Enthusiast II

Answered

Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

1017 replies
128976 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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phollin2

Lyricist III

Hallelujah, after a long wait on hold to customer service they have finally (a month after I first contacted them) set up an exchange for my arc….. wonder if it will resolve the problem or will it just be the same (e.g. a mess)???

D

Danio1137

Hallelujah, after a long wait on hold to customer service they have finally (a month after I first contacted them) set up an exchange for my arc….. wonder if it will resolve the problem or will it just be the same (e.g. a mess)???

Let us know.

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sebas1509

Enthusiast II

Hallelujah, after a long wait on hold to customer service they have finally (a month after I first contacted them) set up an exchange for my arc….. wonder if it will resolve the problem or will it just be the same (e.g. a mess)???

A few people did exchange it and reported back, and they found no significant improvement on the new one. I dont think ive read anyone saying the improvement was so good they were satisfied.

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sebas1509

Enthusiast II

For the people having this issue I am very curious can you record some TV or movie audio where it sounds bad? especially if you also have a Beam or playbar and do a comparison. I watched a youtube review video the other day from an audio installer and he played audio back to back from playbar and arc and i didnt notice this issue.

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phollin2

Lyricist III

Hallelujah, after a long wait on hold to customer service they have finally (a month after I first contacted them) set up an exchange for my arc….. wonder if it will resolve the problem or will it just be the same (e.g. a mess)???

A few people did exchange it and reported back, and they found no significant improvement on the new one. I dont think ive read anyone saying the improvement was so good they were satisfied.

well I just have to give it a go. I’m convinced mine was faulty. If not I don’t know how anyone would be satisfied with paying so much for something so average. I have put a beam back in the same room and it’s a big improvement. One other thing I noticed as well was that I have an open plan room and the arc didn’t fill the room like the beam did. It seemed to be focused on the seating area, rather than pushing sound to the whole room

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Marco Sonos

Lyricist I

Same issue here as well. ARC sounded great before update now actor’s voices distort and are shrill and sound is missing a lot of mid range. I have the ARC, sub and architectural speakers in the ceiling. Prior to the ARC I was using a Playbar and that sounded way better than the ARC does now. They need to fix this ASAP.

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oriboaz

Prodigy I

I think there are several problems:

Trueplay is buggy. Different devices give wildly different results. Older iPhones are generally better. However, even with an older iPhone, I need to do several rounds of Trueplay before I get something that doesn’t sound truly horrendous.
The Arc’s sound profile puts an emphasis on high frequencies, which makes some shows very harsh on S sounds. This is quite bothersome.
I suspect that the mid-range is somewhat de-emphasized, especially with the pronounced high frequencies.
EQ settings are very blunt; the treble adjustment mainly makes the sound muffled when set to a negative value.

Having said the above, well-mixed shows or movies can actually sound good. I watched Baby Driver and enjoyed the sound very much. However, many TV shows are not as well mixed, which causes problems. The worst offender, for me, was Locke & Key, episode 4, at the two minute mark. It's just an SSS fest.

I must remark that Arc doesn’t create SSS sounds. They are audible on other speakers. It’s just that it exaggerates them.

I am eagerly waiting for a fix. I firmly believe it’s a software issue, and I have faith it will be fixed. I just hope it will be sooner rather than later. I, too, would like to have some updates from Sonos. For instance, someone like Scott could chime in again and let us know that Sonos is acknowledging there is an issue and that they are actively working on a fix.

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phollin2

Lyricist III

I’d agree with this. I’ve watched a few things and the arc was impressive (films with Atmos, dark on netflix). But I think truly horrendous and shrill were unfortunately much more common for general viewing.

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sebas1509

Enthusiast II

I think there are several problems:

Trueplay is buggy. Different devices give wildly different results. Older iPhones are generally better. However, even with an older iPhone, I need to do several rounds of Trueplay before I get something that doesn’t sound truly horrendous.
The Arc’s sound profile puts an emphasis on high frequencies, which makes some shows very harsh on S sounds. This is quite bothersome.
I suspect that the mid-range is somewhat de-emphasized, especially with the pronounced high frequencies.
EQ settings are very blunt; the treble adjustment mainly makes the sound muffled when set to a negative value.

Having said the above, well-mixed shows or movies can actually sound good. I watched Baby Driver and enjoyed the sound very much. However, many TV shows are not as well mixed, which causes problems. The worst offender, for me, was Locke & Key, episode 4, at the two minute mark. It's just an SSS fest.

I must remark that Arc doesn’t create SSS sounds. They are audible on other speakers. It’s just that it exaggerates them.

I am eagerly waiting for a fix. I firmly believe it’s a software issue, and I have faith it will be fixed. I just hope it will be sooner rather than later. I, too, would like to have some updates from Sonos. For instance, someone like Scott could chime in again and let us know that Sonos is acknowledging there is an issue and that they are actively working on a fix.

I went to listen to this. While I do hear the Sss it doesn’t sound offensive to me at all. The thing is the Arc is able to go higher frequencies than Playbar or beam ( you can look at frequency response on RTINGS) so this might be a reason why. Also sometimes tuning makes a small “peak” at higher freq too which would worsen this issue. Then again not sure if some are less sensitive, or some Arcs are tuned for the worse due to a bug

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dhewitt

Lyricist III

Just set up my gen 3 sub and surrounds to my arc i got yesterday. I haven't had too much time to play around but i find when watching the football, the commentary seems a bit flat, no depth to it is the only way i can describe it, my old sk9y LG soundbar sounded better on the football. Any ideas? Will probably say on general TV it may be slightly worse as well, but 5.1 content and atmos content sounds very good. I have trueplayed the system, i have an LG B8 Oled TV, other content on sky seems okay but like i say haven't had too much time to listen to it properly yet.
Also another problem i seem to have is one minute it will be at an okay sound and then something will happen action wise and the sound seems to impact massively before going back down when the scene ends, any ideas on how to keep sound at the same level?
If i change EQ settings etc. will that mess up the trueplay i have done?

Thanks.

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