Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

Had a demo of this at Richer Sounds yesterday and me and the sales person both agreed that the ARC sounded tinny. I went home and listened to the same demo content on my beam and sounded better!. fingers crossed this gets looked into before I purchase.

My wife and I agree on this issue, I came from a Bose Soundbar 700. While I could notice more details in the movies, our first impression was that the sound is too thin and metallic like described in the post. I purchased 2x One SL and a Sub (gen 2) and I’m still debating if I should keep this system. I like the immersion it offers. I suspect based on the hardware available in the Sonos Arc a lot can be improved with software. Hopefully, we can get a more fuller sound. But I would definitely like to see  are settings available in Bose where the CENTER CHANNEL can be adjusted just like the Bose SB 700.  I think this could help with this issue by making speech more fuller. This is only for Movies and TV , not so much for music. 

Agreed. Control over the center channel to make the speech fuller would be great if Sonos doesn’t want to fix the issue themselves. This way, we can increase the treble a bit to bring details out of the ambient sound without making the vocals thin and tinny.

I have the same issue, and the harshness gives me a buzz. As much I want to keep the ARC these issues are not helping. Its too bright,metallic sounding. 

For now, I have applied the band-aid called truplaying with iPad. Vocals still sound tinny to me. This is bad especially when Sonos said - “Arc was carefully tuned with the help of Oscar-winning sound engineers to emphasize the human voice so you never miss a word.” and “Featuring eleven high-performance drivers for crisp highs, dynamic midranges, and surprising bass.”

just got the arc yesterday and hear the same thing as everyone else. thin vocals and lacking mids. 

Just wanted to throw my experience into this too.  I am experiencing the same ‘tinny’ and ‘metallic’ sounding vocals with my ARC as well.  I have a Beam in the other room and it definitely sounds more warm and fuller than the ARC.  I’m not an expert on this audio stuff but I can hear a big difference between my ARC and Beam. Hope this helps.

I think the Sonos company released the S2 app and Sonos ARC to quickly before it was ready for prime time. I don’t remember this happening with the Sonos beam. And, I suspect this has something to do with COVID-19 in rushing the product out there, before it was ready.

It’s definitely a software issue. I don't see a reason why Arc should have thin, tinny vocals since the center channel has one tweeter and 2 woofers. I think Sonos just decided to pack all the hardware it needs to make it sound great but decided to release half-baked product thinking they will fix all the software issues later. Usually done to meet the deadlines. Though this does not explain all the positive reviews. 

**Updated edit**
 

So I think I figured it out. Spent a lot of time on this.

Its as if the “virtual surround sound” is tuned too high. Think about a cheap sound bar and you select the “virtual surround button.” It creates a “room filling” sound but this also why people are explaining the sound is irritating especially with music. You hear too much of it thus missing out on the warmth and depth of mods. I suspect people with a large room where sound doesn’t bounce off walls don’t have this problem which explains the differing view points.

Even when I pair the sub and surrounds I still feel like the arc is trying to do too much electronically to fill the room. Let the speaker do the talking and back down the algorithm for emphasizing “virtual surround sound”