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?

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.

S

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.

Show previous replies

D

Danio1137

Yup- after the update still having the same issues with the muddy bass and treble …disappointing….

Did you do a trueplay?

Of course...

:-(

W

wilwong829

Enthusiast II

I have updated the app (both on my android phone and iPad Mini) to version 12.0.3, and then I've tried to have the system update by pressing "System Updates" as before... However, it showed "No update required, your Sonos system is up to date"…

Anyone else?

BMF

Prodigy III

Do you have automatic updates enabled? Maybe the system updated in the background?

what do the “Version” numbers say against the speakers in “About My System”?

W

wilwong829

Enthusiast II

Do you have automatic updates enabled? Maybe the system updated in the background?

what do the “Version” numbers say against the speakers in “About My System”?

Oh yes... I've set automatic updates and all speakers version are 12.0.3 and build number are 58179200. Is that mean I have to retureplay all the speakers and not only the Arc?

Thanks again!

BMF

Prodigy III

That’s the latest version, so you are all good for updates.

regarding having to retune with TruePlay, I doubt you have to, but not seen any release notes apart from “bug fixes and performance” statement.

I would have though IF you had to redo TruePlay it would be a .x release not a .x,x release.

some have said a retune helped, others have said it made no difference.

S

starlan

Enthusiast I

Do you have automatic updates enabled? Maybe the system updated in the background?

what do the “Version” numbers say against the speakers in “About My System”?

Oh yes... I've set automatic updates and all speakers version are 12.0.3 and build number are 58179200. Is that mean I have to retureplay all the speakers and not only the Arc?

Thanks again!

Yes you’re good, that’s the current release as of July 28.

You can try to redo the Trueplay but for me it made no difference. What does make a huge difference for me is which device I use to trueplay. On my iPhone X it sounds pretty bad. The treble is very overemphasized, and harsh. With my wife’s aging iPad mini 2 it sounds much better. I’ll probably just keep that iPad around for that purpose only even if my wife were to upgrade it (long overdue, the thing is basically unusable) unless Sonos manage to fix this wide variability in trueplay.

W

wilwong829

Enthusiast II

Do you have automatic updates enabled? Maybe the system updated in the background?

what do the “Version” numbers say against the speakers in “About My System”?

Oh yes... I've set automatic updates and all speakers version are 12.0.3 and build number are 58179200. Is that mean I have to retureplay all the speakers and not only the Arc?

Thanks again!

Yes you’re good, that’s the current release as of July 28.

You can try to redo the Trueplay but for me it made no difference. What does make a huge difference for me is which device I use to trueplay. On my iPhone X it sounds pretty bad. The treble is very overemphasized, and harsh. With my wife’s aging iPad mini 2 it sounds much better. I’ll probably just keep that iPad around for that purpose only even if my wife were to upgrade it (long overdue, the thing is basically unusable) unless Sonos manage to fix this wide variability in trueplay.

Thanks for your advice! My iPad Mini is the 2019 one...

Or I may borrow an iPhone 8 plus from my nephew…

Just not sure which one would be better?

C

CuzFeeshe

Enthusiast I

Ok, so… I’ve been using the Arc for a month. I received it within a week after release. I have had NO problems…. zero. I have an Arc + Sub + 2 SL. I’ve been watching this thread since before I received them, and was worried - but after tuning it I couldn’t hear any over-exaggerated treble, no metallic sounds. In fact, with treble set on 0 the speaker sounded very warm. I used an iPhone X. There was a few sound examples where I could hear exaggerated sibilance, however I chalked that up to poor audio.

Yesterday I updated the app and the firmware, and decided to re-tune it.

NOW I hear it! With some content I can suddenly hear a ‘metallic’ quality to the sound. In order to get the treble to behave I had to adjust the treble EQ down to -3. Measuring with a spectrum analyzer on the phone I could clearly see a difference in the EQ. There are some higher frequencies that are exaggerated after the tuning.

I’m pretty convinced this is not hardware. I am also convinced this isn’t a ‘preference’. People who think the Arc is simply a bit bright are probably not hearing the issue. When you hear it… it’s jarring. I had no idea what this thread was about until I tried retuning yesterday.

I’m also convinced that this isn’t related directly to the phone used to tune. I’ve been using the iPhone X in all cases.

Anyway… I’m going to find some time today when the family is hopefully not around the living room to use Trueplay with slightly different ‘phone-waving’ behavior to see if I can hear a difference. If I get it back to where it was before, I’m going to leave it. :D

K

King Colin

Avid Contributor I

But doesn’t TruePlay let you know if there was a problem tuning?!!

S

sjw

Local Superstar

I find conversations regarding Trueplay and retuning etc. bizarre to be honest. With it switched off (like it has to be for a huge amount of users who use Android), the Arc should not be exhibiting any of the issues being so widely reported.

Trueplay is to adjust the sound according to the room/environment it is in, not to fix fundamental problems. There may be issues with tuning on specific devices’ microphones (quite ironic given the reasons for Trueplay only being supported on Apple devices) - but with it switched off these sorts of issues with bass etc. really shouldn't be there.

If you switch it off and have the problem then there is a huge issue.

Show more replies

Sign up

Login to the community