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Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

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O
Userlevel 4
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This is my first post and I apologize in advance if this isn’t helpful.
 

In my living room I have a Beam, Sub gen2 and two Ones connected to the S2 app. I replaced a Beam with an Arc yesterday and I experienced the same issues listed here. Muffled bass out of the box and sharp highs after True Play (with iPhone XS Max). It just sounded bad overall. 
 

There were some helpful comments in this thread and a video online that made me try retuning True Play with an OLD iPad mini. I did that this morning and it worked. The arc sounds like a different product, with music and video.
 

Last night I turned the treble down to -5 with Speech enhance on to be able to watch “Bates Motel” on Netflix and “Warcraft” on FX (via Apple TV 4K). Today After retuning True Play treble is at 0 and speech enhance is off and it sounds so much better. 
 

Thanks for the helpful posts! 

Yes, but this is not good experience. I had to run trueplay multiple times, and I am still unhappy with the sound on some programs. I have become acutely aware of mixing problems in shows in the process. 
 

Even after I am happy with the sound signature in one program, I might watch another that is far too bright with very harsh high frequencies. The experience is unpleasant. It is as if the midrange is missing. This never happened with the beam! 

 

I really have high expectations from the Arc, and I eagerly await for Sonos to fix the sound signature.

 

 

C
Userlevel 6
Badge +11

Ok I fixed it! So I trueplay tuned again but this time I did not move around the room. I just sat in my tv viewing spot and moved the phone around. And perfection!

I also found this to be the best way for Trueplay, only move the phone where your ears are likely to be, ie along the sofa

https://en.community.sonos.com/home-theater-228993/optimum-trueplay-6842990

 

 

K
Userlevel 2
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Yeah. The audio on mine is very bright on most tv channels. It’s bright on my streaming device too.Not as bad on dvds.Music is very good.
lt is very disappointing considering what l paid for it. I have the subwoofer and a couple rear speakers too in my set up.

l don’t know what further testing we can do.l have only tuned mine with iPad.l will try with an iPhone.Tech support told me that it didn’t matter what device you used.

 

A
Userlevel 3
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I find conversations regarding Trueplay and retuning etc. bizarre to be honest.  With it switched off (like it has to be for a huge amount of users who use Android), the Arc should not be exhibiting any of the issues being so widely reported.

Trueplay is to adjust the sound according to the room/environment it is in, not to fix fundamental problems.  There may be issues with tuning on specific devices’ microphones (quite ironic given the reasons for Trueplay only being supported on Apple devices) - but with it switched off these sorts of issues with bass etc. really shouldn't be there.

If you switch it off and have the problem then there is a huge issue.

And I am in this category of being an android user. I was disappointed from the very start with the sound of my Arc. I had tried adjusting the bass/treble with undesirable effects and then by borrowing my nephews iPhone to 'trueplay' the bar it did improve the sound quite dramatically. Unfortunately though it remains  hardly any better than my old 5 year old, £130, samsung 2.1 system it replaces, in fact for growling bass and loudness the Samsung was way better! 

This is my first dive in to the Sonos ocean and after glowing reviews I believed I was going to get a cinema experience and so I should at £800! All the Sonos fans seem to think it is okay to have a broken speaker, perhaps you may have a sub and play 1s and you believe, maybe because you have invested so much time and money in to their ecosystem, that Sonos will repair this broken soundbar. For me spending another £1000 to get that (and still some lambast the Arc with that setup) is crazy. It would be like buying a Ferrari with a 1.0 litre eco engine and saying but to get the best from it you need to upgrade and spend over double what you paid for it in the first place to make it what it should be (Actual costs exaggerated)! 

From what I'm reading everyone was happy with their previous Sonos products and I have heard some that sound great, that's what I was expecting (and more) from the Arc, how underwhelmed and disappointed I am. Yes I can send it back, but before I do I want to make sure the next £800 I spend on a soundbar isn't broken. 

 

Everything else Sonos makes is great.  That’s why it’s so disappointing.   Most of the other products all have a similar sound signature:  warm, punchy, dynamic... belies it’s size.   The Arc is just completely out of step with everything else sound wise. It’s like a completely different company made it.

 

At this point I really wish it was just a bigger more dynamic 5.1 Playbar replacement.  I think most people would have loved that.  The Atmos feature of the ARC for me is way overhyped.  Most of the time it’s almost unnoticeable.   If you have the perfect size room with 8 foot ceilings, flat side walls, etc it’s impressive.   But with most average living rooms the pseudo effects will struggle.

BMF
Userlevel 5
Badge +13

Agreed, they have described my observations very well.

 

The EQ profile of far too bright for my tastes, a very different profile to Playbar and Beam and not in a good way.

C

Indykid,

There are MANY folks who have this same issue and NO “Trueplay” will NOT fix the issue.  As you have noticed the thin sound can be “somewhat” program dependent. That is not the case with the Beam which is consistently excellent. (I have both.)  In the long term don’t expect your ears to adjust to this substandard sound quality. The Arc does do a fair job of simulating ATMOS but the shrill timbre quickly causes ear fatigue. 

M

I was suffering from the same issue.  After I read this thread I contacted Sonos support and was escalated to senior support who actually set up a night time appointment and called me to troubleshoot.  I am playing through an LG OLED 77C9.  Spectacular TV BTW.  We ended up with two solutions that fixed my issue.  I switched HDMI from pass through to auto in the LG HDMI settings and replaced the Sonos ARC supplied HDMI cable with a “higher” end cable.  That fixed the issue and ATMOS now sounds amazing through the ARC.  Night and day difference from before to after.  Good luck with this possible solution for LG users.

B
Userlevel 1
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Just watched avengers endgame when everyone comes through the worm holes and attacks thanos in Atmos and oh my lord. Glorious. Amazing special separation, exceptional clarity and perfect amount of subs and surrounds. No need to adjust

A
Userlevel 3
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I think a lot of the people who are happy with the Arc are coming from listening to tv speakers.  Which in most cases, a Bluetooth speaker would be an upgrade.  You don’t see many people on here coming from another soundbar, and definitely not a decent hifi setup, praising the arc.  Poor or limited reference points.  

J
Userlevel 1
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I returned mine, but I will share something about “needing the sub.” As an experiment, we turned the sub down and move it to a different room, the Arc sounded better than without the sub hooked up (of course it lacked bass.) The Arc could be much better on it’s own if it was faked into thinking it has a sub. I’m not saying anyone is trying to make you add more product, but…

 

Many claim you MUST add the sub for the Arc to sound good, then you MUST add the rears for it to sound good. Heck, at that point your are well into a pretty decent a/v component set up, even a low end set up would sound as good or maybe better. I will say that the Sonos sub is a winner, the Arc not so much for the price. 

J

I bought the sonos Arc last week and was soo dissapointed. I added a Sub gen 3 because I tought that would give the sound of the arc more “body”. The bass is better now, but there are no mid tones. 

During tv shows, the vocal part drops in volume (probably because the voice goes into the midrange where there is almost no amplification)

I am really dissapointed, and would not recommend anyone buying this setup.

D
Userlevel 1
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I recently purchased two Arc soundbars. Bought the second one because I changed my mind on the color option. I gave both a go and found the same issue with both bars…that is the dialogue is incredibly forward and shrill to my ears. I find the dialogue is so loud and so forward that it makes it very difficult to enjoy the speaker, in fact it’s even causing ear fatigue and pain ¼ way through a movie. 

I’m coming from a PlayBar paired to a Sub Mini and 2 Play Ones as rears. So that is my baseline of comparison as well as a more decked out system in our living room that is a 5.1.2 Atmos Receiver setup. 

I want to raise the volume up to a decent level but I find when I do the dialogue is just so present and ear piercingly loud and shrill. It was exhausting to my ears after as little as 20 min. I tried making adjustments the next day. I turned off the dialogue enhancement. Turned down the Treble. I still was feeling like my ears where hurting as I was still feeling a lingering ear pressure / discomfort from the prior days run of less than 30 min listening to action sequence at the end of Rogue One. 

The pain kicked in again and I had to take Ibuprofen and a Prednisone to get my ears to settle down. (I have prednisone for my ears for flying. I have a history of ear pain from the pressure while flying that is well mitigated by taking 5 mg of prednisone an hour or two before landings).
 

So maybe my ears are somehow more sensitive to the highs of the dialogue…who knows. I do know that I can crank the same system with the PlayBar in place with Zero issues and no ear fatigue or pain. I know that I can crank my Atmos setup in the living room very loud and have Zero ear pain or ear fatigue. 5 speakers in the living room setup are Martin Logan speakers and there’s an SVS Sub as well. 
 

The only other time I’ve had ear fatigue is when I had ELAC speakers as my front stage. They are not very sensitive speakers and so you have to really drive them with quite a bit of power to get them to sing and sound great. I would get fatigued after about an hour of quite loud music listening with the ELAC speakers.

 

I don’t feel like I’m pushing the Arc soundbar unreasonably high or anything and yet I’m having this really unpleasant ear pain and fatigue with the dialogue and highs.
 

I’m going to give it one more shot now that my ears have rested for 4 days. Going to try the Arc again starting with the Treble turned down, with the dialogue enhancement turned off. I want to see if the arc can still sound any good with these restrained settings while also hopefully not causing me ear fatigue or pain.

 

I really want this to work but it sucks this is an issue when the PlayBar setup is quite good and has a rich warm tone to the music and has great rich bass that the Arc just lacks in. 
 

Has anyone found any solution to this problem with their Arc? 

 

 


 

 

P
Userlevel 2
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I first reported mine as faulty/unsatisfactory at the end of June and I am still waiting for Sonos to resolve this. They offered to set up an exchange but requested some information from me. I have sent this twice and on both occasions, they have just sent me a generic email response asking if they have resolved my case to my satisfaction… no actual response for 3 days.

Unfortunately, I am highly invested into sonos so not as simple as just getting a refund.

Think they are going to lose customers over this and end up with lots of returns. 

Sort it out sonos. Not a happy customer!!!.

 

A
Userlevel 2
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I also have an LG C9. That’s like four people on this thread. Anyone else have an LG tv?

I have a B7, and overall sound is sublime. Definitely seems like a faulty batch of hardware 

Did you have a Beam or playbar etc before? I really noticed the difference when comparing to my Beam.

 

Just looked don’t know why I didn’t earlier at the build date of my arc- March 2020 - I can’t imagine the reviewers had earlier builds than 3 months prior? It hadn’t even been announced at that point.

Where abouts did you find your build number? 

I am also coming from the beam, and the arc is a substantial improvement, but I will say it’s certainly a ‘brighter’ presentation, but I see this as aiding overall clarity, not a reduction in richness at all

J
Userlevel 1
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Jumping in late here and way to much to read… Bottom line, is it worth purchasing the Arc to replace my Beam? Outside of this thread, the reviews I’ve found all make it sound like the Arc is the shit. This thread though makes me think it’s shitty. I’m lost. 

If you have a pair of surrounds and a sub to pair with the Arc then you will not be disappointed. The Arc by itself was terrible at launch, both opinion and fact. But things have improved. The bass issue is 95% resolved, it only crops up in the most obscure places at volumes too high when it is unpaired with a sub and surrounds.  The metallic issue is also mostly fixed, but has been narrowed down to an issue with Trueplay on certain iPhone models. I started a thread here about it, with a video link for a deeper explanation.  

TL:DR: As of Jan 2020 the Arc is a great HT purchase IF you are also pairing it with  surrounds and a sub.

I was once a user who wanted to return my Arc that I preorded, as of now I am  90% happy with my Sonos purchase.  (still burned by no DTS, yes I am one of those guys).

 

 

 

What is the issue if you do not bond it with surrounds when listening to stereo music? This should not be a problem should it? It still ridiculous that you have to bond a 900 dollar soundbar with sub/rears if you ask me...

 

Pairing the Arc with surrounds, and the sub will offload many of those frequencies off the Arc.  It is barely talked about in Sonos’s marketing but the change is pretty huge. A guy named Peter Pee on Youtube shows this change using fancy audio testing equipment to map out the crossover and response changes made.

 The Arc by itself is just trying to do too much on its own.  My wife will contest for me, I was an angry new Sonos user when my Arc came in a week before the One Sl’s and Sub. I added the Ones and instantly the difference was crazy. Then the Sub the next day.  I have been a happy camper a few firmware updates after adding the sub. 

I have have the arc 5.1 system for 7 months now and it sounds terrible. No matter how many times i tune it and with every combination of filter on and or off. It is a terrible sound quality system. 

P
Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Good to hear some is working on it.

jonmichael
Userlevel 4

So, I see the post on the home page about a “Clarity upgrade” for the Arc. After 40 pages of complaints about the sound quality, especially the rampant sibilants, I am starting to reconsider my planned October purchase of an Arc+sub+surrounds.

Has this newly hatched upgrade helped anyone who has had this problem? Should I stay or should I go?

Old guy with toys.
A
Userlevel 6
Badge +6

Does the true play tuning with an older iPhone actually work, ive got currently got an iPhone XS Max and a newish iPad 2-3 years old. What age iPhone are people using? thanks 

Yes it does. I used my 2017 iPad Pro for Truplay and it is miles better than XS.

C
Userlevel 1

All it takes is  a more robust  EQ settings, I’m confident the hardware with 11 speakers, each amplified independently it’s a lot of future proof. A lot can be done with that hardware. For now EQ setting would make most people satisfied for sound signatures. But in the future Sonos can come up with new ideas about the use of this hardware.

M
Userlevel 5
Badge +7

Just purchased the ARC. Using it primarily for movies or shows.   Dialogue seems thin or without midrange.  Basically like there is no warmth to the voice.  And perhaps an even bigger issue is the soundstage sounds “weak”.   Most voices seem contained like in a little box and trapped in the speaker.  Every now and again the soundstage improves in a scene or two but kinda few and far between.   Have messed witht the treble and bass controls and they don’t seem to do too much.  

Looks like this is similar to some others.  Has Sonos come up with a fix??

I have found the Sonos ARC can be hit and miss with different content, some dialogue does sound very thin.. I have a Beam upstairs and find that better at times with dialogue.

D
Userlevel 1
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The video is very interesting. It’s a bit frustrationg to spend $800 on a product that doesn’t work as advertised and the fix is to buy another another $700 product????

I don’t doubt the sub is a nice product but one reason I spent more on the Arc was to not have to buy a sub. 

T
Userlevel 3
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How is there still no real progress on this… ugh.

C

Mitchell’s,

As well as the thin sound do you experience a harsh sibilance on certain female voices?  

S
Userlevel 4
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I changed from Playbar to ARC in January and have often thought it was sounding distorted - I have just happened upon this thread - I thought it was just me and I was going mad.  During Four Weddings and a Funeral the other night, when Kristin Scott Thomas is proposing a toast ‘to Duckface’ outside the church, the distortion on her speech was excruciating.  I have tuned several times with iPhone 12, without a case and holding/moving as instructed.

I have turned Trueplay off and will see how it sounds for a few days.  It seems better on first listen.

 

iPhones for me always had issues. Found an old iPad and seems to sort it correctly. 

Ken_Griffiths

So, I see the post on the home page about a “Clarity upgrade” for the Arc. After 40 pages of complaints about the sound quality, especially the rampant sibilants, I am starting to reconsider my planned October purchase of an Arc+sub+surrounds.

Has this newly hatched upgrade helped anyone who has had this problem? Should I stay or should I go?

Last post here in the thread (before yours) was a month ago, so maybe that helps to answer your question?… if not, just stick around anyway.😀

You’ll always find those in support and those against, but the real answer here is to just try things for yourself, as there is a Sonos 100-day returns policy and money back guarantee in any case.

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