Sonos Arc audio keeps cutting out.

@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. 

Update...I just spent about 30 minutes on the phone with Sonos support.  Not surprisingly, they point to the issue being with my Samsung TV intermittently disabling the HDMI/ARC port.  Based on issues I’ve had with my other Samsung TV, I have no reason not to take Sonos’ word on this.  The frustrating part, however, is that the Sonos tech support analyst kept trying to get me to find a setting on my Samsung TV that doesn’t exist - an “HDMI Input Audio” setting in the Sound...Expert Settings menu - it’s not there.  And given that, they said I need to call Samsung.  So, I then spent another 30 minutes on the phone with Samsung support and, not surprisingly, they tried to initially blame the issue on the Sonos Arc.  After re-explaining several times what was happening, they’re now saying there’s a problem with my HDMI/ARC port (duh!) and they want to send out a technician.  None of this makes sense - my gut tells me this is a software problem.  The HDMI/ARC port works just fine, until it doesn’t, and unplugging/re-plugging wakes it back up.  So, I’m skeptical a technician will be able to do anything.  But, given my TV is still under warranty, and this won’t cost me anything (other than time), I’ll go with it for now.

If anyone else has figured this issue out, please let me know, so I can skip the trouble of a technician appointment.  If not, then I’ll report back here on whatever happens.

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.

It’s not just Samsung, my LG has audio cutouts as well and I’ve seen plenty of others on here with new LG’s with issues, I think eARC is just rubbish on all TVs and needs some work via firmware both from the TV company’s and Sonos.

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.

Same issue here.  The sonos arc cuts out every time we try to use the tv.  We have to power cycle the speaker than everything works.  This is something that I wouldn’t expect for a $1,800 sound system.   And if it does, I would expect a fast fix.   
 

Diagnostic report is 1763819074.

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.

Is there a link to the article?

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, thanks for the update and the diagnostic information that you’ve sent. I checked the diagnostic information, the same issue was detected about wireless interference, yes, there is a link on the previous reply I sent, for further assistance on this issue. I'll ask you to kindly contact our phone support team for further assistance and more in-depth troubleshooting steps.  They need to check further on this issue. 

Keep me in the know with the advice above.

The Sonos community is always here to help.