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ggmogollon
Enthusiast II
June 10, 2020
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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    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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    Bwoering
    Lyricist I
    June 11, 2020

    Wait a minute - I was just listening to some music on my One in my kitchen and the woofer sounded like it was bottoming out at very reasonable volume levels. I haven’t done any critical listening, but has anyone else checked their other speakers? Did the update that installed affect all the EQ of all Sonos speakers? Or just the Arc? My Play:5 sounded OK earlier, but I wasn’t listening for anything out of the ordinary. 

    I have the same issue with my Play:1. Arc sounds fine to me but my Play:1 has bottoming out bass it never had before. Might be something with the S2 update overall? 

      Wildantics
      Avid Contributor III
      June 11, 2020

      Has anyone tried any of these songs or clips on the beam for comparison?

      bbalz
      Renowned Enthusiast I
      June 11, 2020

      Has anyone tried any of these songs or clips on the beam for comparison?

      Yes I have.  It's night and day difference.  Beam seems overall just better right now.  If you adjust loudness and bass lower on the Arc it's ok but lacking.  Once it's fixed the Arc is really going to shine like reviews said...at least that is my hope.  I'm crossing my fingers.

      buzz
      buzz
      Grand Maestro
      June 12, 2020

      It seems that only some users experience this issue. It would help the effort if everyone would include a diagnostic with their post. There could be different production batches and this information will be included in the diagnostic.

      For the record, I am not experiencing this issue.

      Diagnostic: 1568306753

      Years ago I had an experience with a manufacturer where a solid product started having issues and the replacement also had issues immediately out of the box. It took a few weeks, but the manufacturer finally traced the issue to a single person on the assembly line who was not following explicit instructions. Everything that he assembled during a certain group of days broke during shipment.

        ripcordaff
        Trending Lyricist I
        June 12, 2020

        Experiencing the issue to a very large extent. Diagnostic #1804929637

        wilwong829
        Enthusiast II
        June 12, 2020

        I'm from Hong Kong, currently with BEAM setup... ordered the Arc and will be delivered by mid. of July... Hope everything will be fine then because I don't want to cancel the order at all.

         

        No matter what, everyone knows and believe that SONOS is a responsive company and brand, so even if it's a hardware issue or can be solved by  software/firmware updates, the company will do the best for the customers. 

         

        As a supporter of the brand, I hope this will not cost them too much in terms of money and goodwill/brand image... Support here from HK!!👍👍

        Mightbeandy
        Lyricist I
        June 12, 2020

        I thought mine was not affected but then I realized I only had my source audio as Stereo. When I switched to Dolby Digital and watched the toy story 3 scene the bass almost cuts out and sounds fairly bad. 
         

        also noticed fairly bad at the title screen for the conjuring. 
         

        diagnostic 126317094

        zoomzoomz
        Lyricist II
        June 12, 2020

        I am having the same muddy bass issue with the ARC. Anything above 50% speakers sound like they’re about to blowout. This is my first foray into this community and was wondering how people were getting diagnostic numbers to address this issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks 

        ggmogollonAuthor
        Enthusiast II
        June 12, 2020

        I am having the same muddy bass issue with the ARC. Anything above 50% speakers sound like they’re about to blowout. This is my first foray into this community and was wondering how people were getting diagnostic numbers to address this issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks 

        Settings → help and tips → submit diagnostics 

          ewolkoff
          Enthusiast II
          June 12, 2020

          Same issue here. The bass response is terrible. My beam at about 50% volume has a smoother And cleaner response. This is terribly disappointing and so glad I read this thread. I thought it was me. 
           

          The Highs and mids are incredibly detailed and crisp though. It is a LOT louder when compared to the beam. 
           

          The bass for me was poor while listening to music (Spotify and Apple Music), watching inception on Netflix was great until the bass kicked in and same muddled response. Plugged in the PS4 Pro to play some call of duty and yet again same experience. My sub has yet to be delivered, but thinking of cancelling both and sticking with the beam (much better value for money). 
           

          I have the arc placed on my wooden tv unit with the tv behind it. This is the same location I had the beam with no issues at all. All running through HDMI Arc. Not using optical. 
           

          Hope a software update fixes the issue otherwise, bye bye Sonos Arc. 
           

           

          Once you have the sub, you will not have any issues...

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