Enthusiast II

Answered

Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

1017 replies
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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?

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

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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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pyro225

Enthusiast II

4 digits before the serial no

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anujgoel83

Trending Lyricist I

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

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craigski

Local Superstar

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

This is what the rtings graphs show. The high frequency cut off for Playbar and Beam shows a score of 7.5, where as the Arc shows a score of 9.8. So this means you are hearing high treble frequencies on the Arc that you may not have heard on the Beam/Playbar, depending on how good (old?) your ears are at this frequency?

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anujgoel83

Trending Lyricist I

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

This is what the rtings graphs show. The high frequency cut off for Playbar and Beam shows a score of 7.5, where as the Arc shows a score of 9.8. So this means you are hearing high treble frequencies on the Arc that you may not have heard on the Beam/Playbar, depending on how good (old?) your ears are at this frequency?

Well my 36 year old ears may have deteriorated slightly!, but for anyone to experience the beam sounding in any way ‘better’, there’s something seriously wrong with those units

W

Wildantics

Avid Contributor III

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

This is what the rtings graphs show. The high frequency cut off for Playbar and Beam shows a score of 7.5, where as the Arc shows a score of 9.8. So this means you are hearing high treble frequencies on the Arc that you may not have heard on the Beam/Playbar, depending on how good (old?) your ears are at this frequency?

Well my 36 year old ears may have deteriorated slightly!, but for anyone to experience the beam sounding in any way ‘better’, there’s something seriously wrong with those units

yea I upgraded from the beam myself, granted my Arc came after the bass fix so I can’t speak to that but this thing sounds amazing. I was worried seeing all these negatives, im glad for me it was not an issue. It does make me wonder though if some of them are just defective and maybe need replaced?

M

Mitchellsx

Renowned Enthusiast II

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

This is what the rtings graphs show. The high frequency cut off for Playbar and Beam shows a score of 7.5, where as the Arc shows a score of 9.8. So this means you are hearing high treble frequencies on the Arc that you may not have heard on the Beam/Playbar, depending on how good (old?) your ears are at this frequency?

Well my 36 year old ears may have deteriorated slightly!, but for anyone to experience the beam sounding in any way ‘better’, there’s something seriously wrong with those units

yea I upgraded from the beam myself, granted my Arc came after the bass fix so I can’t speak to that but this thing sounds amazing. I was worried seeing all these negatives, im glad for me it was not an issue. It does make me wonder though if some of them are just defective and maybe need replaced?

What is the build number of your device? I’ve only heard March so far.

A

anujgoel83

Trending Lyricist I

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

This is what the rtings graphs show. The high frequency cut off for Playbar and Beam shows a score of 7.5, where as the Arc shows a score of 9.8. So this means you are hearing high treble frequencies on the Arc that you may not have heard on the Beam/Playbar, depending on how good (old?) your ears are at this frequency?

Well my 36 year old ears may have deteriorated slightly!, but for anyone to experience the beam sounding in any way ‘better’, there’s something seriously wrong with those units

yea I upgraded from the beam myself, granted my Arc came after the bass fix so I can’t speak to that but this thing sounds amazing. I was worried seeing all these negatives, im glad for me it was not an issue. It does make me wonder though if some of them are just defective and maybe need replaced?

What is the build number of your device? I’ve only heard March so far.

Can’t see how the build number correlated to date? Mine is 58177280 for ref

Jean C.

Retired Sonos Staff

Hello all,

Thank you for clarifying that the issue is both from music services and from connected home theater sources, sometimes one does get tunnel-vision in looking into an issue this large.

For those of you that have moved from a Beam to an Arc, how large is the room that you are set up in with the Arc?

The Beam is designed to deliver optimal sound in more modest or compact space where the Arc is quite the opposite. I can see from some of the photographs that have been included in this thread that quite a few of your set-ups are in larger open spaces.

In the interest in trying to take all factors into account I’d be interested in more information from those of you who have moved from our smallest to largest home theater products and if possible, provide comparative diagnostic reports from your system.

Help others find useful content by clicking the like button and selecting the best answer to your question.

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BenR

Lyricist III

Hi @Jean C.

Thanks for continuing to listen.
I am one of those who moved from the beam to the arc and my setup is in a relatively large room (kitchen/living/dining combined). The beam, when paired with the sub and play1s, always sounded decent, but i was also aware that the beam was not intended for a space this large. That said, I generally thought the sound signature was fine, it was mostly just lacking in soundstage and maybe detail at higher volumes playing complex audio.
The arc can clearly address those issues, but has its own issue that has been described well in this thread, and really *seems* like a processing/eq issue to me, because the drivers and power don’t seem lacking, but it’s hard to tell without more control over the eq. That theory is certainly bolstered by how different the truplay tuning results can be. The last time I tuned with an older iPad, the overall balance of frequencies seems to have improved, but it’s hard to be certain without a more scientific approach. It went from really bothering me, to something I can tolerate, but still feel is not representative of what the hardware can do.

I still have my beam and have not spent the time to reconnect and do a/b testing yet. I would be willing to go through this exercise, especially if we could decide on a repeatable testing approach that maybe others could also follow.

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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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