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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ccarlock12

Lyricist I

Hi,

I am so surprised that the bass issue with the ARC is not in any one of the reviews online like Youtube or any other sort of write up. They must have used the Sonos Sub to review. For the most part like everyone else in this thread I thought the Arc would be able to play some sort of bass with clipping/distortion/muddy sound. I was very wrong. When watching any sort of 2.0 programing on YouTube TV, the bass issues were fine. However when watching 5.1or Atmos content I would hear the low bass frequencies get muddy as if one of the speakers went loose. It sounded to me like a cheap car speaker from the 80’s when there was too much bass. When watching Yellowjackets on Showtime with 5.1 some of the music was clipping. I did all the things you are supposed to do like run true play or turn off true play. Normal listening levels for us is around 20%, so not very loud at all and still got the bass issues. On the flip side the ARC compared to our Playbase, the dialog and mid’s are out of this world for a sound bar, just not nearly as good with the bass as the playbase. So to solve the problem and match what all the reviews did in 2020 was I got the Sonos Sub. And yes, it solved the bass issues and the fidelity was even better. What disappointments me is that you really need the sub to deal with the Arc bass issues and that is very pricey. Yes, the ARC paired with a sub is incredible. But i wish I knew the truth ahead of purchasing the ARC. There should be a disclaimer that when a low bass frequency occurs at a certain (low) output that there is an asterisk on any sell sheets or promotional material indicating you will need a sub or you will hear distortions.

Airgetlam

It’s hard to reproduce a lot of bass sound when you’re using 3 or 4 inch speakers, as there are in all Sonos sound bars. You can do a bit, but it will never move the amount of air that a normal Sub would.

Bruce

M

Mjb112975

Contributor I

Hi,

I am so surprised that the bass issue with the ARC is not in any one of the reviews online like Youtube or any other sort of write up. They must have used the Sonos Sub to review. For the most part like everyone else in this thread I thought the Arc would be able to play some sort of bass with clipping/distortion/muddy sound. I was very wrong. When watching any sort of 2.0 programing on YouTube TV, the bass issues were fine. However when watching 5.1or Atmos content I would hear the low bass frequencies get muddy as if one of the speakers went loose. It sounded to me like a cheap car speaker from the 80’s when there was too much bass. When watching Yellowjackets on Showtime with 5.1 some of the music was clipping. I did all the things you are supposed to do like run true play or turn off true play. Normal listening levels for us is around 20%, so not very loud at all and still got the bass issues. On the flip side the ARC compared to our Playbase, the dialog and mid’s are out of this world for a sound bar, just not nearly as good with the bass as the playbase. So to solve the problem and match what all the reviews did in 2020 was I got the Sonos Sub. And yes, it solved the bass issues and the fidelity was even better. What disappointments me is that you really need the sub to deal with the Arc bass issues and that is very pricey. Yes, the ARC paired with a sub is incredible. But i wish I knew the truth ahead of purchasing the ARC. There should be a disclaimer that when a low bass frequency occurs at a certain (low) output that there is an asterisk on any sell sheets or promotional material indicating you will need a sub or you will hear distortions.

100% my experience. Very dissappointing.

M

Mjb112975

Contributor I

It’s hard to reproduce a lot of bass sound when you’re using 3 or 4 inch speakers, as there are in all Sonos sound bars. You can do a bit, but it will never move the amount of air that a normal Sub would.

Nonsense. My 5 year old ms6500 samsung pounded and sounded amazing. There is ZERO excuse for a 900 soundbar to be stomped by a 600 one from half a decade ago.

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Nielsb

Contributor I

Today january 2022 i bought fininally my Sonos Arc. I have read a lot of good reviews especially about the bass performance. But when i installed the Sonos Arc, the bass was very low and crappy. Even when changing the bass level in the EQ, you hear almost no difference between bass level 0 and 10.

loudness is on, tried Trueplay two times, one time with a Iphone13pro and one time with an iPad, but still crappy bass. My Sonos Play5gen2 has a perfect bass, so now i don’t know how to solve this. Can anyone provide me some tips and tricks, before i sent the unit back?

A

Arcnsubprob

Lyricist I

Amazing bought arc and gen 3 sub yesterday. After listening and reading reviews Not a single review mentioned about any problems. The sub just does not have any punch at all . Tried reset and re locating the sub. Still no luck . Arc on its on has bass problems as mentioned in above posts. Not even going to bother calling the customer support after reading thro the post. Read topics with promo have issues with sub. Surprisingly even after an year long thread here there are no troubleshooting steps or mention on Sonos support section. Comes across as a bad and poor product marketed as high end product and sold at premium price. this product not worth the hassle after pay so much money.

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Nielsb

Contributor I

I have called Sonos Support and they are very helpfull . After some tests and a hard reset my arc is working fine.

so i recommend to give support a call and discuss the issue you have.

good luck.

H

hithereuser

Lyricist I

Could you please share things you did that helped to fix the issue

S

SndHLP

Contributor I

Hey guys, I was having the exact same bass problems as everyone else, (even with the sub combined with ARC) I ran TruePlay again and that fixed it) I sincerely hope this helps someone else out.

J

JayDeesSpace

Lyricist I

I just added two Sonos One SL surround speakers to my Sonos Arc. I’ve been using the Arc without surrounds for about 2 months prior. I don’t have a Sub.

Before adding the surrounds the bass produced by the Arc was full, deep and balanced. I had my EQ bass setting on 5 and it sounded incredible. After adding the One SLs the bass sounds pretty bad. It now seems to be mostly in the deep lows and it sounds very unbalanced. Both me and my partner think the bass sounds muted and bad.

I tried running the TruePlay calibration twice and I played with the EQ. Increasing the bass through the EQ increases the bass output in the very low spectrum but makes it sound worse overall.

This happens both with music and with movies and with pretty much any source (stereo or Atmos).

I’m kind of disappointed after investing in the surrounds and having a worse overall sound.

I did just that yesterday and added two One SL to my Arc. After I was very satisfied with the Arc, I am now very disappointed. It's really worse than before, the bass is completely missing, I have calibrated the room three times differently without a change. With decoupled One SL everything is good again, just as with TruePlay turned off.
TruePlay with the Arc alone was great and a big, positive change. However, together with the two One SL it is a real disappointment.

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