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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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    Masterpopper
    Lyricist III
    June 24, 2020

    Try playing Dr. Carter by Lil Wayne at a 70% volume. 

    maurice.pothoven
    Trending Lyricist II
    June 24, 2020

    I think the issue now shifts more to the point of:

     

    it doesn’t sound near as good as people claim in reviews. There hardly is any bass (without sub)

    LOL. This is never-ending. 

    I have the sub haha so I have bass enough :D

    arpatil1
    Enthusiast II
    June 24, 2020

    I think the issue now shifts more to the point of:

     

    it doesn’t sound near as good as people claim in reviews. There hardly is any bass (without sub)

    LOL. This is never-ending. 

    I have the sub haha so I have bass enough :D

    Your ears are just like the eyes. They calibrate themselves to the sound pretty quick. If you do back to back comparison, Arc’s bass will sound trash as your ears get used to the subwoofer bass. I have Arc without the sub, and the bass is plenty. 

    britishwonderings
    Enthusiast I
    June 24, 2020

    So I am starting this by saying I have decided to keep my Arc. I am still not 100% satisfied, but I am getting closer. It has replaced my beam under the TV. 

    I have a Sub, Play:1 Surrounds as well. 

    With the update it does sound better yet compared to the beam I don’t think bass handing is correct yet. It lacks the ‘oomph’ I was expecting. I will say that compared to the beam the sound is more expansive, details and has more spatial volume (not loudness). Actual loudness does not seem huge compared to beam but again that may be more due to lack of low down grunt. 

    I need to do more testing, use trueplay to tune it (oldest apple device in my house is an iPhone XR) etc. But out the gate, the Arc (inc Sub/Surrounds) lack oomph. I would watch a movie with the beam/sub/surrounds and my living room would be a wall of sound, with bass rippling though the experience. Not so much now, sub and all. 

    I have also noticed some of my other speakers around the house seem to lack bass precisions/depth but I am not wondering if it is psychosomatic. 

    Here is a thought that is off not practical benefit but my Sonos systems just feel little underwhelming since S2. S1 has years and years of refinement and I think some of that has been lost? It’s like I’ve gone from HDR/Dolby Vision back to regular 4K. Still good, but not… ‘wow’

    So why am I keeping it….because I feel it can be fixed, and I refuse to believe reviews are so off the mark. And if there is a hardware issue, 100 days or not, Sonos should remedy with a replacement. I have a certain amount of faith in Sonos, let’s see if it is well places. 

    Beam. 2x Play:1 - 2x Play One (gen 2) - Sub - 2x Play 5 - Move
      Roy Hobbs
      Lyricist III
      June 24, 2020

      Utterly ridiculous, the update didn’t fix anything.  The arc still chokes on anything bass heavy and the volume above 35-40%.   

        Reefy
        Enthusiast I
        June 24, 2020

        I think the issue now shifts more towards the point of:

         

        it doesn’t sound near as good as people claim in reviews. There hardly is any bass (without sub)

        I can assure you this is flat out a lie. Barely any bass? There’s plenty of bass sometimes too much. I had a playbar before and the bass here is more prominent.  
         

        ofncourse it wont compete with a subwoofer. I don’t see how you claim reviewers had it better many are happy with their arcs.

        another thing might be your room if it’s huge and open space you might not hear as strong of a bass compared to a smaller space


        This is a thread to talk about the issues going on with the arc. I’m glad yours is fixed but many people are still having issues. Maybe different hardware?

        Exactly. Some people had no issue with initial firmware. Some still have issue after the firmware release. And presumably Sonos had no issue during development (which is why they released it as is). So it wouldn’t unrealistic to think that there is some hardware issue causing some units to behave differently. It could be a bad batch of components (or slightly different components from good units to bad ones). Usually there is a list of approved components, and a secondary list just in case the preferred component is not available in the market. it could be manufacturing issue or maybe the software requires filler tweaks. 

          Roy Hobbs
          Lyricist III
          June 24, 2020

          Try playing Dr. Carter by Lil Wayne at a 70% volume. 

          The bass in this song sounds horrid at 40%

            ftm
            Trending Lyricist I
            June 24, 2020

            Ftm that being the case is the Arc as amazing as you expected it to be? Did you happen to upgrade from another Sonos Soundbar? 

            The arc was really good low down volumes then the bass got muddy as described.  The sound other than that was really good at times .The update partially masked the bass issue.  My house is detached so I often have high volumes this is probably why I noticed it.

            It sounds alot better with sub.

            ftm
            Trending Lyricist I
            June 24, 2020

            Got the sub today, easy set up as always.  I can confirm that the sub takes care of the arcs bass issues.  All the films I've watched which had the distorted bass all sound spot on now.  That's with the sub set to -3

            we really gotta stop saying “bass issues “ the bass issue was fixed already with yesterday’s firmware.

             

            if you properly updated and have any issues you might have a defective unit but the widespread bass issue was fixed 

            It was partially fixed it wasnt fully fixed at all.  Not on my arc anyway 

              dP89
              Lyricist III
              June 24, 2020

              Please have a look at this video:

               

              Seems like the initial problem has been fixed BUT there are new issues with the bass at different frequencies.

               

               

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