Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

Any updates this tinnyness is ridiculous 

Yeah we need an update.. ive been waiting 3 months for a fix  :(

Time to move on folks, I’ve resigned myself to the fact it is what it is and to look elsewhere.

If you’re unhappy with your Arc it may be best to sell it on now whilst it commands a higher price due to new units being in short supply.

I guess it’s possible later generations may be engineered differently but if any sound affecting software update was to be released regarding this issue for existing units it would have been done by now I reckon.  

I had taken my Arc to richersounds to compare against there Arc in the demo room, they both sounded the same to me and they guy in richersounds agreed with me that they did, he thought they both sounded very good. My advice is with anyone with this issue who is thinking about swapping for another, do not bother as i promise it will be exactly the same. I know content of certain things is worse than others and only got to test out for a couple of minutes in store. The tech guy in store said to me it was not tinny but just a bright sound profile and a lot of people prefer the bright sound profile and this is maybe why sonos has gone this way with this bar. To me it still sounds tinny however i do get what he means when comparing it to the LG SN11RG in store which sounded very warm and to my ears a lot better, however he said the Arc sounded a lot better than the LG & for this reason i am convinced Sonos WILL NOT rectify this issue as most think it sounds better like this. Obviously its annoying for us who are having this issue, i know room acoustics and different peoples ears will have a lot to play in just to what extreme we are having this issue, but i am just going to live with it for now, i have added x2 surround one SL’s and they seem to help slightly, but on standard content it is still really annoying, i do believe the issue may have gotten slightly better however over the past couple of months with the firmware updates but nothing to write home about, the issue is still there.

To summarise believe it or not this issue we are having, most people PREFER this sound profile and for this reason there will not be an update to FIX this issue, i do however believe in future updates that they will improve on this issue we are having to give a bit more of a neutral sound to make everyone happy, but due to probably 90% or over of people that are happy with this, not much is going to change. Of course this is just my opinion, but an opinion that makes sense in Sonos’s case anyway. My advice is if your un-happy with the sound profile of the arc, return it if you cant live with it because there will be no FIX for this issue.

Just to clarify i have this tinnyness issue and its really annoying but i think i am happy to live with it for now as it is not hurendous and who knows i might get used to it and like it (unlikely) but you never know. I have tried other soundbars and none on the market work quite as flawlessly as this ARC minus the tinniness.

I must admit in most viewing I have not heard this tinniness, I have had some tinny sound in some content but Im unsure if it was just the content.

The content I have have had this tinny sound is-

Point Break 4k, a scene when they was talking in the back of the van, sounds very tinny.

Netflix Dirty John, the woman's voices at times sound really tinny also, both these examples could be the content though.

For me, the problem is mostly sibilance. For example, “Filthy Rich” sounds very sibilant to me. 

I think people past return period who hear issues shouldn’t despair…

Why? SONOS kept saying bass issue is fixed before. People kept complaining. They issued a new update a bit ago and after retuning and installing the update most poeple say it is fixed for real now including youtubers.. So I think SONOS will keep improving the sound signature to please most users.

That being said I dont hear any excessive tinniness and it is not “crazy” or “awful” to my ears. Yes it is brighter but that is done with the purpose of sound directional effects which are very nice on this soundbar. Anyways content really matters too.

Saw someone on here saying my goal is to make hamilton sound less SSSS well, let me tell you that is a content problem. I thought the same and my brother who has a playbar could hear the SSSS too and googling it it was easy to see many having the issue. So you might be driving yourself crazy thinking every bad content issue is an Arc issue.

Now I recognize some people say that it is all content etc. Our ears are all different so maybe this soundbar isnt for you.

After owning both the playbar has way less irritating SSSS sound and is way better at full range voices than the Arc. 

Just wanted to add my experience here I believe I also have this issue, using an Arc/sub 3/symfonisks.

Sometimes during dialogue there is a metallic tinny sound, a bit like tin foil being scrunched up. It is not all the time and it is definitely not the source material as it doesn’t happen on other devices.

This seems to have been reported for some time now, is Sonos going to do anything about it?

I have the same problem, during certain dialogues, often the letter “a” or “o” the audio pops and crackles. It often occurs when someone raises the voice in a dialogue. Is there any fix for this? Have had this problem since day one.