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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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    Mitchellsx
    Renowned Enthusiast II
    February 11, 2021

    Im looking at selling my Sonos setup. just getting fed up with the poor sound of the ARC, yes the sub is great and the rears are very active ( we do need some upfiring speakers tho!) The ARC just lacks that immersive feeling for me and its just so tinny sounding still.. I had a Samsung q90r before and thats on a different level when watching movies...

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      J32503
      Lyricist III
      February 13, 2021

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

      Now that’s a heck of a step up!

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      Mitchellsx
      Renowned Enthusiast II
      February 15, 2021

      Are people still getting this issue? What levels of EQ settings are you all setting to get rid of the treble harshness-6 -7

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        Mitchellsx
        Renowned Enthusiast II
        February 22, 2021

        @Krishma M Do you know if this issue is still being looked into by Sonos Tech? Thanks

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        J32503
        Lyricist III
        March 16, 2021

        So nothing new?

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        Mitchellsx
        Renowned Enthusiast II
        March 16, 2021

        @Krishma M Can you give us an update on this long on going issue with the Sonos Arc?

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          Philflyer
          Lyricist I
          March 19, 2021

          Is there no answer to the Arc sound quality from Sonos? I received my Arc 7 days ago and am very disappointed with the harsh, tinny sound especially noticeable on TV speech. Some things actually sound better on the internal speakers of the LG TV. The only real improvement is in the bass which works well on music and Netflix films. For this amount of money I expected a lot more and its going to be returned to Sonos next week if I don’t find an answer.

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            Tgx
            Lyricist II
            April 3, 2021

            Just wanted to briefly add my experience with my new Arc.

            After the first calibrations with my iphone 11 pro max I got the hollow metallic sound everyone is complaining of. I was thinking of returning it.

            Next, after reading this thread, I tried to calibrate the Arc in a different way. 
            Instead of walking around the whole room with my iphone, I tried to focus only in the immediate vicinity of the listening seated position, walking away from it only for more or less of one meter and rotating my iphone in a path like the 8 number. 
            The sound improved a lot with trueplay enabled. I added 3 notches to bass and removed 2 notches from treble. 

            Now I’m happy with my Arc. Full and warm sound ;-)

            Tgx

             

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              RJJS
              Lyricist I
              April 6, 2021

              Hi tgx (and all),

              I recently got the Arc and was at first in love with it which running through the normal test stuff - gaming, 4K movies etc. it was great. Got the sub to go with it the next day. Awesome. 
               

              Then i started watching normal stuff like cable TV and other stuff like Netflix at regular volume and the sound stage completely fell apart like the folks here are complaining about. Metallic, hollow, tinny etc. I tried night mode, voice enhancer, adjusting treble and bass, and truplay. 

              While it was good at the higher “demoing my new system” volume it was actually shockingly bad at anything else. I own several Sonos speakers - i love they sound the produce even straight out the box before even touching the EQ and at all volumes. 

              One major issue i see is not having any sound modes to choose from. I feel like a standard forced “Stereo” or “Stereo 2X” would really help for just watching standard tv. TV typically has horrible results with any soundbars that lack a simple forced stereo mode. There was way too much sound coming out of the center channel only and silly stuff like commercials bouncing sound all over the room - like fake 5.1 simulation. Constantly adjusting the volume even with night mode enabled.
               

              @tgx how has the bar done with normal cable tv viewing after your new true play tuning? If not Have you tried anything like YouTube TV or Hulu? 

              In the end I returned mine ( and sub)with a very heavy heart as i what wanted a Sonos soundbar for years, then waited a good 2 years after that for the enviable upgrade (the Arc) to launch. 

              couldn’t have been more disappointed…
               

               


               

               

               

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                Tgx
                Lyricist II
                April 7, 2021

                 

                @tgx how has the bar done with normal cable tv viewing after your new true play tuning? If not Have you tried anything like YouTube TV or Hulu? 
                 

                I suppose the soundbar works best with dolby encoded sources. With pure stereo sources the performance is good but not exceptional.

                I think a proper trueplay calibration is crucial for the Arc to sound good. 

                A proper Equalization feature is however sorely needed so that you could shape the sound according to your own personal testes. I’m speaking of multiple eq bands or parametric eq. Bass and treble controls  are not enough.

                Tgx

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