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I recently bought the Sonos Arc, installed it and enjoyed it. The next day, I decided to complement it with the Sub. I have to say that I was impressed, to the point that my previous setup is going to retirement - including my far bigger Klipsch subwoofer.

Meanwhile, about 5 days later, I was annoyed by an initially small buzzing that I originally thought was coming from the TV station. To my horror, a quick diagnosis of the issue pointed very quickly toward the Arc.

I then started a more precise investigation, changing the source to a music player for better input material control. Pausing the music player clearly showed that the buzzing was increasing with the volume - to a point where it actually became loud. Also, by moving one of my ear over the Arc, I could identify one single speaker, the rightmost facing one, being the culprit.

I was terribly disappointed as it meant the Arc had to go back for an exchange, especially since they are nowhere to be seen in any store in my region and neither on the Sonos store for several weeks or even months.

I pursued the investigation by playing some of my well known albums. One thing I noticed was how more "ethereal” and "dispersed” some songs were. I started thinking the Arc was "processing” them at an exaggerated “wide” level.

At this point, I decided to unplug the Arc power and restore it back to give it a proper reboot. Well, it actually did the trick and everything went back to normal, including the more naturally sounding songs.

Therefore, it appears the Arc can suffer from an incorrect software state where (and this is speculation) it decodes the incoming audio stream incorrectly or from an incorrectly identified format, and thus sending garbage data to on of the speakers. Nothing a reboot cannot fix though.

I should have triggered a diagnostics dump for Sonos to investigate but I was not originally expecting the reboot to fix the issue.

 

To conclude, if you experience something in the range of what is described above, give it a try and it may fix the nasty high pitch buzzing.

Happy Sonos listening.

 

P.S.
The setup for this installation is comprised of an LG WebOS TV, Xbox One, Sonos Arc and Sonos Sub.

Hi there @The Cyber Knight.

Thanks for posting and for sharing with us what you did to resolve it.

We appreciate your time and effort working through this, it can definitely help those who might encounter the same issue and looking for answers here in the community.

I agree with you that obtaining a diagnostic report through the Sonos app at the time the issue occurs would be a great help to determine what is the root cause of the issue.

 

If you have any questions, feel free to let us know.

Cheers!

Annazel,

Thanks for the reply.

The issue did not reoccur since my post. Be assured I will generate a diagnostic report if it happens again.

BTW, I really appreciate my new Sonos products.

Hi @The Cyber Knight.

Thanks for your response and feedback on your new Sonos products.

It’s nice to know that the issue hasn’t gone back for a while and I’m looking forward that you won’t experience it again.

 

Keep us posted.

Hi there,

 

The condition that preceded the high pitch buzzing incident reappeared 2 days ago - that is the Arc appears to reproduce sound with a much larger spatial range. This is caused by the side speakers (lateral) being active even when the sound format does not required them.

Again, only the left channel is firing sound toward the wall, the right one being completely muted. The last time, this exact same behavior appeared, then followed by the buzzing of the right lateral speaker.

This is happening with the TV source. Playing music on the system does not seems to exhibit this behavior. My TV setup is using an XBOX One as the source, routed to an LG TV which finally goes to the Arc. I rebooted the XBOX to verify if it was the culprit, with no change to the issue.

I generated a Sonos report when I noticed the issue. It carries the number 2135672779.

Don't hesitate if you need any additional information.


Thanks in advance for your support.

Hi there @The Cyber Knight.

Thanks for reaching out back to us.

Upon checking the diagnostic report, there are several errors detected by the system, but since the issue is not happening on music streaming,  it can be something being generated either by the TV, or possibly some sort of wifi interference.  I appreciate that you already did a factory reset on the Sonos Arc and that was indeed one of the steps to try when it comes to issues like this, but since the issue persists, then I suggest that it’s best to reach out to Sonos Support so we can take a closer look at this in real-time and expedite the process. I suggest our phone team for they have more resources available on their system for advanced troubleshooting, and the tools our agents can use would be very useful in this case.

 

​If you have any questions, please feel free to let us know.

Annazel,

Thank you for the follow-up.

I do suspect teh TV or the XBOX One as the culprit. My WiFi is usually very stable here, with no hiccups whatsoever.

My continued investigation showed that this state did survive the TV (XBOX + TV set) normal turn-off / turn-on cycle - that is it was still present the next day. Meanwhile, I forced music playback on this setup through Sonos Radio (the Sonos App seems to differentiate TV input vs music input) and could clearly hear all speakers (on the Arc) and the surrounds being at work.

After this session, when using the setup for TV watching again, I noticed everything was operating normally. I won't call support until I have a clearer understanding of the issue or another buzzing event - this will save time to everyone.

Thanks again.

 

P.S. The Arc + Sub + Surrounds really kick butts! I’m still surprised after 2 months...

Hi again,

 

My Arc did start the high pitch buzzing in the side-firing right speaker again few day ago.

I generated report #84742873 during the event.

Meanwhile, I do have more information about the issue. First, I was watching Netflix content that, I think, was using a 5.1 audio format without any issue. Then, without stopping Netflix, I switched to TV content provided by the XBOX - through a TV source change. At this point, the right side-firing channel start its high-pitch buzzing. At this point, I generated the report mentioned above. Several minutes later, I switched back to Netflix and continued watching the initial content. Interestingly, all the audio channels were behaving fine.

My uneducated guess here is that the Arc did not - for whatever reason - changed/perceived the audio channel format change and kept processing the stream the way Netflix initialized it, thus sending garbage data to the right side-firing speaker. In all events, the right side-firing speaker is the buzzing one. Then when switching back to Netflix, everything went back to normal.

There you go. You have the data and my description. I hope you can find something interesting.

Have a nice day. Thanks in advance for your time.

Just pinging back to see if there's something new that was uncovered with the diagnostics that were submitted.

Hi there @The Cyber Knight.

Thanks for your response.

I reviewed the diagnostic report and it shows that stereo/PCM is the audio codec/signal the Arc is getting from the audio source at the time this diagnostic was triggered. Most likely this might have something to do with the audio format and I suggest checking or adjusting the audio format on your video source to one of the supported home theater audio formats and see if there would be any changes. Some game consoles use the DTS audio format which is not supported by Sonos and some have the ability to transcode DTS into a format that Sonos supports, such as Dolby Digital 5.1. 

You may also refer to this article for more information: 

Unsupported audio on your home theater speaker

 

Let us know how that goes.

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