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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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    knafets
    Lyricist III
    July 9, 2020

    It’s remarkable that the Sonos staff is responding in other topics (so they are reading this) and not responding here. That does give me a bad feeling. 

      knafets
      Lyricist III
      July 9, 2020

      looking for some info about room accoustics, I found this article: Room acoustics for home audio

      The result may be midrange and treble that's too bright and harsh or echoey, or bass notes that are boomy, with a muddy "one-note" quality that drowns out deep bass. Because these reflections arrive at your ears at different times than the sound from your speakers, the three-dimensional "soundstage" created by your speakers and the images of the instruments and singers may become vague or smeared.

       

      I am no sound-engineer at all, but could it be due to the Arc speakerplacements, which sends sounds in multiple directions, not only front left-center-right, but also left- and rightside, and 2 on top, this phenomenon is more present than other speakers (like beam and playbar)??

        knafets
        Lyricist III
        July 9, 2020

        BTW: accoustics isn't the only possible problem. RTINGS just updated there review with the latest firmware and it is still not good….. 

        arpatil1Author
        Enthusiast II
        July 9, 2020

        looking for some info about room accoustics, I found this article: Room acoustics for home audio

        The result may be midrange and treble that's too bright and harsh or echoey, or bass notes that are boomy, with a muddy "one-note" quality that drowns out deep bass. Because these reflections arrive at your ears at different times than the sound from your speakers, the three-dimensional "soundstage" created by your speakers and the images of the instruments and singers may become vague or smeared.

         

        I am no sound-engineer at all, but could it be due to the Arc speakerplacements, which sends sounds in multiple directions, not only front left-center-right, but also left- and rightside, and 2 on top, this phenomenon is more present than other speakers (like beam and playbar)??

        The whole point of Truplay is to negate the effects you mentioned. But it looks like it’s not working as intended. I have found stereo 2.0 to be much fuller than DD5.1 content. So, the channel separation and sound reflections might be the culprit here as you said @knafets 

        TheHeadlessPoster
        Enthusiast I
        July 9, 2020

        Been reading this thread with interest. I have 2 Arc’s - 1 in an open plan Family Room and the other in a seperate Media Room. Both have Gen 3 Subs as well  

        I don’t have any metallic/harsh sound that is talked about in this thread. Or if I do, then I’m blissfully unaware. Both were Trueplay’d using an iPhone 11 Pro Max  I don’t find the sound too bright  

        Actually I was so paranoid after reading everyone’s comments about Trueplay using latest iPhones and the bright sound, that I re-did it using an iPhone 7 in the Family Room - and suddenly I was getting the harsh SSSSS in vocals! So I re-tuned it again using my 11 Pro Max and then it went back to normal and the harsh SSSSS’s went away

        So it would appear I have the opposite experience to others. All good with the latest iPhone, but worse with an older iPhone. Very strange. 

          sebas1509
          Enthusiast II
          July 9, 2020

          Reposting what i posted on the Muddy bass thread:

          Here is a snippet of the Compression graph from RTINGS.com in red it shows the Arc at high volume and on green it shows the Beam at high volume. There is a noticeable dip there for red, this is not what is expected at that range. Note this only happens at high volume. The other green (mostly flat line) is the Arc at 80dB SPL level (not as loud) which is flat as it is ideal. It is normal for speakers to struggle at higher volumes but theres a clear issue for the bass response for the Arc at high volume.

           

          Here is the summary with the score, pretty poor score even lower than Beam and Playbar.

           

           

          Here is another score that is lower than expected, and it points to the metallic sound/ tinny sound some are experiencing 

           

          Find it hard to believe SONOS didnt test these type of things before pushing the Arc out of the door. So it makes me wonder what is going on….

            Mitchellsx
            Renowned Enthusiast II
            July 9, 2020

            Reposting what i posted on the Muddy bass thread:

            Here is a snippet of the Compression graph from RTINGS.com in red it shows the Arc at high volume and on green it shows the Beam at high volume. There is a noticeable dip there for red, this is not what is expected at that range. Note this only happens at high volume. The other green (mostly flat line) is the Arc at 80dB SPL level (not as loud) which is flat as it is ideal. It is normal for speakers to struggle at higher volumes but theres a clear issue for the bass response for the Arc at high volume.

             

            Here is the summary with the score, pretty poor score even lower than Beam and Playbar.

             

             

            Here is another score that is lower than expected, and it points to the metallic sound/ tinny sound some are experiencing 

             

            Find it hard to believe SONOS didnt test these type of things before pushing the Arc out of the door. So it makes me wonder what is going on….

            @Paul A 

            Hi Paul, seen you have been posting on the muddy bass thread, could you also look into this thread also please. 

             

            King Colin
            Avid Contributor I
            July 9, 2020

            I couldn’t stick it any longer. I brought the arc back to the shop,and exchanged for a beam.I now find warmer audio,same quality in soundstage plus 430 Euro into my pocket as a refund. Unfortunately the Arc wasn’t for me and my Tv room. Good luck in getting a better Arc!

              knafets
              Lyricist III
              July 9, 2020

              Interesting video about treuplay on the Arc and boosting the higher frequencies causing “metallic sound”  

               

              Could Sonos boost the higher frequencies on purpose, so the atmos en surround effects of the Arc work better? Since higher frequencies bounces better of walls and ceilings? If so, this explains why the are ignoring this topic as it is “By design” 

              @Sonos if it is “by design”, please tell us, so each of us can decide if the Arc is the right product them. If not give of some info regarding a fix!

                amoney
                Lyricist I
                July 9, 2020

                Interesting video about treuplay on the Arc and boosting the higher frequencies causing “metallic sound”  

                 

                Could Sonos boost the higher frequencies on purpose, so the atmos en surround effects of the Arc work better? Since higher frequencies bounces better of walls and ceilings? If so, this explains why the are ignoring this topic as it is “By design” 

                @Sonos if it is “by design”, please tell us, so each of us can decide if the Arc is the right product them. If not give of some info regarding a fix!

                Sounds like its 100% not a firmware issue which is reassuring. Those with the “tinny” sound, could be resolved by dialing back the treble.

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