Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

Yikes! I confirm. i get crackling sounds. sounds pretty bad. 

I submitted the form and diagnosis . It is terrible, Beam never did this. If bass and this doesn’t get straightened out by my return window this thing is going bye bye. Arc should cost $499 even that is pushing it. How can a product be released like this. Such a fail.

I just tried this…. I could hear it clearly at higher volume.  Then I lowered the volume quite a bit and got near the speaker… I could still hear some popping/crackling.

THEN I went in the bedroom and pulled up the Beam and tried it…. and I could still hear the crackling.  Granted, it was more difficult to hear because the Arc is producing a greater dynamic range, but it was clearly there.

THEN I pulled out my Bose headphones, plugged them into my iPad, and did the same thing… I could clearly hear the popping/crackling.

I think the popping and crackling to an extent is part of the original soundtrack.  The joke is that he’s screaming into the microphone enough the tax their PA equipment.

I’m thinking in this case maybe the arc is doing a terrific job reproducing popping and crackling of PA equipment in a soundtrack.

I will test this further but I hear this not just at that part, that is where it’s consistent and exaggerated. This happens all the time. Pop here pop there i feel like something is wrong always lol

Reading the above, there is some irony here, we have a scene that is supposed to sound terrible, and the Arc reproduces these ‘terrible’ sounds and they sound ‘terrible’ ? I would argue that is not an ideal test.

In my last comment I said it doesn’t just happen there, did you miss that part? It is possible that the parabolic mics they use on the show give off that feedback and the Arc exaggerates it.

I would agree…. there are several possibilities here.  One is that there are recording imperfections that better quality speakers and dynamic separation reveal.  This was a big complaint when CD’s originally came out and exposed limitations of records.  The ‘hiss’ was gone and suddenly you could hear these things.  Also, with the “brighter” sound on the Arc maybe you can hear things that you can’t hear on the beam.

Another possibility is that there are still some sound reproduction/translation issues in the Arc that need to be adjusted.  Obviously with more speakers and the directional abilities a lot had to be re-done on the Arc.

Testing the same soundtrack at low volumes and higher volumes to see whether the imperfections are still there is one way to see.  If the exact same sounds are reproduced at all volumes it’s clearly in the recording or in the way the sound is being translated, which means it probably isn’t an imperfection in the hardware.

Also, I have no way of hearing what you are hearing.  I can hear popping/crackling in that part of the office but it may not be exactly what you are hearing.

Drive - Netflix - 35:00 volume over 55% horrible bass popping sound. Under 30% sounds good.

on my B&W LCR8 / denon setuo it sounds superb all the way through the colum

Thank you for testing on other equipment!

Everyone should be testing on more than one piece of equipment before simply posting “this scene sounds terrible on the Arc” when half of these examples are probably issues with the source audio itself. All that does is muddy the waters and detract from the issue making it more difficult for Sonos to investigate.

There is an issue here that cannot be chalked up to preference or room size. Was the bass issue that was supposedly solved a result of a more revealing speaker or a less than ideal room? No. A major issue was found that got past all the intelligent folks at Sonos. 

Something isn’t right about the Arc. It sounds small & thin resulting in a harsh sound. It’s almost as if the polarity is off. I don’t want to exaggerate the issue either. It’s tolerable. It just doesn’t sound like a high end product. Sounds cheap. I’d like for Sonos to unbox a unit that they’re shipping out to see if something happened during manufacturing.