Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

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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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Edgar71

Lyricist I

I just want to add my voice here. I upgraded from the Beam to the ARC (with sub + play1 rears).

I felt immediately, and have continued to feel (after waiting for my ears to adjust), that the ARC sounds thin. Midrange just feels empty, with our without trueplay active.

In terms of my preferences and experience - I have owned several home theater systems, some of which were very high end ($10k+). I LIKE very detailed (aka bright, for some) speakers, having often preferred ribbon-based tweeters (Gallo Ref3s most recently). I’ve also owned and preferred very flat headphones, like the Audeze LCD2s. All that is just to say that I know what a flat frequency response should sound like, and while the Beam may have been overly warm at times, the ARC seems just dead.

I was actually pretty happy with the beam’s sound overall for the price, but wanted atmos and a bigger soundstage. The ARC definitely delivers on those aspects, and I think the high-end is quite nice and detailed, so I tend to think this can be fixed with better eq. I’m holding off on a return until Sonos has a chance to address these concerns.

While I respect what Trueplay is doing, especially the simplicity of it, I would really like more control to ‘tweak’ it. At the very LEAST add a mid-range slider alongside the bass/treble. Better would be some kind of advanced mode for trueplay that exposes some of what it’s done, and let us move the needle a bit in terms of certain frequencies.

Edit - I’ve seen reports of using older ios devices for Trueplay, which I will try. I also realized that you can probably ‘fake’ a midrange adjustment by just turning down both bass and treble in equal amounts, so I’m going to play with that too.

100% agree with Ben here. Simply put, the Arc has no warmth and doesn’t have the rich, full sound I’ve come to love from Sonos. I understand that everyone has different ears and “good sound” is subjective but with all of the 10/10 reviews I’ve seen before I received my own, expectations were set high.

I have the new Sub 3.0 + Arc set up, applied the new update, and there’s still something missing from the mid range. Just sounds like a cheap Bluetooth speaker with an amazing sub. Previously had a Playbase and even that sounded better.

One can’t help but wonder what several other’s have already shared on this forum about their Arc’s sounding amazing. I WANT MY ARC TO SOUND AMAZING TOO! The tech reviews, blogs, and this forum make me believe that I have a defective unit but getting through to Sonos support is a nightmare. Spent 3 hours on the phone yesterday alone.

True! I spent more than 3 hours adjusting everything that can be adjusted:-) Trueplay, EQ, different music, movies scenes, over and over again. In my opinion the Arc just doesn't meet the high standard they sold us on their website, Facebook advertisements etc. ‘Extraordinary sound’….joke! I don't believe all the reviews I read, unless they really had different units. I was looking forward to the Arc for weeks. Very disappointed right now. I made up my mind. Spent 900 euros, not gonna wait any longer for another fix or reply from Sonos. This doen’t match a premium product like they promised, this is just an average soundbar. Unfortunately tomorrow the Arc goes back.

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firstarc