Sonos Arc - Metallic Sound

I would also like to know if anything is being done about this.  It is a very common problem.  Surely boosting dialogue in the arc is a fix that can be done.  I still can't believe I have to keep adjusting volume on pretty much everything I watch.  Yes I have doe trueplay, yes I have reset the router and yes I have tried speech enhancement and night mode. 

There is also a thread in av forum with similar complaints.

I did make the issue tolerable with re-calibrating true play with an older ipad instead of my iphone X. The high treble and tinny sound did dissipate alot. But still wasn’t very impressed with the sound. However, After getting a pair of sonos 1 for surround and sub gen 3. It is freaking amazing, but very expensive. I’m not sure if Sonos is going to fix the issue. But from my experience from trying to recalibrate with true play a million gazliion times to try to fix the sound. I feel like it really depends on the device you use because of the mic from the phone. I could technically be wrong, I’m just speaking from user experience. I’ve tested with a bunch of different apple devices. 

Hi I recently upgraded to the Sonos Arc + Sub and after about a week with it I’m noticing the vocals (whenever someone is speaking) sounds distorted almost like it’s clipping and has a raspy sound to it. I noticed other people are reporting similar issues and are claiming it happens after setting up Trueplay but for me I noticed it before I even bothered setting Trueplay to begin with. 

I first noticed it watching stand up comedy on Amazon Prime it was instantly noticeable compared to other movies and cable tv I was watching and I thought maybe it was just because it was live stand up that’s just how it sounded but then I was watching Jumanji The Next Level and noticed it again and now I’m noticing it all the time.

For what it worth mentioning my tv is the Sony x900h and I have the Arc hooked up to the eArc HDMI 3 port. Everything seems to be connected correctly and set up correctly. 

Also after the first couple days randomly the sound cut out and then came back after about 10 seconds and it has done that twice now in total and oddly after that is when I started noticing this raspy vocal distortion. I even tried rebooting unplugging everything and it still sounds bad. To be honest I feel let down and considering returning it. 
 

Oddly For music so far everything sounds great especially the Sub too no issue (only tested through YouTube & Sonos Radio). I called Sonos and did a bunch of diagnostic tests and a factory reset as well and still noticing the sound. They said everything is correct and offered to replace my unit for free but I feel like it’s not a defect and it’s just how the soundbar is designed.

For example in Jumanji The Next Level in certain scenes whenever Kevin Hart is speaking i notice the sound but when other actors are I don’t it’s almost like it’s a frequency issue depending on the tone in the persons voice the speaker pumps out this harsh staticky background noise.

So I had purchasesd the Arc the first time from Amazon. I noticed I was having an issue with sound from the center channel. I decided to buy another one from bestbuy and see if I had the same problem. Turns out the one from bestbuy worked great. Noticeable difference. I sent the Amazon order back. In the beginning after getting the one from bestbuy I noticed that the dialog was low on some movies. I found that if I ran trueplay and focused on the back of the room near my seating position and stayed away from the soundbar I could hear a noticeable difference in the dialog from the center. I also noticed thst trueplay worked much better using my iPhone 6s over the iPad. I attribute thst to the 2 microphones on the iPad. So if sonos wants to replace it... I would definitely let them. I think there was some units that had a hardware issue. Then run trueplay on the replacement the way I suggested. 

Don’t think there is anyone from the Sonos staff who is actually reading this.. 

 Hey I purchased mine from Amazon as well do you experience this harsh staticky vocal sound that I’m explaining? My worry is replacing it for nothing and it’s just issue across them all. Today is my last day to return on Amazon and get refund or I can get a replacement from Sonos. They told me it’s 1 year warranty.

Had my ARC for about 5 months. Have trueplayed with iPhone 11, iPhone 6s and older iPad.. still find the ARC to bright and lack of mid.. I also have a sub and rears. I sometimes find my Beam has a better overall sound upstairs. The ARC just sounds too Tin can sounding what ever I do. I had a Samsung Q90r before and that sounded much better, The sub wasn’t as good but the bar itself was much better.

@Krishma M any update on this 

I returned mine, but I will share something about “needing the sub.” As an experiment, we turned the sub down and move it to a different room, the Arc sounded better than without the sub hooked up (of course it lacked bass.) The Arc could be much better on it’s own if it was faked into thinking it has a sub. I’m not saying anyone is trying to make you add more product, but…

Many claim you MUST add the sub for the Arc to sound good, then you MUST add the rears for it to sound good. Heck, at that point your are well into a pretty decent a/v component set up, even a low end set up would sound as good or maybe better. I will say that the Sonos sub is a winner, the Arc not so much for the price. 

Add me to the list of people with this problem.

New Sonos owner and not impressed, dialog in particular sounds terrible, too much emphasis on “S” sounds so a person can say.

“Sssonosss is sstill sssounding hissssy on viocessss”.

Have the full set, Arc sub, and 2x OneSL but my TV speaker actually reproduces voice more cleanly, why bother with this product when its so poor?

I sold it, and bought a pair of B&W 702 S2 .. sounds a bit better. thanks Sonos for the support!