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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pyro225

Enthusiast II

join the other thread and email them if you have issues I just got this back...

Thank you for contacting Sonos and sorry to hear that you have audio quality issue with your ARC.

We are investigating bass issue with some of the Sonos users. To help us to do that, could you please tell us:

What type of content is being played? (TV, Music)?
What volume lever do you experience the issue?
Is the Arc wall-mounted?
If wall-mounted, does removing the speaker from the wall bracket and setting it on a credenza or table improve the issue?
Is Trueplay configured on the ARC?
Is the Bass EQ setting flat or adjusted is some way?

Also, could you please submit new diagnostic and reply to us with the number please.

Submit Diagnostics

Last, if possible please make a photo where ARC is located and reply to this

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DebadgedA6

Trending Lyricist I

I tried to run 4hz test tone on my Samsung MS750 in bedroom and on my friend’s Q90r and both of them wobble even on 30% volume without sub but sounds smooth with sub. So probably this is something with soundbars to provide nice quality sound with decent bass otherwise add sub. I tested dr carter by lil wayne and penetrator both of them sounds good after the update at around 60-70% volume without sub. This could be how the soundbars are designed. As adding sub made these tracks sound powerful so sub is required if you want to play bass heavy tracks at high volumes.

But Sonos is not Samsung. I didn’t devote my whole house to Sonos products just to live with problems that other manufacturers also have. I went with Sonos because they don’t have the issues that others have.

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DebadgedA6

Trending Lyricist I

Thank you for contacting Sonos and sorry to hear that you have audio quality issue with your ARC.

We are investigating bass issue with some of the Sonos users. To help us to do that, could you please tell us:

What type of content is being played? (TV, Music)?
What volume lever do you experience the issue?

It would have been funny if we responded with (Test tones) and (100%). Haha.

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PowdeRiver

Lyricist III

Hopefully they wouldnt say something like shouldn’t expect our product to produce certain tones at 100% without the speaker making odd sounds.

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sebas1509

Enthusiast II

Hopefully they wouldnt say something like shouldn’t expect our product to produce certain tones at 100% without the speaker making odd sounds.

Idk man I tested the test tone on my sonos one and it made weird sounds at certain volumes. I think people are nitpicking now. But even if it does make some weird sounds at 80 percent volume I will never reach that and can wait for a fix. If it is a hardware issue you bet I will ask for a replacement later down the road.

People in this forum are hilarious sometimes, yall think the playbar and other sonos products didnt get firmware updates that improved the sound signature significantly. Many were complaining about the Sonos AMP and they have been patching that changing the sound signature constantly to improve it (some even say its too many updates because they have to slightly retune it). Playbar also got a big firmware update months toa year after release in which they improved the sound quite a bit (Sonos said they weren’t 100% satisfied with the sound on launch and retuned things). I for one am invested on Sonos (own many products) and think on 99 percent of cases the Arc sounds great. Movies just blow me away. Go find another soundbar that sounds this good for the price and has Atmos etc…. Samsung soundbars are great but are very pricey as well, some even pricier than the Arc.

buzz

Grand Maestro

Test tones are useful to a point, but one can cause any speaker to do something ugly if one applies tones of certain frequencies (unique to each design) at a high enough amplitude.

I’m not saying this in an attempt to sweep this issue under the rug, only to point out that one must interpret response to pure tones carefully.

Don’t push this analogy too far, but consider a sports car with a reputation for “excellent handling”. This is does not give the inexperienced driver (or any driver for that matter) permission to place a brick on the accelerator, then thread through city traffic or mountain roads expecting no consequences.

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sebas1509

Enthusiast II

Test tones are useful to a point, but one can cause any speaker to do something ugly if one applies tones of certain frequencies (unique to each design) at a high enough amplitude.

I’m not saying this in an attempt to sweep this issue under the rug, only to point out that one must interpret response to pure tones carefully.

Don’t push this analogy too far, but consider a sports car with a reputation for “excellent handling”. This is does not give the inexperienced driver (or any driver for that matter) permission to place a brick on the accelerator, then thread through city traffic or mountain roads expecting no consequences.

If I heard the issue during normal content at volumes I listen to I would definitely be upset. But that’s just not been the case.

i think people wanting a bass heavy speaker will be dissapointed I think the arc does great for music and movies, but certainly the as with any speaker it won’t wow everyone. People have different tastes in music and speaker reproduction. People even like different types of bass and subwoofers .

butncoming from a playbar I just don’t feel any downgrade whatsoever. The arc sounds better especially for movies. For music I’d argue it has a different sound signature with less warmth to it. But that doesn’t mean worse it just means different. Some will prefer the soundbar, or the beam or a bose soundbar to this. That’s just a matter taste.

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nickngsr

Trending Lyricist I

Test tones are useful to a point, but one can cause any speaker to do something ugly if one applies tones of certain frequencies (unique to each design) at a high enough amplitude.

I’m not saying this in an attempt to sweep this issue under the rug, only to point out that one must interpret response to pure tones carefully.

Don’t push this analogy too far, but consider a sports car with a reputation for “excellent handling”. This is does not give the inexperienced driver (or any driver for that matter) permission to place a brick on the accelerator, then thread through city traffic or mountain roads expecting no consequences.

Whilst I totally agree with you, and that the limitations of physics must be taken in to account when criticising a product, Sonos market their products as distortion free at high volumes. In direct comparison to your analogy, this is very different to simply stating that their products handle distortion at high volumes excellently.

Sonos have and always will continuously improve the products already out in the world and I have no doubt will end up fixing this issue. The problem that companies like Sonos have is that they give so much in the way of constant improvement and longevity that people take it for granted and completely forget the limitations of the real world. You could argue the Arc was released a little early or the testing during production wasn’t as thorough as it could have been, but they aren’t immune to the challenges facing the world today.

I for one will be running alongside Sonos on their sprint to fix this issue.

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PowdeRiver

Lyricist III

Sonos or other people shouldn’t be surprised to see negative comments about soundbar if the response is the speakers always need adjustments up to a year later to make them sound as advertised

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RedVespaBlur

Lyricist III

Sonos or other people shouldn’t be surprised to see negative comments about soundbar if the response is the speakers always need adjustments up to a year later to make them sound as advertised

Yes continual improvement and updates should be the mark of failure.

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