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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ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

Had you tested out your previous Arc with the 12.0.1 update before returning it? If so, and your new Arc doesn’t have the muddy bass problem, then this would point to a hardware problem--perhaps with a certain batch. Unless the bass problem is really just being covered up by the 12.0.1 firmware.

Don’t the comments from Rtings (a few posts up) pretty much confirm that all Sonos did was “cover up” the bass issue with 12.0.1? That was my interpretation anyway.

I dont agree with this. An user here said that but don’t take that as a fact. RTINGS said very clearly the update improved things. Not sure was “cover up” means in this case. How do you cover up an issue by improving it? The user mentioned a bandgap filter which basically blocks out a range of frequencies, yet I am not sure were they're getting this information from. Anyways that is what DSP is, a bunch of processing and this goes into all SONOS Speakers. So the hope, if theres no hardware design issue, is that the final and intended DSP tweeks are able to filter out and undesired frequency response to flatten it out.

In the plots I shared, this can be seen perfectly. The goal would be a flatter sound that doesn’t deviate from ideal performance, we know this is not possible or even a thing on any soundbar though. For example look at the Q90R samsung soundbar comparison. Now this is not a fair comparison because this shows performance with a subwoofer which will pereform much better in the lower freqs. I suspect the arc with the Sub look as good if not better than this red line (they haven’t tested it yet). Q90R comes with sub but it is pricier as well (not as pricey as sonos whole 5.1 system though)

Anyways there is clearly something weird going on in the 40 - 50 Hz range with the Arc (without a sub) it was improved with the update but still looks off.

That being said, the issues show up at MAX SPL which means max volume level, there is distortion. Most people, including me, wont really push the sound past 70% or so so they might not even experience these issues. However, we certainly expect more out of SONOS engineering. This is not acceptable, competitors or even other SONOS products can perform better at high volume. So that is where we set the bar for this new SONOS flagship

There is a belief that Sonos cut the bass significantly to eliminate the issue (i.e. if there is no bass, there is no distorted bass). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VtO4Qc5NaY (see beginning at 7:00 minutes for a minute or so). I think that was the quick fix while they continue to work on the issue, which makes sense. I don’t think it’s a “cover up” or anything crazy like that.

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khaz22

Avid Contributor III

I believe he is referring to the surround speakers having up-firing speakers, and the possibility of Sonos creating a One with an up-firing Atmos speaker as a surround option.

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bjl

Trending Lyricist I

Replying to @ewolkoff

The Q90 has up-firing drivers in the soundbar and surround speakers which gives you a 7.1.4 configuration. I’ve never tested the Q90, but the up-firing drivers in the surrounds should you give a better height effect.

if Sonos offered up-firing drivers in the surrounds, you’d then have a 5.x.4 configuration. Another nice enhancement would be for Sonos to enable you to designate an Amp and some number of speakers as up-firing height speakers OR an Amp and some number of ceiling speakers as down-firing height speakers.

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ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

Replying to @ewolkoff

The Q90 has up-firing drivers in the soundbar and surround speakers which gives you a 7.1.4 configuration. I’ve never tested the Q90, but the up-firing drivers in the surrounds should you give a better height effect.

if Sonos offered up-firing drivers in the surrounds, you’d then have a 5.x.4 configuration. Another nice enhancement would be for Sonos to enable you to designate an Amp and some number of speakers as up-firing height speakers OR an Amp and some number of ceiling speakers as down-firing height speakers.

Gotcha thanks. Very interesting. I hopped onto Samsung’s website to see this and saw that the reviews on Samsung.com are very mediocre (~3 stars). When you dive into them, there are a ton of 1 star reviews when the soundbar came out because it had all kinds of connectivity, reliability, and sound issues. The newer reviews are really good because Samsung worked on firmware for almost a year to perfect it. Early adopters always bear the brunt of these issues, but I am sure Sonos will continue to work to improve the Arc. Just something to keep in mind.

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sebas1509

Enthusiast II

Replying to @ewolkoff

The Q90 has up-firing drivers in the soundbar and surround speakers which gives you a 7.1.4 configuration. I’ve never tested the Q90, but the up-firing drivers in the surrounds should you give a better height effect.

if Sonos offered up-firing drivers in the surrounds, you’d then have a 5.x.4 configuration. Another nice enhancement would be for Sonos to enable you to designate an Amp and some number of speakers as up-firing height speakers OR an Amp and some number of ceiling speakers as down-firing height speakers.

Gotcha thanks. Very interesting. I hopped onto Samsung’s website to see this and saw that the reviews on Samsung.com are very mediocre (~3 stars). When you dive into them, there are a ton of 1 star reviews when the soundbar came out because it had all kinds of connectivity, reliability, and sound issues. The newer reviews are really good because Samsung worked on firmware for almost a year to perfect it. Early adopters always bear the brunt of these issues, but I am sure Sonos will continue to work to improve the Arc. Just something to keep in mind.

There were also complaints with the playbar initially. It was sort of a new thing and the sound was tuned for a while after. Now after 7 years people forget that.

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Danio1137

This review may have already been posted here but one more but honest. I'm surprised by the early reviews that did not notice anything, probably paid by sonos and I will always be critical in the future. Check out this video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZxAC4BdTE&feature=youtu.be

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Butcher

Lyricist III

This review may have already been posted here but one more but honest. I'm surprised by the early reviews that did not notice anything, probably paid by sonos and I will always be critical in the future. Check out this video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZxAC4BdTE&feature=youtu.be

Sounds more and more like its not for me :sob:
Maybe i will just go with the Beam.

But i will wait a month or so, and see what sonos comes up with.

Bumper

Replying to @ewolkoff

The Q90 has up-firing drivers in the soundbar and surround speakers which gives you a 7.1.4 configuration. I’ve never tested the Q90, but the up-firing drivers in the surrounds should you give a better height effect.

if Sonos offered up-firing drivers in the surrounds, you’d then have a 5.x.4 configuration. Another nice enhancement would be for Sonos to enable you to designate an Amp and some number of speakers as up-firing height speakers OR an Amp and some number of ceiling speakers as down-firing height speakers.

Gotcha thanks. Very interesting. I hopped onto Samsung’s website to see this and saw that the reviews on Samsung.com are very mediocre (~3 stars). When you dive into them, there are a ton of 1 star reviews when the soundbar came out because it had all kinds of connectivity, reliability, and sound issues. The newer reviews are really good because Samsung worked on firmware for almost a year to perfect it. Early adopters always bear the brunt of these issues, but I am sure Sonos will continue to work to improve the Arc. Just something to keep in mind.

There were also complaints with the playbar initially. It was sort of a new thing and the sound was tuned for a while after. Now after 7 years people forget that.

Source? I owned a playbar back then and it always sounded amazing except for one update which messed up the sound well after release. But maybe I am remembering this wrong...

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Niko79

Trending Lyricist I

Asked for an update and got this response from Tech Support:

The Arc is not defective, but the engineers have not released the fix for this known issue that has affected some of the Arc devices. They are still looking into it and you will receive an email when the fix has been found/ released.

To make sure we have not missed anything, have you unmounted the Arc and tested audio while it is sitting on a table instead of being mounted?

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Danio1137

Asked for an update and got this response from Tech Support:

The Arc is not defective, but the engineers have not released the fix for this known issue that has affected some of the Arc devices. They are still looking into it and you will receive an email when the fix has been found/ released.

To make sure we have not missed anything, have you unmounted the Arc and tested audio while it is sitting on a table instead of being mounted?

It feels good they look at the problem now but at the same time everyone who contacts the support gets a little different answers and explanations of what is happening. What one would like now is an official explanation on the website.

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