Enthusiast II

Answered

Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

1017 replies
128946 views

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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S

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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knafets

Lyricist III

RTINGS said in there review something the same:

Sonos Arc soundbar is just okay for dialogue and TV shows. It has a dedicated center channel for accurate reproduction of voices, which is great. It also has an overall bright sound signature which can help dialogue stand out, although some may feel like there's not enough bass.

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King Colin

Avid Contributor I

I bought the arc two days,and l have tried everything to get rid of this harshness and tinny sound in the audio.I am very disappointed at the

moment with the product,and l hope Sonos will address this problem. I wonder does the soundbar need a “running in”

Do we wait for a fix or send it back???

M

mewantsonos

Trending Lyricist I

I bought the arc two days,and l have tried everything to get rid of this harshness and tinny sound in the audio.I am very disappointed at the

moment with the product,and l hope Sonos will address this problem. I wonder does the soundbar need a “running in”

Do we wait for a fix or send it back???

I m thinking about sending it back just can’t wait for 6 months for a fix lol

K

knafets

Lyricist III

For now my “best” settings are

treuplay off

bass +3

treble-2

I think this is some workaround to control te mid tones But still it is not good at all.

O

oriboaz

Prodigy I

TLDR: something was off with the HDMI handshake between devices. This caused distorted audio from Apple TV to Arc. Resetting the TV fixed this. Arc sound much improved, still harsher than I would like.

Intro and bottom line: Arc still sounds harsher than I like, but I discovered an odd problem that once fixed, improves the situation somewhat. Again - harshness is still there, and I am eagerly waiting for a fix, but I want to share this with you, should you also be affected.

Setup: Sony X850E, Apple TV 4K on HDMI2, Arc on HDMI3. The TV does not have eArc. I only stream data from Apple TV; I do not use any of the TV’s built in apps. Apple TV is audio setting is set on convert to Dolby Digital 5.1.

The problem: I played this simulated Atmos demo from youtube, which supposedly compares stereo with Atmos sound. There’s this ball jumping from left to right, with sound following it. Well, whenver the ball was on the right side, there was no sound! This was clearly a problem. At first I figure my Arc was defective. However, when I airplayed sound to the Arc, the right channel was coming through loud and clear. I switched the Apple TV to HDMI4, and suddenly the right channel was working again! This is not a viable solution, as HDR is only possible on HDMI2. To solve this, I reset the TV to factory setting and now HDMI2 works perfectly.

Technical note: throughout all of this, HDMI CEC was working perfectly: volume control was good, as was turning off and on all devices.

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King Colin

Avid Contributor I

I tried that-marginal improvement only!!! I’m not sure if Sonos will fix this problem!!

K

King Colin

Avid Contributor I

For now my “best” settings are

treuplay off

bass +3

treble-2

I think this is some workaround to control te mid tones But still it is not good at all.

I tried that-but marginal improvement only.l am not sure that Sonos will fix this issue.

W

WandB

Enthusiast I

What I am experiencing is a harsh sound, with very pronounced “SSSSS” sounds throughout any video that is playing. It’s not that the arc is creating sounds that are not there --- it is just amplifying the SSSSS part. (I listened to the same video via a different speaker, such as the beam, and I can pick out the SSSSS, but it is much smoother and pleasant on the beam).

I get this problem over HDMI ARC from my TV and also when sound is pushed to Arc via airplay 2 directly via the Apple TV 4K.

I have tried trueplay tuning with various Apple devices: iPhone 11 Pro, iPad Air (latest generation), iPhone 6S. I’ve done various trueplay “dances”, neither of which seems to alleviate the problem. My system is a full 5.1 system, including a sub and two one SLs. The TV has HDMI ARC but not HDMI eARC, so all sound coming to Sonos Arc is Dolby Digital 5.1

I do hope that Sonos fixes this very soon! I love the Sonos brand, and until now I have been a fierce Sonos advocate. I am very hopeful that this is just a software issue and that very soon Sonos will be able to fix it!

This is an exact description of my findings. The Playbar is so much better in dialogue and the SSSSS issue was called out even by my wife (who normally does not hear that much difference between speakers)

K

King Colin

Avid Contributor I

What I am experiencing is a harsh sound, with very pronounced “SSSSS” sounds throughout any video that is playing. It’s not that the arc is creating sounds that are not there --- it is just amplifying the SSSSS part. (I listened to the same video via a different speaker, such as the beam, and I can pick out the SSSSS, but it is much smoother and pleasant on the beam).

I get this problem over HDMI ARC from my TV and also when sound is pushed to Arc via airplay 2 directly via the Apple TV 4K.

I have tried trueplay tuning with various Apple devices: iPhone 11 Pro, iPad Air (latest generation), iPhone 6S. I’ve done various trueplay “dances”, neither of which seems to alleviate the problem. My system is a full 5.1 system, including a sub and two one SLs. The TV has HDMI ARC but not HDMI eARC, so all sound coming to Sonos Arc is Dolby Digital 5.1

I do hope that Sonos fixes this very soon! I love the Sonos brand, and until now I have been a fierce Sonos advocate. I am very hopeful that this is just a software issue and that very soon Sonos will be able to fix it!

This is an exact description of my findings. The Playbar is so much better in dialogue and the SSSSS issue was called out even by my wife (who normally does not hear that much difference between speakers)

This is a down to a “sharpness” in dialogue l guess. I am getting It too on my soundbar.Have you spoken to the technical team at Sonos?

K

knafets

Lyricist III

I have the arc since release date. From the beginning I find the voice (like watching news, talk shows) very tiny. Like the arc is only using the small tweeter and not the midrange drivers.

I was hoping to get used to it but I’m not. For comparison I bought a Denon DHT-S716H a 3.0 soundbar about the same size and price of the Arc.

This confirmed my suspicion: while the Arc is much better than the Denon on soundstage, bass, clarity etc, the Denon is much, much better on voices, much richer and fuller.

This proves to me there is something wrong with the Arc.

it’s a real shame I really really want to keep the Arc, but if this problem is not fixed In my return window , I have to send ik back.

Sonos please fix this! It’s a pity that this is ruining a potential great product.

Have you tried with trueplay off and loudness off? My experience is it is an improvement to tinnyness with certainly trueplay off … still not right but better

trueplay on or off makes a tiny tiny difference. Not noteworthy.

I have to correct myself:
did some testing but it seems indeed that true play makes things even worse. True play with an iPad mini 2 makes it very bad. True play with an iPhone 7 is les bad.

But with true play of it is always less harsh/bright. But still too harsh/bright.

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