Enthusiast II

Answered

Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

1017 replies
128929 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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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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Hug_of_Death

Lyricist I

Upgraded from the beam in a 5.1 setup and the only content that sounds better is either stereo mix older tv/movie content or Atmos content (although not as much as I would expect).

Music is significantly inferior on almost every front even with the sub.

Truplay was run on an iPhone XS

njgc

Lyricist I

Agreed. I can mitigate somewhat by dialing treble down manually, but it’s definitely messed up. Sounds almost like a “hollow” speaker housing- someone else mentioned a laptop, I’d say it’s like one of those super cheap Bluetooth portable speakers or a bad outdoor speaker (you know, the ones designed to look like rocks). Performed TruePlay on iPhone 11 Pro.

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lzy1987

Enthusiast I

I do hope this gets the same attention as the bass problem. The harsh sound is actually causing more discomfort to me than the muddy bass.

My family members have also feedback that the Arc sounds weird (i think they didn't want to say it's bad seeing how much I paid for it..)

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Talvish

Enthusiast II

When I first bought the Beam late last year, I was very impressed with the sound. When I turned on the Arc, I just felt like something was missing.

Yes, that was exactly my feeling!

I have beams in 2 other rooms and much prefer listening to music on them.

I am sure it will get sorted

I hope so. I have loved my Sonos speakers. But for me it isn’t just music. Movies also feel a bit off, more shallow and, well, not quite metallic, but on the edge of it. Those same movies have more depth on the Beam.

And I am comparing:

Arc, latest Sub and Play:3 rears versus
Beam with One rears

(though to be fair, the Sub definitely has better low base depth)

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PowdeRiver

Lyricist III

I can see what the authors of the posts are saying although it’s not hurting my ears. I just want Sonos to continue working on the new trueplay they developed specifically for the arc and upward firing speakers as well as the arc to get a familiar sound we have all come accustomed too.

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TapDatApp

Enthusiast I

Just wanted to chime in as well, same issue that everyone else has described in detail. The highs sound super crisp to the point that it’s almost giving me a slight headache, and this is coming from someone who LOVES treble. I will say I didn’t notice this issue until after I Trueplayed with my iPhone 11 Pro Max. Turning it off and on makes a huge difference. You can immediately hear the tweeters make a crisp “ssssss” when flipping it back on. But while it’s off, it doesn’t exactly sound amazing either. It sounds muffled and less detailed, but nowhere near as harsh.

I’m coming from a Playbase in this same room and I have a Beam in another room. While the Arc undoubtedly has a wider sound stage that I am digging, it is totally missing the warmth that both the Beam and Playbase have. Something just isn’t right here because this doesn’t sound like a Sonos product to me.

Worth noting I have a 5.1.2 set-up here with Sub Gen 3 and Sonos Ones Gen 2 as rears.

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chillaban

Trending Lyricist I

Seeing the same behavior. The mids on the Arc aren’t great even without TruePlay.

Not specific to S2, even a few months ago in S1 I noticed that if I use an iPhone 11 Pro to tune a Playbar, the resulting audio is very treble heavy and tinny. Tuning it with an older iPad Pro worked a lot better.

I suspect there is some issue where maybe the newer iPhones are processing the mic input in a way that doesn’t work well with TruePlay.

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Christiaanzwll

Lyricist I

Is it weird for not having complaints? Maybe I'm too average to hear the issues….and no… I'm not deaf :)

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danielkea

Enthusiast II

I want to echo everyone else’s concerns and say I notice the same too. It was so bad that I wondered if one of the speakers was blown and was going to send it back. It sounds like the vocal speaker is gone. Sounds awful particularly at high notes when people are talking. Thank god I am not the only one. But agree it needs sorting. I do not have the bass issue as have a sub but I think this issue is equally important...it sounds like the product is faulty!

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craigski

Local Superstar

Having the exact same issue. I believe there’s an issue with the Trueplay calibration when done via an iPhone (at least me and my husband's iPhone 11). Tries tuning with a first-generation iPad Pro and the results were much better. That incredibly harsh, metallic trebly heavy sound is gone. Can anyone else see if this works better for them?

@Heilo the Dog I noticed the exact same thing. TruPlay done with iPad Pro did bring down those harsh trebles, albiet with compromised details. Then I redid the TruPlay again with my iPhone XS, and no surprise - the harsh and metallic treble came back. I plan to repeat this process multiple times to validate our hypothesis.

Suggests different frequency response at upper treble range from the various iPhone models:

https://signalessence.com/can-you-use-an-iphones-internal-microphone-for-acoustic-testing-and-accurate-recordings/

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