standby art display, and not the actual television (if that makes sense).  If the Sonos TV Autoplay is switched off, it apparently isn’t checking to see if the TV HDMI/ARC port is alive, and that’s when I get the intermittent audio, until I unplug/replug the HDMI cable (or power cycle the Arc). 

Not sure what this all means in terms of resolving this issue.  Might there be a way for Sonos to regularly check the state of the HDMI/ARC port whether or not TV Autoplay is switched on?  It doesn’t seem quite right to me that Sonos is only detecting the power state of the HDMI/ARC port if TV Autoplay is switched on (if that is indeed what’s happening)

In the case of non-Frame Samsung TVs, I can only guess that the HDMI/ARC port on the TV shuts down as part of some power saving scheme as well, although not linked to an “art display” motion sensor. 

Figured I’d share this information with the community as I hadn’t seen any specific references to the TV Autoplay setting when I scanned the posts.  Curious to know if any of you experiencing this issue have noticed the same correlation to the TV Autoplay setting in the Sonos app.

I’ve also shared this with Sonos Tech Support. 

Hi @Gaffney90, Thank you for reaching out and welcome to the community and for sending a diagnostic report of your Sonos system. Upon checking on the diagnostic information, it shows that the Arc status is disabled. Kindly re-enable the CEC on the TV and thanks for doing all necessary troubleshooting steps as our team is continuously monitoring this issue. I'll ask you to kindly contact our phone support team for further assistance and more in-depth troubleshooting steps and to create a case ticket for this concern.

Let us know what you have in mind with the advice above.

The Sonos community is always here to help.

Have the same problem with cutting in and out and believe that is a Sonos issue.

1.  It’s fixed when Unplugging and replugging the ARC.

this method is not acceptable and hence tried a couple of other methods after reading both of these work without the need to to do option A above.

have found a couple of options to remedy the issue every day.  But still not acceptable.

2.   Going into advance sound settings on the TV and 1) switch sound to PCMI 2) Click the auto select sound for Dolby off and on.   Then need to switch back from PCMI to auto once working correctly

100. Just recently discovered that playing music from Spotify via my phone before turning on the TV avoids the issues.   Currently my best solution.  Still a pain but tells me it’s the ARC.  

hope this works for others

Hi @hmf4, thanks for reaching out. Sorry to hear that you have the same issue with your Sonos Arc. Thanks for alerting us about this issue and we are closely monitoring this concern, as many users are having the same issue. I’ll have this consulted with our specialists for further checking. 

Let us know what you have in mind with the advice above.

We're here to answer any further questions you have.

Agree here, wireless interference or not, I don’t see why that would effect dropouts over HDMI, WiFi should have absolutely no effect on the HDMI connection. Also since when did any device using WiFi not have WiFi interference, that’s a common issue, and if the Sonos ARC can’t cope without crapping out there is a serious issue with this device.

I am questioning why Wi-Fi interference would cause this issue since sound comes from the hdmi cable to arc, not Wi-Fi.  To test I unplugged the surrounds and bass, so it’s just the arc.  Turned on the tv, same problem with just the arc.  When powercycling the arc, it works perfectly.  For some reason if Wi-Fi interference were the problem, the problem would still be there after the power cycle or shortly after.  This seems like an interface problem with sonos.   Here is the diagnostic with just the arc.  1979548412

Hi @Tblaney3, Thank you for reaching out and welcome to the community. Sorry to know about what happened, thanks for sending a diagnostic report. Upon checking, It detects Wireless interference on it, but we are currently checking on this situation. You may check this article about reducing wireless interference. Or for further assistance. I'll ask you to kindly contact our phone support team for further assistance and more in-depth troubleshooting on this issue. 

Let us know what you have in mind with the advice above.

We're here to answer any further questions you have.

I Lied - Another Update...so, in all my back and forth with Sonos, they ended up keeping one of my cases open and a very responsive and seemingly-knowledgeable support rep has been corresponding with me.  One of the first things he said - and this was the first time I got anything like this from Sonos - is that there is a KNOWN ISSUE with eARC TVs, and with those TVs, the symptom is a periodic complete loss of audio.  And they are apparently working with Samsung to resolve.  My Samsung Frame TV is a 2019 version with regular HDMI/ARC (i.e. not eARC).  And my symptom of the audio cutting in/out, like someone is pressing the mute/un-mute button every 1-2 seconds, is, according to him, not a common issue.  This strikes me as odd, given there are so many posts in this topic, and others, that seem to raise the identical issue.  And the diagnostic shows the HDMI/ARC port to be inactive when the symptom is occurring.  None of this is novel - we all suspect it’s a software/firmware issue on the TV side (and apparently not just Samsung TVs), but just wanted to confirm with the community...for those of you with regular HDMI/ARC connections (not eARC), does your TV periodically [allegedly] shut down the HDMI/ARC port and you’re left with audio cutting in/out until you either hard-reboot your TV or unplug/re-plug the HDMI cable to the Arc?  I told the rep to just go read a few of these topics in the community and he’d see I’m not alone in this, but they’re treating my issue like something unique, albeit with no real optimism for a solution.

Final Update...After booking a service appointment with Samsung for this Thursday, I did some more web searching, and found that this problem is very common/widespread - both on the Samsung and Sonos communities.   

Then, about 30 mins ago, Samsung Service got back to me and pushed what was supposed to be an appointment this Thursday out to to the end of November!  So, I just cancelled it.  This is clearly not a hardware issue, and having a service technician come out made no sense.

At this point, my only options are (a) live with having to unplug/replug my HDMI cable every few days when this happens, or (b) switch to Optical, lose Dolby Atmos sound and also lose the ability to switch my TV on with an Alexa voice command.

This is really disappointing...a high-end home theatre component not working with a market-leading television brand.

Samsung/Sonos - would you please get together and resolve this?  I realize this seems to be mostly a Samsung issue, but Samsung TVs allegedly do not have this issue with other soundbars, according to what I’ve read, and I would hope you might be able to exert some influence over this situation, given your position in the market, and theirs.  You also need to get your Support folks inline - as is obvious by this thread (and many others), this is a common problem, and it seems every analyst I’ve spoken to knows nothing about it.

@Simon B .  I have done as you suggest.  Today, contact Sonos support by Phone appears to be disabled, apparently due to call volume/staffing.  I have therefore initiated a chat with a Support representative and, putting it mildly, it’s been a waste of my time.  This is NOT acceptable for any product, let alone an $800 one.  If this issue was unique to me, OK.  But it’s apparent from the postings in this topic that it’s a widespread issue, and I need to know if it’s being seriously looked at and when we can expect a resolution.  In the past two weeks of having my Sonos Arc installed, I’ve had to unplug/replug the HDMI/ARC cable at least 8 times, including today.  The Support Rep on Chat seems either unaware of this being a commonly reported issue, or is just doing that Support “thing” of having me perform basic troubleshooting that I’ve already done.

I’ve been a Sonos customer since you started - over 10 years.  While there have periodically been little quirks/bugs, your products have otherwise always worked flawlessly.  I am really disappointed with this. 

I just installed a new Arc a week ago and this has already happened to me twice. I went ahead and unplugged/re-plugged the HDMI cable to the Arc and that restored sound. However, like those above, with this being a common and recurring issue, having to unplug/re-plug every few days is not an acceptable solution. What is the source of this problem? Has there been a fix since the last post in this issue two months ago?

Same problem here. Immensely frustrating. Issue probably arises twice weekly. 

Diagnostic number: 223811885