Enthusiast II

Answered

Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

1017 replies
128989 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.

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Bjmort

Avid Contributor I

I think there are a few issues going on here;

There appears to be an issue with trueplay. Lacking low end and sharp highs and also the balance of the surrounds seems way out. Ive had to drop mine to -9. On my beam i had to drop them to -6.
There appears to be an issue with frequency response when air playing music from an iOS device. proven by playing a song through apple music from an apple tv there is a wide frequency response and then when playing straight from the phone its all thin (this could be because the apple tv is encoding to DD5.1)
There also seems to be some issues with non DD5.1 or Atmos content through the TV also having a strange frequency response.

So based on this i would say there’s an issue with how the ARC divides frequencies with 2.0 source material and also how it performs its true play tuning.

C

cowieson

Lyricist III

I think there are a few issues going on here;

There appears to be an issue with trueplay. Lacking low end and sharp highs and also the balance of the surrounds seems way out. Ive had to drop mine to -9. On my beam i had to drop them to -6.
There appears to be an issue with frequency response when air playing music from an iOS device. proven by playing a song through apple music from an apple tv there is a wide frequency response and then when playing straight from the phone its all thin (this could be because the apple tv is encoding to DD5.1)
There also seems to be some issues with non DD5.1 or Atmos content through the TV also having a strange frequency response.

So based on this i would say there’s an issue with how the ARC divides frequencies with 2.0 source material and also how it performs its true play tuning.

Well put!

It makes sense that music will sound different when played back via AirPlay (stereo) vs an Apple TV (Dolby Digital) as you have implied - for one thing, DD has separate channels which will be sent to different drivers, most notably LFE. A more accurate comparison would be to set the Apple TV to output digital stereo and then compare with AirPlay.

Regarding the users in this thread with issues of frequency response - I think it’d be worthwhile toggling TruePlay tuning to “off” to see if the same issues are just as present. (Someone previously said something along the lines of it not making sense that TruePlay could introduce the issue which is not all that logical IMO; given that it’s essentially creating a custom EQ response curve of course it could introduce EQ response issues!)

B

Bjmort

Avid Contributor I

I think there are a few issues going on here;

There appears to be an issue with trueplay. Lacking low end and sharp highs and also the balance of the surrounds seems way out. Ive had to drop mine to -9. On my beam i had to drop them to -6.
There appears to be an issue with frequency response when air playing music from an iOS device. proven by playing a song through apple music from an apple tv there is a wide frequency response and then when playing straight from the phone its all thin (this could be because the apple tv is encoding to DD5.1)
There also seems to be some issues with non DD5.1 or Atmos content through the TV also having a strange frequency response.

So based on this i would say there’s an issue with how the ARC divides frequencies with 2.0 source material and also how it performs its true play tuning.

Well put!

It makes sense that music will sound different when played back via AirPlay (stereo) vs an Apple TV (Dolby Digital) as you have implied - for one thing, DD has separate channels which will be sent to different drivers, most notably LFE. A more accurate comparison would be to set the Apple TV to output digital stereo and then compare with AirPlay.

Regarding the users in this thread with issues of frequency response - I think it’d be worthwhile toggling TruePlay tuning to “off” to see if the same issues are just as present. (Someone previously said something along the lines of it not making sense that TruePlay could introduce the issue which is not all that logical IMO; given that it’s essentially creating a custom EQ response curve of course it could introduce EQ response issues!)

In my opinion the music should sound exactly the same if it’s played via air play or through the Apple TV being encoded to DD5.1 because it’s still the same 2.0 source material. There may be a slight degradation in bitrate but not frequency response. If the Apple TV can take the 2.0 source and divide it up correctly then there is no reason why the arc can’t do The exact same thing.

trueplay could 100% be an issue especially ina. Situation like mine where you have the arc, 2 one sls and a sub all having to be received by the mic at once and then have that signal applied to the system as a whole. If it’s hearing bass from the one SLs and thinking it’s from the ARC and that it’s too high it’s going to lower the bass on the ARC (that’s just an example I don’t believe that’s what’s happening)

C

cowieson

Lyricist III

In my opinion the music should sound exactly the same if it’s played via air play or through the Apple TV being encoded to DD5.1 because it’s still the same 2.0 source material. There may be a slight degradation in bitrate but not frequency response. If the Apple TV can take the 2.0 source and divide it up correctly then there is no reason why the arc can’t do The exact same thing.

I see where you’re coming from but that isn’t how it works per se; it differs per source device, but broadly speaking if a source device (e.g. Apple TV) is set to output Dolby Digital in 5.1, if it is playing a stereo signal it’ll still output it in 5.1 - it’ll either fill the FL and FR channels and leave the other 3 channels empty or upmix the stereo input to the configured output codec (DD 5.1 in this case) - which would impact bass frequencies below a certain cut-off as the LFE channel for example.

This is not the same thing as outputting stereo natively. If you think about it - if you had a full 5.1 setup with 5 speakers and a sub - how would you expect it to output stereo fed via a DD5.1? Dual-stereo? FL/FR only with no sub? FL/FR+Sub? Centre speaker?

Some Home Theater devices actually then do their own post-processing (or have various options) where they can take a stereo signal and upmix it to 5.1 (or other configs) but that’s another story.

As I say - the only “true” comparison between an Apple TV and AirPlay would be to have them matched as closesly as possible (as with any other test - eliminate variables) - which in this case would mean simply setting the Apple TV to output digital stereo for the duration of the testing.

D

dhewitt

Lyricist III

I think there are a few issues going on here;

There appears to be an issue with trueplay. Lacking low end and sharp highs and also the balance of the surrounds seems way out. Ive had to drop mine to -9. On my beam i had to drop them to -6.
There appears to be an issue with frequency response when air playing music from an iOS device. proven by playing a song through apple music from an apple tv there is a wide frequency response and then when playing straight from the phone its all thin (this could be because the apple tv is encoding to DD5.1)
There also seems to be some issues with non DD5.1 or Atmos content through the TV also having a strange frequency response.

So based on this i would say there’s an issue with how the ARC divides frequencies with 2.0 source material and also how it performs its true play tuning.

Well put!

It makes sense that music will sound different when played back via AirPlay (stereo) vs an Apple TV (Dolby Digital) as you have implied - for one thing, DD has separate channels which will be sent to different drivers, most notably LFE. A more accurate comparison would be to set the Apple TV to output digital stereo and then compare with AirPlay.

Regarding the users in this thread with issues of frequency response - I think it’d be worthwhile toggling TruePlay tuning to “off” to see if the same issues are just as present. (Someone previously said something along the lines of it not making sense that TruePlay could introduce the issue which is not all that logical IMO; given that it’s essentially creating a custom EQ response curve of course it could introduce EQ response issues!)

Surely if the issue is happening with trueplay on or off it is not an issue with trueplay? This thing sounds mostly horrible no matter what i do or change.

C

cowieson

Lyricist III

I think there are a few issues going on here;

There appears to be an issue with trueplay. Lacking low end and sharp highs and also the balance of the surrounds seems way out. Ive had to drop mine to -9. On my beam i had to drop them to -6.
There appears to be an issue with frequency response when air playing music from an iOS device. proven by playing a song through apple music from an apple tv there is a wide frequency response and then when playing straight from the phone its all thin (this could be because the apple tv is encoding to DD5.1)
There also seems to be some issues with non DD5.1 or Atmos content through the TV also having a strange frequency response.

So based on this i would say there’s an issue with how the ARC divides frequencies with 2.0 source material and also how it performs its true play tuning.

Well put!

It makes sense that music will sound different when played back via AirPlay (stereo) vs an Apple TV (Dolby Digital) as you have implied - for one thing, DD has separate channels which will be sent to different drivers, most notably LFE. A more accurate comparison would be to set the Apple TV to output digital stereo and then compare with AirPlay.

Regarding the users in this thread with issues of frequency response - I think it’d be worthwhile toggling TruePlay tuning to “off” to see if the same issues are just as present. (Someone previously said something along the lines of it not making sense that TruePlay could introduce the issue which is not all that logical IMO; given that it’s essentially creating a custom EQ response curve of course it could introduce EQ response issues!)

Surely if the issue is happening with trueplay on or off it is not an issue with trueplay? This thing sounds mostly horrible no matter what i do or change.

That was my point, yes - I hadn’t seen people confirm whether their devices still sounded bad with TruePlay disabled.

C

craigski

Local Superstar

free to air tv is sounds average and has a lot sibilance issues.

Not sure what free to air you refer to? I’m in UK, Freeview SD (Stereo) sounds ‘average’ vs Freeview HD (DD 2.0) sounds way better.

J

Josena

Contributor I

In my opinion the music should sound exactly the same if it’s played via air play or through the Apple TV being encoded to DD5.1 because it’s still the same 2.0 source material. There may be a slight degradation in bitrate but not frequency response. If the Apple TV can take the 2.0 source and divide it up correctly then there is no reason why the arc can’t do The exact same thing.

I see where you’re coming from but that isn’t how it works per se; it differs per source device, but broadly speaking if a source device (e.g. Apple TV) is set to output Dolby Digital in 5.1, if it is playing a stereo signal it’ll still output it in 5.1 - it’ll either fill the FL and FR channels and leave the other 3 channels empty or upmix the stereo input to the configured output codec (DD 5.1 in this case) - which would impact bass frequencies below a certain cut-off as the LFE channel for example.

This is not the same thing as outputting stereo natively. If you think about it - if you had a full 5.1 setup with 5 speakers and a sub - how would you expect it to output stereo fed via a DD5.1? Dual-stereo? FL/FR only with no sub? FL/FR+Sub? Centre speaker?

Some Home Theater devices actually then do their own post-processing (or have various options) where they can take a stereo signal and upmix it to 5.1 (or other configs) but that’s another story.

As I say - the only “true” comparison between an Apple TV and AirPlay would be to have them matched as closesly as possible (as with any other test - eliminate variables) - which in this case would mean simply setting the Apple TV to output digital stereo for the duration of the testing.

I just try it, the same song shallow of bradley cooper with lady gaga don´t sound the same.

If you play from apple tv with the app music of apple rears don´t play the voices until mid single with the ambient sound and the sound have better quality that with airplay with the iphone, is like it was a movie and sound like DD5.1.

If you airplay the same song from music app in the iphone to the sonos arc all the speakers sounds together from the beginnig of the sound, less quality but more enjoyable like inmersive sound to hear all the voices sourroning you.

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Bjmort

Avid Contributor I

Ok I fixed it! So I trueplay tuned again but this time I did not move around the room. I just sat in my tv viewing spot and moved the phone around. And perfection!

and this was with an iPhone XS

C

craigski

Local Superstar

Ok I fixed it! So I trueplay tuned again but this time I did not move around the room. I just sat in my tv viewing spot and moved the phone around. And perfection!

I also found this to be the best way for Trueplay, only move the phone where your ears are likely to be, ie along the sofa

https://en.community.sonos.com/home-theater-228993/optimum-trueplay-6842990

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