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arpatil1
Enthusiast II
June 17, 2020
Answered

Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

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
    July 2, 2020

    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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    1017 replies

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    oriboaz
    Prodigy I
    August 22, 2020

    I was also experiencing bad (metallic) sound from arc+sub, and was just about to deliver it back when I configured trueplay using a newer iPhone. I had previously configured it through a 2 year old iphone and older iPads. Now it sounds as good as I was expecting it to sound.


    I can second this - I borrowed a friend’s iPhone 11 today and went through the TruePlay procedure again and the difference is remarkable. The sibilance from the excessive high-end has been tamed, and mids seem to be much more present.  
     

    I had previously used my iPhone 6s to do the procedure (it’s about 4.5 years old now). 

    This is very interesting. Having followed this thread for quite some time now, the previous suggestion was to use an older iPhone for “better” trueplay. Previously, before 12.0.4, indeed using an iPhone 6s gave me the best results. 
     

    Now, people are claiming that newer iPhones give good results. Can others confirm? Perhaps @Krishma M or @Scott - Sonos could let us know if there was some change in that regard? Having ran trueplay many, many, times before getting acceptable sound, I am somewhat weary of running trueplay yet again, lest the sound will worsen. 

    cowieson
    Lyricist III
    August 22, 2020

    I was also experiencing bad (metallic) sound from arc+sub, and was just about to deliver it back when I configured trueplay using a newer iPhone. I had previously configured it through a 2 year old iphone and older iPads. Now it sounds as good as I was expecting it to sound.


    I can second this - I borrowed a friend’s iPhone 11 today and went through the TruePlay procedure again and the difference is remarkable. The sibilance from the excessive high-end has been tamed, and mids seem to be much more present.  
     

    I had previously used my iPhone 6s to do the procedure (it’s about 4.5 years old now). 

    This is very interesting. Having followed this thread for quite some time now, the previous suggestion was to use an older iPhone for “better” trueplay. Previously, before 12.0.4, indeed using an iPhone 6s gave me the best results. 
     

    Now, people are claiming that newer iPhones give good results. Can others confirm? Perhaps @Krishma M or @Scott - Sonos could let us know if there was some change in that regard? Having ran trueplay many, many, times before getting acceptable sound, I am somewhat weary of running trueplay yet again, lest the sound will worsen. 


    Personally I found the trueplay results to be very similar between tunings when using the same device each time. 
     

    It does make sense that there’d be some difference when tuning EQ using different devices as they have different mics (although I have to say I didn’t expect the difference to be quite so dramatic). 
     

    Perhaps the fact that the 6s has only one mic is the biggest factor here. 

    sebas1509
    Enthusiast II
    August 24, 2020

    I was also experiencing bad (metallic) sound from arc+sub, and was just about to deliver it back when I configured trueplay using a newer iPhone. I had previously configured it through a 2 year old iphone and older iPads. Now it sounds as good as I was expecting it to sound.


    I can second this - I borrowed a friend’s iPhone 11 today and went through the TruePlay procedure again and the difference is remarkable. The sibilance from the excessive high-end has been tamed, and mids seem to be much more present.  
     

    I had previously used my iPhone 6s to do the procedure (it’s about 4.5 years old now). 

    This is very interesting. Having followed this thread for quite some time now, the previous suggestion was to use an older iPhone for “better” trueplay. Previously, before 12.0.4, indeed using an iPhone 6s gave me the best results. 
     

    Now, people are claiming that newer iPhones give good results. Can others confirm? Perhaps @Krishma M or @Scott - Sonos could let us know if there was some change in that regard? Having ran trueplay many, many, times before getting acceptable sound, I am somewhat weary of running trueplay yet again, lest the sound will worsen. 


    Personally I found the trueplay results to be very similar between tunings when using the same device each time. 
     

    It does make sense that there’d be some difference when tuning EQ using different devices as they have different mics (although I have to say I didn’t expect the difference to be quite so dramatic). 
     

    Perhaps the fact that the 6s has only one mic is the biggest factor here. 

    There were also 1 or two app/systemupdates since last time you tuned it? Or you retuned after each update?

    cowieson
    Lyricist III
    August 24, 2020

    I was also experiencing bad (metallic) sound from arc+sub, and was just about to deliver it back when I configured trueplay using a newer iPhone. I had previously configured it through a 2 year old iphone and older iPads. Now it sounds as good as I was expecting it to sound.


    I can second this - I borrowed a friend’s iPhone 11 today and went through the TruePlay procedure again and the difference is remarkable. The sibilance from the excessive high-end has been tamed, and mids seem to be much more present.  
     

    I had previously used my iPhone 6s to do the procedure (it’s about 4.5 years old now). 

    This is very interesting. Having followed this thread for quite some time now, the previous suggestion was to use an older iPhone for “better” trueplay. Previously, before 12.0.4, indeed using an iPhone 6s gave me the best results. 
     

    Now, people are claiming that newer iPhones give good results. Can others confirm? Perhaps @Krishma M or @Scott - Sonos could let us know if there was some change in that regard? Having ran trueplay many, many, times before getting acceptable sound, I am somewhat weary of running trueplay yet again, lest the sound will worsen. 


    Personally I found the trueplay results to be very similar between tunings when using the same device each time. 
     

    It does make sense that there’d be some difference when tuning EQ using different devices as they have different mics (although I have to say I didn’t expect the difference to be quite so dramatic). 
     

    Perhaps the fact that the 6s has only one mic is the biggest factor here. 

    There were also 1 or two app/systemupdates since last time you tuned it? Or you retuned after each update?

    I retuned it on my iPhone 6s and listened back to a selection of tracks as well as parts of movies before then retuning with my friend’s iPhone 11 and listening to the same tracks and selections (so it was done on the same day with the same software version). 

     

    DIfferent microphones have different EQ response curves so I can imagine that having an impact here although it could 

    sebas1509
    Enthusiast II
    August 25, 2020

    New app update and firmware update. Just updated

      Viljavi
      Avid Contributor I
      August 25, 2020

      Any change with the update in the sound?

      dhewitt
      Lyricist III
      August 25, 2020

      Nope, exactly the same, how long is it going to take to sort this out!!!

      TomasKV
      Lyricist III
      August 25, 2020

      Any change with the update in the sound?

      I did install it and did trueplay dance with iPhoneX. Problem is not solved :-(

      Cardwizard
      Enthusiast I
      August 25, 2020

      After the new update and new Trueplay it does sound a lot better, bass is still terrible

      pawel20k-ce
      Trending Lyricist I
      August 25, 2020

      I have  Arc + sub + 2 x play 1 And for me This set sounds amazing  in movies. After trutone bass is weaker but much more precise and excelent to everyday watching . 

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