Enthusiast II

Answered

Sonos Arc Muddy/Bottoming out Bass

1406 replies
193354 views

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.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

S

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.

Show previous replies

S

sebas1509

Enthusiast II

Don’t think you need eArc for Atmos. Currently most services offering Atmos will work with normal HDMI Arc. I think eArc might be needed for some Blu-ray movies though, and in the future it might become more widely used. But by then you’ll have a new TV anyway!

Lot’s of samsung TVS until 2019 or 2020 didnt pass atmos through ARC. And most TVs before 2017 didnt either. For example even if you have a high end model LG OLED from 2016 your tv will have ARC but no atmos through it. So it depends on the model

A

AndrewLC

Enthusiast I

Ah ok. Think mine does but it’s a recent Philips one. Although at the moment I’m holding off on buying an Arc!

A

arpatil1

Enthusiast II

Hello All,

I was going to place an order for Arc (my first Sonos device) but I am impressed by the negative with all this problem related to AUDIO in a device of this price.
My Samsung TV does not have HDMI eARC so I will not be able to enjoy the Dolby Atmos function by now.
For the price difference (€ 899 vs € 699) I would like to know your opinion\advice if I will be better served by buying the Playbar + 2 OneSL instead of Arc (buying the Sub on a later stage).

Or probably wait until all this issues to be resolved, properly tested and then move to the Arc?

For all the discussion I have read here it seems to me that Arc does not seem to be mature enough as announced by Sonos (“featuring eleven high-performance drivers for crisp highs, dynamic midranges, and surprising bass”) and it wouldn't be nice to have a device that looks “incomplete” and patch-dependent

Future-proofing, latest features, and sleek design are all appealing, but the primary function of the device i.e. audio is still not up to the mark IMO. Just because some people don’t notice it does not mean the issues are not there (as proven by the bass distortion). If possible, I would wait until the issues are ironed out. You should not have to pay the full price for a speaker that has been released half-baked. Having said this, I do believe Sonos will fix the issues. They hear us, unlike other companies (how many brands have such engaging and repsonsive community forums?). Arc is a new product and software improvements can bring out all the raw power it has got.

A

antx

Lyricist III

Hello All,

I was going to place an order for Arc (my first Sonos device) but I am impressed by the negative with all this problem related to AUDIO in a device of this price.
My Samsung TV does not have HDMI eARC so I will not be able to enjoy the Dolby Atmos function by now.
For the price difference (€ 899 vs € 699) I would like to know your opinion\advice if I will be better served by buying the Playbar + 2 OneSL instead of Arc (buying the Sub on a later stage).

Or probably wait until all this issues to be resolved, properly tested and then move to the Arc?

For all the discussion I have read here it seems to me that Arc does not seem to be mature enough as announced by Sonos (“featuring eleven high-performance drivers for crisp highs, dynamic midranges, and surprising bass”) and it wouldn't be nice to have a device that looks “incomplete” and patch-dependent

Future-proofing, latest features, and sleek design are all appealing, but the primary function of the device i.e. audio is still not up to the mark IMO. Just because some people don’t notice it does not mean the issues are not there (as proven by the bass distortion). If possible, I would wait until the issues are ironed out. You should not have to pay the full price for a speaker that has been released half-baked. Having said this, I do believe Sonos will fix the issues. They hear us, unlike other companies (how many brands have such engaging and repsonsive community forums?). Arc is a new product and software improvements can bring out all the raw power it has got.

Very well said, it’s a flaw and lets accept it, if some don’t hear it or feel it does not mean its working well, we have paid a premium price and there are lot of us who have similar issue and we are not bringing this up for negative PR, I am not working with any competitors brand etc. I am just another consumer.

I still believe in Sonos Technology and that’s the only reason I have not rushed my return.

If you are planning to buy, I would say just hold a bit may be a month or so before deciding. If you decide to buy then just buy Arc as playbar may be sweet sounding device but it is a very old tech and probably in a year or so you may want to upgrade. So just wait for Arc to get sorted and then buy arc that would be my suggestion.

J

jkn411

Lyricist I

Looks like the issue was also noticed on techhive and the mentioned this Post - https://www.techhive.com/article/3562736/sonos-arc-soundbar-atmos-performance-evaluation.html

S

Sir Fluffy

Contributor I

We have identified a bug that has potential to cause distortion when playing bass-heavy content at higher volume levels on Arc. Our team is working on the fix now. We expect the software release to be implemented as early as next week. I'll share any additional updates here.

Thanks. Will the fix be applied for the Sonos One too?

I don’t believe this particular bug affects the Sonos One, but I’ll raise it with the team just in case.

What about an Arc paired with Sub? Does the team believe the issue is only when the Arc is performing solo?

The Sub takes over most of the troublesome frequencies for Arc that cause the audio distortion to surface. So it may or may not be affected or apparent, but the fix will apply nonetheless.

i’m using it with a sub and two sonos:one speakers in the back and have the issue as well so i’m hoping this fixes that; i also get what feels like a tearing sound in speech or loud sounds when listening to atmos content via TV

S

Sash A

Lyricist III

Looks like the issue was also noticed on techhive and the mentioned this Post - https://www.techhive.com/article/3562736/sonos-arc-soundbar-atmos-performance-evaluation.html

Here is an article specifically talks about this and the community: https://www.techhive.com/article/3562702/software-fix-for-sonos-arc-soundbar-bass-bug-is-on-the-way.html

P

paulypies

Lyricist I

We have identified a bug that has potential to cause distortion when playing bass-heavy content at higher volume levels on Arc. Our team is working on the fix now. We expect the software release to be implemented as early as next week. I'll share any additional updates here.

Thanks. Will the fix be applied for the Sonos One too?

I don’t believe this particular bug affects the Sonos One, but I’ll raise it with the team just in case.

I have this too on my One’s and One SL worse. Very easy to replicate by playing any sound below 50hz, you hear the speaker pop and struggle. The volume changes up and down frantically to cope. This is at low to mid volume too.

A

arpatil1

Enthusiast II

We have identified a bug that has potential to cause distortion when playing bass-heavy content at higher volume levels on Arc. Our team is working on the fix now. We expect the software release to be implemented as early as next week. I'll share any additional updates here.

Thanks. Will the fix be applied for the Sonos One too?

I don’t believe this particular bug affects the Sonos One, but I’ll raise it with the team just in case.

I have this too on my One’s and One SL worse. Very easy to replicate by playing any sound below 50hz, you hear the speaker pop and struggle. The volume changes up and down frantically to cope. This is at low to mid volume too.

Something must be up with the S2 OS.

M

mudstuff

Lyricist III

Don’t think you need eArc for Atmos. Currently most services offering Atmos will work with normal HDMI Arc. I think eArc might be needed for some Blu-ray movies though, and in the future it might become more widely used. But by then you’ll have a new TV anyway!

You need eARC for proper, lossless dolby atmos. Through regular ARC, you can get compressed Atmos, wrapped as dolby digital plus. This is what many streaming services support but it's lossy and not a patch on the sound you get from dolby atmos/truehd from a 4k bluray.

Show more replies

Sign up

Login to the community