Enthusiast II

Answered

Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

1017 replies
128955 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?

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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knafets

Lyricist III

Understandable…

Here you have it Sonos, this is the result of you’re “radio silence strategy”; customers returning the Arc…

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arpatil1Author

Enthusiast II

After reading all the info in this topic I think we can come to this conclusion:

the high frequencies are indeed “boosted up” (we are not crazy)
this can be corrected by updating the trueplay software

Disagree. We cannot logically come to the conclusion that anything can be corrected by simply updating the Trueplay software. The problem goes beyond fixing/tweaking the Trueplay software. Yes, there MAY be some issues with Trueplay with the Arc and/or the Sonos v2 iOS app which would explain why people have gotten very different results when re-tuning using older iOS devices vs. newer iOS devices. But that does not explain the terrible sound quality many are experiencing WITHOUT using Trueplay. Rtings.com addresses the Arc’s issues in their review and they go beyond Trueplay.

Trueplay is Sonos’s version of room-correction equalization. It is not mandatory, nor should it be. This is conceptually the same as using something like Audyssey in an AVR (i.e. Denon) to tweak the EQ of your speakers for your specific room (which I have used many times over the years). This tuning should result in minor improvements to account for the unique acoustics of one’s room - not be a requirement for a speaker to sound good. In fact, many high-end speaker designers recommend NOT using room-correction EQ for various reasons.

I accidentally marked your answer as the best. whew!

Anyway- I completely agree with you. Any “premium” speaker should sound good right out of the box without any room correction EQ. This is especially important considering how Truplay gives inconsistent results based on the device used, area covered etc.

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Mitchellsx

Renowned Enthusiast II

Gonna exchange mine see if it’s any different.. just put my mind to ease that it’s not just the unit I have, then return if the same.. come Sonos give us some info on this issue

@John A @Chris - Sonos @Jean C.

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antx

Lyricist III

Packing everything- getting ready to return the Arc and 2 ones even after paying 30% off the price. Dealing with the quiet and thin dialogue by increasing the volume did not help much as the action scenes were getting too loud. Sonos is also silent about this issue and have not provided any assurances. I can’t just bet my money on HOPES that they will fix it. Lack of 4K pass-through ports, LPCM and DTS support were aleady a bummer, but I still accepted those flaws because of the price I paid, but I can not accept sound quality issues. Not everybody was privilged to get 30% off and at $799, Arc is just not worth it as it depends too much on the pricey sub and surrounds for good experience.

Overall, the experience is sub-par for a supposedly premium system. I will be going back to the HomePod and Airpods combination which are much more cost-effective with a fuller sound (I never thought I would be saying this after using the Arc).

Planning the same….

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vtjt

Lyricist III

Want to make sure people saw Peter Pee’s latest video… does a great job looking at the frequency response of Arc, with and without Trueplay, and with and without the Sub. I think this illustrates the current issues with Arc, and I think it also shows that it could be easily remedied through software updates. I would argue that it’s likely to be.

TL;DR: there is indeed an obvious spike in the treble, there is indeed a bass issue, adding the sub does remedy the bass issue, and Trueplay (even performed with an iPhone 11) does make a big difference to flatten the frequency response of the speaker, so it would be silly not to use it.

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mewantsonos

Trending Lyricist I

I’ve recalibrated using the iPhone X now and the treble is back to -1 from -8 previously but the overall sound has become too dull now no punch in bass it has become kind of muddy. I’ve got the full 5.1.2 setup. I think this could all be fixed with software updates but don’t want to wait for 6 months before I could actually stating enjoying the sound quality. I want to return it but I also got that 30% discount that I won’t be able to get next time so just u sure about what to do.

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gswanso2

Lyricist III

where did you all get 30 percent off???

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arpatil1Author

Enthusiast II

where did you all get 30 percent off???

First responders and nurse discount early on.

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arpatil1Author

Enthusiast II

I’ve recalibrated using the iPhone X now and the treble is back to -1 from -8 previously but the overall sound has become too dull now no punch in bass it has become kind of muddy. I’ve got the full 5.1.2 setup. I think this could all be fixed with software updates but don’t want to wait for 6 months before I could actually stating enjoying the sound quality. I want to return it but I also got that 30% discount that I won’t be able to get next time so just u sure about what to do.

I was in the same dilemma with 30% off i got. It was just becoming stressful to daily tweak the settings, increase the volume constantly to hear the dialogues, and suddenly get a blast when any action happened. Not to mention the dialogues sounded thin. It’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth the stress and time. Sonos hasn’t been very responsive to the issues since the layoffs happened. That’s why I am returning mine.

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PowdeRiver

Lyricist III

I’m waiting until the end of return window. Couple weeks

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