Enthusiast II

Answered

Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

1017 replies
128936 views

Hi All.

It’s a relief that Sonos has identified the bug that’s causing the bass distortion in Sonos Arc. Thank you @Ryan S for working with the Sonos Communty to identify the problem quickly.

Having said this, I believe that Sonos still needs more work to make the Arc sound as it was advertised. Currently, multiple people on Reddit including myself are reporting the highs being too high which sort of feels “harsh”. This improve the speech clarity and brings out details in the movies, but the warmth in speech is lost because the voices sound thin and metallic (for eg. actors I know having heavy voices don’t sound heavy). I was expecting the mid-range to be a lot better considering the Arc has 8 woofers.

I have tried TruPlaying twice without success (Turning TruPlay off produces muffled sound). Adjusting the treble also did not help much. Loudness turned on and off does not make a big difference either. May be, this is how the Arc is tuned?!

Anyone else feels that Arc is over-emphasizing the highs with compromised mids?

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Scott - SonosAnswer

Sonos Product Management

Hello everyone. I’m a product manager at Sonos. Thank you for sharing your experiences with Arc. The development team is monitoring this community and listening to your feedback.

As we do with all Sonos products, we’ll continue to improve the experience for Arc through numerous software updates into the future. Last week we issued our first update (12.0.1) to fix a bug some customers were experiencing with low-frequency distortion at higher volumes.

If you have specific music tracks or timestamps for TV shows and movies that you want to bring to our attention, please use this form. It is helpful if you can submit a diagnostic when you’re listening to the content. Instructions for doing so can be found here.

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LiveMixEng22

Lyricist I

I actually disabled TruePlay entirely and that

Hi All.

It’s a relief that Sonos has identified the bug that’s causing the bass distortion in Sonos Arc. Thank you @Ryan S for working with the Sonos Communty to identify the problem quickly.

Having said this, I believe that Sonos still needs more work to make the Arc sound as it was advertised. Currently, multiple people on Reddit including myself are reporting the highs being too high which sort of feels “harsh”. This improve the speech clarity and brings out details in the movies, but the warmth in speech is lost because the voices sound thin and metallic (for eg. actors I know having heavy voices don’t sound heavy). I was expecting the mid-range to be a lot better considering the Arc has 8 woofers.

I have tried TruPlaying twice without success (Turning TruPlay off produces muffled sound). Adjusting the treble also did not help much. Loudness turned on and off does not make a big difference either. May be, this is how the Arc is tuned?!

Anyone else feels that Arc is over-emphasizing the highs with compromised mids?

I also am having a huge issue with the highs being too emphasized. I have been measuring the performance of my Sonos Arc and am seeing a huge flat response in the range from about 375hz to 1khz. There is just nothing really there. No movement on a spectrum analyzer, and the sound lacks any warmth to it. I fiddled with the EQ settings and managed to get a slight gain in that range by turning down the Treble and turning up the Bass, but it overall is very, very cold-sounding. To listen to this for long periods of time is actually quite irritating. Podcasts and other streamed audio dialogue is painful. Sonos, can we get a fix for this ASAP?

Thanks!

Follow up: I disabled Trueplay entirely and manually adjusted the EQ and the sound is far, far better. The mids are there again. The only issue is that the crossover is not as robust without Trueplay, so there is muddiness in that mid-range and a loss of clarity on the high end.

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vtjt

Lyricist III

My Arc arrived last night, and sadly I too am suffering from this issue.

Upon performing Trueplay calibration with an iPhone XS, and firing up the speaker for the first time, I was extremely disappointed to hear the miserable sound quality. It’s like the midrange is totally absent, and the treble/presence is harsh and extremely exaggerated -- cymbals sound almost like static, “s” sounds cut through everything else, etc. It also sounded like the “center channel” was missing… the sound seemed too directional out of the hard left and hard right, rather than uniformly filling the room.

Arc is setup standalone, with no other speakers.

We previously had a Beam in this room, and the sound from that was so much better... full midrange, warmth, perfect balance. Hard to believe an $800 speaker with such glowing audiophile reviews could be so miserable in person. If this can’t be fixed, I’m going to return this thing.

Here’s the thing though… I’m suspicious that this metallic treble sound and missing midrange is a Trueplay bug, or a compatibility issue with certain iPhone models doing the calibration, rather than a flaw with the speaker itself. I re-calibrated Trueplay using my wife’s iPhone 11, and the sound quality is much improved. It’s still not as good as the Beam… the midrange is still off, and it sounds like the center channel is still missing, but the trashiness of the treble is much improved.

I’m tempted to try recalibrating with an iPad, just to see what happens, but I’m afraid of making it worse and not being able to get it back. I wish I could save different Trueplay calibrations.

@Ryan S please let me know how I can help the Sonos team fix this issue!

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craigski

Local Superstar

Here’s the thing though… I’m suspicious that this metallic treble sound and missing midrange is a Trueplay bug, or a compatibility issue with certain iPhone models doing the calibration, rather than a flaw with the speaker itself. I re-calibrated Trueplay using my wife’s iPhone 11, and the sound quality is much improved. It’s still not as good as the Beam… the midrange is still off, and it sounds like the center channel is still missing, but the trashiness of the treble is much improved.

https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/trueplay-tuning-a-variety-of-speakers-playbar-arc-beam-with-newer-iphones-results-in-tinny-sound-6843248

I’m tempted to try recalibrating with an iPad, just to see what happens, but I’m afraid of making it worse and not being able to get it back. I wish I could save different Trueplay calibrations.

https://en.community.sonos.com/setting-up-sonos-228990/suggestion-save-multiple-trueplay-tunings-6843198

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lzy1987

Enthusiast I

My Arc arrived last night, and sadly I too am suffering from this issue.

Upon performing Trueplay calibration with an iPhone XS, and firing up the speaker for the first time, I was extremely disappointed to hear the miserable sound quality. It’s like the midrange is totally absent, and the treble/presence is harsh and extremely exaggerated -- cymbals sound almost like static, “s” sounds cut through everything else, etc. It also sounded like the “center channel” was missing… the sound seemed too directional out of the hard left and hard right, rather than uniformly filling the room.

Arc is setup standalone, with no other speakers.

We previously had a Beam in this room, and the sound from that was so much better... full midrange, warmth, perfect balance. Hard to believe an $800 speaker with such glowing audiophile reviews could be so miserable in person. If this can’t be fixed, I’m going to return this thing.

Here’s the thing though… I’m suspicious that this metallic treble sound and missing midrange is a Trueplay bug, or a compatibility issue with certain iPhone models doing the calibration, rather than a flaw with the speaker itself. I re-calibrated Trueplay using my wife’s iPhone 11, and the sound quality is much improved. It’s still not as good as the Beam… the midrange is still off, and it sounds like the center channel is still missing, but the trashiness of the treble is much improved.

I’m tempted to try recalibrating with an iPad, just to see what happens, but I’m afraid of making it worse and not being able to get it back. I wish I could save different Trueplay calibrations.

@Ryan S please let me know how I can help the Sonos team fix this issue!

Slightly disagree, the metallic treble sound u mentioned is already present even without Trueplay. While Trueplay calibration do give inconsistent result, i think the Sonos team should first focus on fixing the Arc to sound great out of the box.

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vtjt

Lyricist III

Slightly disagree, the metallic treble sound u mentioned is already present even without Trueplay. While Trueplay calibration do give inconsistent result, i think the Sonos team should first focus on fixing the Arc to sound great out of the box.

Fair point. The speaker sounds downright atrocious without Trueplay. I would return it on the spot if there was no way to make it sound good.

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chillaban

Trending Lyricist I

FWIW I think the TruePlay issue plays a role in how bright/metallic the Arc can sound but it’s not the only factor.

Even doing the tuning with an unaffected device, in my assessment when playing music, the side firing tweeters that are meant to bounce off the walls end up contributing to at least 30% of the volume, which probably contributes to a bright treble heavy effect.

in my opinion this is a stark contrast to the Playbar which barely uses the side tweeters for music, allowing more of the midrange in the front facing part of the sound bar to dominate.

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sebas1509

Enthusiast II

Some are saying to retune after the 12.0.1 and that fixes or improves this issue

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chillaban

Trending Lyricist I

I’m not really noticing a difference after installing 12.0.1 and then re-tuning. But I’ve got Subs and a surround. Still the same, versus the Playbar, the Arc has a pretty significant surround sound effect for playing music that makes it feel less rich and center-stage than the Playbar.

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antx

Lyricist III

I’m not really noticing a difference after installing 12.0.1 and then re-tuning. But I’ve got Subs and a surround. Still the same, versus the Playbar, the Arc has a pretty significant surround sound effect for playing music that makes it feel less rich and center-stage than the Playbar.

Same here, its really annoying now

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austinVill

Lyricist II

FWIW I think the TruePlay issue plays a role in how bright/metallic the Arc can sound but it’s not the only factor.

Even doing the tuning with an unaffected device, in my assessment when playing music, the side firing tweeters that are meant to bounce off the walls end up contributing to at least 30% of the volume, which probably contributes to a bright treble heavy effect.

in my opinion this is a stark contrast to the Playbar which barely uses the side tweeters for music, allowing more of the midrange in the front facing part of the sound bar to dominate.

this is what I was trying to articulate to the author... arpatil1… I think the side firing speakers are tuned too loud thus drowning out the center speaker, mid range/ vocals.

**Updated edit**

So I think I figured it out. Spent a lot of time on this.

Its as if the “virtual surround sound” is tuned too high. Think about a cheap sound bar and you select the “virtual surround button.” It creates a “room filling” sound but this also why people are explaining the sound is irritating especially with music. You hear too much of it thus missing out on the warmth and depth of mods. I suspect people with a large room where sound doesn’t bounce off walls don’t have this problem which explains the differing view points.

Even when I pair the sub and surrounds I still feel like the arc is trying to do too much electronically to fill the room. Let the speaker do the talking and back down the algorithm for emphasizing “virtual surround sound”

from arpatil1: “This does not explain why the vocals are tinny. Center speaker is till direct, facing you. there is no virtual surround with the speech”

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