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arpatil1
Enthusiast II
June 17, 2020
Answered

Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

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
    July 2, 2020

    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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    CuzFeeshe
    Enthusiast I
    July 1, 2020

    @Jean C. 

    Here is a diagnostic after playing the Dolby Atmos demo above on XBox One.

    704248715

      shane_sd
      Lyricist III
      July 1, 2020

      Hello All,

      Sorry for the delay, I have only just now been able to review this thread and taken a quick cursory glance at the half dozen or so diagnostics submitted (thank you for those).

      The one commonality that I’m seeing on all of these reports is that the ARC status on the Arc (I know) is either disabled, blocked, or inactive. 

      Have you examined the CEC settings on your TVs (and for good measure made sure that the Arc is in the HDMI/ARC port)?

      If you do a full reboot of your TV (unplugging it fully from power/plugging it back in) change anything in the audio settings or quality?   

       

      Hi all! This is my first post. I found this thread after searching the web to see if others were disappointed with their new Arc’s. My new Arc replaced a Beam in my home theater system. The primary reason I was replacing the Beam was because of how it handled music. I was never happy with it. The highs were just too harsh/thin/brittle for my ears. I don’t experience this with the Play 5 in my office at all. I realize these products are tuned for specific roles but I also owned the Playbar which was fantastic with music. 

       

      I believe the product should sound good without extra processing, just like my Play 5 does, but I’ve done everything to try and improve the sound of my Arc with no success. I have Trueplay tuned several times, adjusted EQ and Loudness, with no success. I also believe our ears need several days to adjust to a new sound. I gave the Arc several days and I’m still not happy. I don’t believe I have an improvement over my Beam for music which is wild. I’m at the point where I’m ready to start a return. 

       

      With that said, thanks for chiming in Jean. I’m hoping a solution is possible before my return period expires. To your question about whether or not CEC settings are configured properly, what I’m hearing from the community is that we all feel like something is missing overall. A harshness or “thinness” is there. With that said, I’ve tried turning CEC on and off and there is no improvement. I’m happy to help in any way I can. 

        BMF
        BMF
        Prodigy III
        July 1, 2020

        CEC is on for me, same as the Beam was… I use it all the time “Alexa, turn off the TV” (as my wife and daughter do not seem to understand that a TV can also be switched off as well as on….. but that is a different problem, that I doubt Sonos can fix 🤓)

         

        Cant see why CEC would make a difference, but tested and the Arc still sounds more harsh than Playbar or Beam.

          arpatil1Author
          Enthusiast II
          July 1, 2020

          CEC is on for me, same as the Beam was… I use it all the time “Alexa, turn off the TV” (as my wife and daughter do not seem to understand that a TV can also be switched off as well as on….. but that is a different problem, that I doubt Sonos can fix 🤓)

           

          Cant see why CEC would make a difference, but tested and the Arc still sounds more harsh than Playbar or Beam.

          Harshness goes when truplayed with older iPhones. But dialogues are still hollow. It doesn’t feel like the center channel has 2 woofers and 1 tweeter. The balance between highs and mids just isn’t there.

          Also, my CEC is on. Zero chance that it’s affecting sound quality. 

            Jean C.
            Jean C.
            Retired Sonos Staff
            July 1, 2020

            Hello @CuzFeeshe,

            Thank you for the diagnostic report and welcome to the Sonos Community by the way.

            Does your X Box One or TV have an eArc port?

            Can you test the Arc directly from the X-box to see if the harshness continues?

              

            Help others find useful content by clicking the like button and selecting the best answer to your question.
            Jean C.
            Jean C.
            Retired Sonos Staff
            July 1, 2020

            @BMF, ​​@arpatil1 & @shane_sd,

            CEC can come into play if it is somehow blocked or preventing the Arc from receiving the correct audio codec. 

            That the ARC status had been consistently reading as blocked/inactive/disabled tells me that something might be amiss in how the Tv is communicating to the Arc.

            The quickest way to remedy this would be to completely reboot the TV and then see what format the TV is passing on via the HDMI/ARC or preferably eARC port. 

            If your TV doesn’t support eARC, try setting the TV audio format to Dolby Digital+ and see if it makes a difference. 

            Help others find useful content by clicking the like button and selecting the best answer to your question.
            jkozlow3
            Enthusiast II
            July 1, 2020

            @Jean C.  Couldn’t people just stream the songs from their device via Airplay and confirm that the Arc sounds metallic/tinny and take the display out of the equation altogether?

              Jean C.
              Jean C.
              Retired Sonos Staff
              July 1, 2020

              Hello @jkozlow3,

              Home Theater audio and streaming music or Airplay music function very differently from each other.

              To the best of my understanding this issue is only occurring with home theater audio which indicates a software issue rather than a hardware issue at this time.

              If this has not been the case and any audio sourced from the Sonos app or other streaming audio services linked to Sonos was sounding equally bad, it would change the slant of our troubleshooting here.

              Help others find useful content by clicking the like button and selecting the best answer to your question.
              jkozlow3
              Enthusiast II
              July 1, 2020

              Hello @jkozlow3,

              Home Theater audio and streaming music or Airplay music function very differently from each other.

              To the best of my understanding this issue is only occurring with home theater audio which indicates a software issue rather than a hardware issue at this time.

              If this has not been the case and any audio sourced from the Sonos app or other streaming audio services linked to Sonos was sounding equally bad, it would change the slant of our troubleshooting here.

               

              @Jean C. 

              Interesting - I was under the impression people were having issues with music playback as well (either via Airplay or the Sonos app) - not just via home theater audio. 

               

              Hopefully folks will chime in as I know many people have indicated in the various threads here and on Reddit that their older Sonos devices (Playbar, Beam, etc.) sounded better for music as well.

                shane_sd
                Lyricist III
                July 1, 2020

                @Jean C.  Couldn’t people just stream the songs from their device via Airplay and confirm that the Arc sounds metallic/tinny and take the display out of the equation altogether?

                Yes. That’s exactly what I have done. HDMI has been disconnected entirely. Music is my primary use so you can understand my disappointment when I realized my Beam sounds as good if not better than the Arc for music playback - and I don’t like the way my Beam sounds with music.

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