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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Wildantics

Avid Contributor III

@arpatil1 What are you’re plans? I am looking at the Bose soundbar 700

I’m curious how that would work out? It actually has good reviews but the software is I guess horrendous

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arpatil1Author

Enthusiast II

@arpatil1 What are you’re plans? I am looking at the Bose soundbar 700

@knafets I am going to reply on my HomePod and AirPods for now (No Arc-like struggle with them). I live in an apartment, but looking to buy my own house in the near future. So I will just switch to a proper 5.1 setup then. I can hide the wires the way I want. With the money bose and Sonos charges, you can get much better sound when you have a traditional system. No more soundbars for me.

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Lalligator

Lyricist III

While I’ve been waiting for something like the Arc for quite a while (product with earc, ability to use sonos sub and my existing ones as rears) the issues, lack of lpcm and non-communication regarding the issues is starting to push me in other directions.

Too bad the beam isn’t an option, but happily I’m not too deeply bought into the sonos ecosystem yet.

They committed to adding multi channel LPCM. In their defense sonos is usually much better at this but IDK what is going on with their restructuring and covid..

gswanso2 .. Look at the beam curve dude theres no way they get to design their own speakers pick components and they say YES this is what we want for the Flagship product to perform worse than the Beam! Yes this is our sound signature….. come on. I do not know if theres a hardware issue, but I think this is most likely a DSP issue. The weird thing is if a random small company can test this, and a youtuber can test this I cannot believe that SONOS wouldn't. So something weird went on.

Regarding the “metallic sound” that could be a different topic where they are purposedly emphasizing the highs for atmos and directional wider sound-stage presence.

Regardless I dont really experience any of these issues anymore or at least cant tell since I dont push the volume too high.

I’m expecting this to be the new normal, based on the sacking of the community manager right after the biggest new product launch in years.

K

kojak35

Lyricist III

I don't know if this will help anyone, but I purchased the Arc from Amazon. I received it and was not happy with the sound at all. So I decided to buy another one from best buy. The 2nd one was a night and day experience. It sounds incredible. No sharp treble. I wondered if I was just imagining the bad audio from the first unit, so I reconnected it again and could tell the difference right away. I returned the original unit and kept the 2nd one. So I am not sure if this is really a software problem or if it's a defective unit. I think in my case it was defective.

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kojak35

Lyricist III

Just a follow-up to my last comment. I have noticed that the dialog sounds more metallic when playing a movie in Atmos. It's also more pronounced on certain apps. For instance. Disney + has a really big problem with low audio. It sounds like they are over compressing the audio. So I have to turn the volume up +10 more than on other apps. There is a big difference in the dialog with too much treble when playing a Disney + Marvel or Star Wars movie in Atmos. There is still a small treble problem when playing the same movie in Dolby Digital plus, without atmos. The metallic sound is reduced when not using Atmos. So far the majority of audio problems seem to be from certain apps, especially disney +.

I'm curious what streaming apps are people in this thread using to test the Arc?

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Danio1137

Just a follow-up to my last comment. I have noticed that the dialog sounds more metallic when playing a movie in Atmos. It's also more pronounced on certain apps. For instance. Disney + has a really big problem with low audio. It sounds like they are over compressing the audio. So I have to turn the volume up +10 more than on other apps. There is a big difference in the dialog with too much treble when playing a Disney + Marvel or Star Wars movie in Atmos. There is still a small treble problem when playing the same movie in Dolby Digital plus, without atmos. The metallic sound is reduced when not using Atmos. So far the majority of audio problems seem to be from certain apps, especially disney +.

I'm curious what streaming apps are people in this thread using to test the Arc?

Are there more who had the courage to send back and dare to buy a new Arc? is that the way to solve it maybe I should look into it.

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PowdeRiver

Lyricist III

I’m kinda getting tired of these but interested if this will help using his settings.

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knafets

Lyricist III

@Danio1137

I will certainly do not. If there isn’t an answer/ software fix from Sonos in the next week or so I am done with Sonos.

The arc is my first sonos product. Was planning for more. But looks like Sonos is a no-go.

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antx

Lyricist III

This is a personal experience and wanted to share here, I was as fed up as everyone here, and before returning, decided I will give one more try with Sonos tech support and managed to reach them through chat. I spoke about both the muddy bass issue and the harsh metallic tone (treble) issue. We did the usual diagnosis and then a few tweaks done from the support agent. I guess he did a resetting of my EQ, restarted my Sonos arc, and then we did the trueplay configuration again.

There was not much difference and I was not happy. So the agent requested me to send 20 seconds of files with different sources. (I am yet to do this). All this happened on Friday

On Saturday, I do not know what miraculously happened since there was no software update or any other action taken but my Arc sounds different now for good. The music and sound are much better, nicer, and crisp.

PS: I have not tested movie source/content from TV (ARC/eARC) since my TV stopped working. My experience is with Airplay/Youtube Premium is the music source.

I am still wondering and thinking if it could be a placebo effect but then even my wife felt today the system sounded way better.

If anyone else has a similar experience, pls do share. Cheers

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Danio1137

This is a personal experience and wanted to share here, I was as fed up as everyone here, and before returning, decided I will give one more try with Sonos tech support and managed to reach them through chat. I spoke about both the muddy bass issue and the harsh metallic tone (treble) issue. We did the usual diagnosis and then a few tweaks done from the support agent. I guess he did a resetting of my EQ, restarted my Sonos arc, and then we did the trueplay configuration again.

There was not much difference and I was not happy. So the agent requested me to send 20 seconds of files with different sources. (I am yet to do this). All this happened on Friday

On Saturday, I do not know what miraculously happened since there was no software update or any other action taken but my Arc sounds different now for good. The music and sound are much better, nicer, and crisp.

PS: I have not tested movie source/content from TV (ARC/eARC) since my TV stopped working. My experience is with Airplay/Youtube Premium is the music source.

I am still wondering and thinking if it could be a placebo effect but then even my wife felt today the system sounded way better.

If anyone else has a similar experience, pls do share. Cheers

I had a similar one after turning off the electricity for the night and listening the next day. It sounded better until I raised the volume really then the problems came back.

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