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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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    Mitchellsx
    Renowned Enthusiast II
    July 2, 2020

    @Jean C. I have a LG c9, I followed your steps reset tv etc but still the same results with the ARC, sound is still very bad. I have also tested my Sonos Beam next to the ARC and find the Beam gives a much nicer warmer sound. ARCs sounding is just to sharp.

    BMF
    BMF
    Prodigy III
    July 2, 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. 

    The TV is definitely sending DD+ where appropriate, but the harshness is still there irrespective of codec or source, ie natively streaming music HDMI playing DD+, DD5.1, DD2.0 or PCM.

      craigski
      Local Superstar
      July 2, 2020

      published yesterday, the reviewer has also reviewed the beam:

      https://www.soundandvision.com/category/soundbar-reviews

      Outstanding music and movie sound
      Impressive rendering of height information
      Solid bass for standalone soundbar

      I don’t get why there is such a difference of opinion of sounds coming from the Arc? Could it be the environment, eg speaker placement, room size/dimensions?

       

        WerckxD
        Lyricist I
        July 2, 2020

        Same issue here with my wall-mounted Arc (+ Sub Gen3 + 2x One SL for surround). Already contacted customer support by phone, sent diagnostics reports, went through all the hoops of unplugging hdmi, power cable, restarting the tv (LG C9), different sources, eARC on/off, selecting pass-through/automatic, selecting automatic/dolby digital plus on my tv audio settings, etc...but to no avail. Nothing helped. Still experiencing the same (sometimes painful) piercing highs with a lot of hiss sounds, especially when people talk and barely any mids. Music playback has the same issue by the way.

        Trueplay (iPhone X) actually makes it even worse, and without Trueplay everything sounds dull. Nothing close compared to the raving reviews online which talk about full range audio.

        Something is definitely off with the tuning on the Arc. I hope Sonos will take the time to look into this and fixes this asap.

          gswanso2
          Lyricist III
          July 2, 2020

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

            gswanso2
            Lyricist III
            July 2, 2020

            Although the RTINGS.com review appears to not have used an LG TV, so I think it’s just a problem with the sound signature itself, as opposed to some sort of error unique to the people on this thread.

            BMF
            BMF
            Prodigy III
            July 2, 2020

            I have a Samsung TV and as Music streamed directly from the Arc, not involving any TV, still sounds harsh…. I assume it is the sound signature of the Arc.

             

            hopefully it can be warmed up by Software to be closer to the other Sonos speakers.

              anujgoel83
              Trending Lyricist I
              July 2, 2020

              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 

                pyro225
                Enthusiast II
                July 2, 2020

                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.

                Mitchellsx
                Renowned Enthusiast II
                July 2, 2020

                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? 

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