Enthusiast II

Answered

Sonos Arc Muddy/Bottoming out Bass

1406 replies
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Beyond thrilled to receive the new Sonos Arc. True played my room and I have loudness on as well connected to LG B8 using Tidal and Spotify. Most of the sound range is phenomenal, aside from the bass. At even half volume the woofers are extremely muddy and sound terrible. Not sure if this is because I have under two hours of use but I wasn’t expecting to have to break-in the speaker. I own set of speakers next to it in the same room (KEF LS50W) and the difference is night and day. There have also been posts on Reddit regarding this issue. It is interesting given no reviewers have mentioned this issue but more than a few recipients have. Has anyone else experienced similar issues? Turning loudness off helps but it is disappointing for such a highly anticipated product.

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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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mattadamsone

Enthusiast I

Been having a long email conversation with Sonos customer support. A lot of similar questions and actions reported on here. They have said it might. That’s might, be a hardware issue. They are replacing my Arc. It comes on Thursday.
I hope this fixes things. Will report back.

Definitely keep us posted. That would be best case for most of us with this issue. Will they let you have them side by side for comparison?

I received a replacement arc…bad news…. it sounds the exact same… Same rattles and distorted sounds....I was seriously heartbroken and disappointed…...I’m leaning toward software issue now Unless my new arc was built at the same time as my old one…...can someone tell me how to check build dates? .... I need to send my other arc back very soon...

Man that stinks. I think we all had hopes that this was the fix. If you look on the thread about metallic sound, I think they had something in there about build dates

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ILoveNYC

Lyricist I

Hi Guys:

New to this forum. I almost pulled the trigger on the Sonos Arc to pair with the LG CX 65 OLED I just purchased as I couldn’t wait to try the Dolby Atmos. But after seeing the bass problem posted here I guess I will wait to see how this issue is resolved. I won’t buy one unless they resolve the bass issue.

In the meantime, I think my TV speakers are good enough to carry me through for a while.

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AndyWUK

Lyricist III

Not sure why my posts have videos attached apologies

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vivianfahy

Lyricist II

Hi Guys:

New to this forum. I almost pulled the trigger on the Sonos Arc to pair with the LG CX 65 OLED I just purchased as I couldn’t wait to try the Dolby Atmos. But after seeing the bass problem posted here I guess I will wait to see how this issue is resolved. I won’t buy one unless they resolve the bass issue.

In the meantime, I think my TV speakers are good enough to carry me through for a while.

Wise choice. Mine is like everyone else posting here, very poor bass issues. I cannot fathom how so many so called reviewers gave this product such a glowing review, it’s just average at best - if it cost 250EUR, that is no exaggeration. Not sure if its hardware or software related, but bass and sharp sounds make it poor to listen to. I’ll keep it for another few weeks until I see it improves, if not its going back, as simple as that. I’m very disappointed in it, especially as I hoped to use it for music in my sitting room.

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brttlt

Avid Contributor I

I did “pull the trigger”, but I also got the subwoofer, so I shouldn’t have the issues people are having.

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Jordan1126

Avid Contributor I

new to the forums but thank god i found this as soon as i bought the arc. i was losing my mind for the first few days because it was almost as though the sound “hurt” to listen too and the bass was all over the place. I decided to just return it and go back to the beam that i luckily didn’t sell. I have the beam with the 2 ones as surrounds and no sub (little kids at home so i dont blast it anyways). I am much happier with a product that cost less than half the amount for now. If i ever see that the product was fixed in it’s entirety i will definitely upgrade as i have a beautiful LG 65 inch oled that is capable of ARCING out atmos sound. what a shame as i was really looking forward to this product. The beam on the other hand still punches well above its weight, and i bumped up the bass 4 notches on the EQ and it provides a much cleaner listening experience than the arc ever did

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ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

Interesting video. He tests various bass tones in the middle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VtO4Qc5NaY

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pyro225

Enthusiast II

Another ‘bad song’ for bass over 50% kovacs brothers -world domination - sounds horrible like starboy I posted above and just about anything with a decent bass line… yuck

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mattadamsone

Enthusiast I

new to the forums but thank god i found this as soon as i bought the arc. i was losing my mind for the first few days because it was almost as though the sound “hurt” to listen too and the bass was all over the place. I decided to just return it and go back to the beam that i luckily didn’t sell. I have the beam with the 2 ones as surrounds and no sub (little kids at home so i dont blast it anyways). I am much happier with a product that cost less than half the amount for now. If i ever see that the product was fixed in it’s entirety i will definitely upgrade as i have a beautiful LG 65 inch oled that is capable of ARCING out atmos sound. what a shame as i was really looking forward to this product. The beam on the other hand still punches well above its weight, and i bumped up the bass 4 notches on the EQ and it provides a much cleaner listening experience than the arc ever did

I’ve had a similar experience. The Beam has a much more pleasant sound overall and significantly better low end performance. I’ve put them side by side and in every case the Beam is better. I hope we will see an update soon to address this. I have about 3 more weeks on my return window.

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sebas1509

Enthusiast II

Here is a snippet of the Compression graph from RTINGS.com in red it shows the Arc at high volume and on green it shows the Beam at high volume. There is a noticeable dip there for red, this is not what is expected at that range. Note this only happens at high volume. The other green (mostly flat line) is the Arc at 80dB SPL level (not as loud) which is flat as it is ideal. It is normal for speakers to struggle at higher volumes but theres a clear issue for the bass response for the Arc at high volume.

Here is the summary with the score, pretty poor score even lower than Beam and Playbar.

Here is another score that is lower than expected, and it points to the metallic sound/ tinny sound some are experiencing (theres another post for that issue)

Find it hard to believe SONOS didnt test these type of things before pushing the Arc out of the door. So it makes me wonder what is going on….

@Scott - Sonos @Jean C.

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