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Enthusiast II
Jun 10, 2020 8:51 PM UTC
Answered

Sonos Arc Muddy/Bottoming out Bass

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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Sonos Product Management
Jul 2, 2020 11:04 PM UTC

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.

1406 replies

Enthusiast II
Jul 28, 2020 9:06 PM UTC

Yup - Still messed up here too….ugh

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Jul 28, 2020 9:24 PM UTC

Still sounds horrific on Drive at 35:00 at 50% volume up.

 

daft punk weeknd- starboy sounds marginally better.

eminem - without me sounds bad still

Did you do a trueplay?

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Jul 29, 2020 4:37 PM UTC

New video 

 

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Enthusiast II
Jul 29, 2020 6:16 PM UTC

Good video - looks like they didn’t really change the Freq response at all - interesting how he mentioned the volume change. I didn’t notice that…..still have muddy bass though….

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Lyricist III
Jul 29, 2020 6:27 PM UTC

Good video - looks like they didn’t really change the Freq response at all - interesting how he mentioned the volume change. I didn’t notice that…..still have muddy bass though….

Yeah. Good stuff again from Peter. This might also explain why I and some others experienced a higher volume coming from the surrounds. I had to lower them a bit because they were taking over too much. 

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Enthusiast II
Jul 30, 2020 11:50 AM UTC

Hi all - since the last update seemed to have fixed nothing I thought I’d do a direct comparison of my Playbase and the arc … here is the video… and for those of you who think the Arc sounds greats can you not hear the difference?

 

 

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Contributor I
Jul 30, 2020 1:14 PM UTC

Hi all - since the last update seemed to have fixed nothing I thought I’d do a direct comparison of my Playbase and the arc … here is the video… and for those of you who think the Arc sounds greats can you not hear the difference?

 

What is the origin of the sound (youtube?) and what music is so I can try to test on my end too?

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Enthusiast II
Jul 30, 2020 1:32 PM UTC

Hi all - since the last update seemed to have fixed nothing I thought I’d do a direct comparison of my Playbase and the arc … here is the video… and for those of you who think the Arc sounds greats can you not hear the difference?

 

What is the origin of the sound (youtube?) and what music is so I can try to test on my end too?

Hi there

 

a film on Netflix called ‘Drive’ think its

some Bollywood film at 50% plus volume and 35:00 exactly into the film

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Local Superstar
Jul 30, 2020 2:25 PM UTC

Hi all - since the last update seemed to have fixed nothing I thought I’d do a direct comparison of my Playbase and the arc … here is the video… and for those of you who think the Arc sounds greats can you not hear the difference?

 

 

Arc is against a wall, where is the Playbase?

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Enthusiast II
Jul 30, 2020 2:40 PM UTC

On the floor for the test directly under it. It’s not on the wall it sits forward about an inch

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