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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arpatil1

Enthusiast II

https://thedigitaltheater.com/2019/10/10/top-gun-maverick-2020-trailer-1-4k-1080p-dts-hd-ma-and-ac3-5-1/

This is the trailer I played for my first test. The first ‘boom’ when Paramount shows up (6-7 seconds) my Arc immediately gives that bottoming out sound. Throughout the trailer it continues to do it as well.

(It used the ac3 audio and showed 5.1 Dolby Digital in the Sonos app.)

May be, they will issue a patch that will limit all the woofers from reaching their max excursion. Just may be!

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ripcordaff

Trending Lyricist I

It would seem to me that if the “fix” is to apply a high pass filter To cut off the frequencies below 60- 70 Hz (the frequencies which are apparently causing the problems), the Arc end up being very bass light. I am not confident That a software fix will Magically make the device more capable if the individual components are not up to the task.

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arpatil1

Enthusiast II

https://thedigitaltheater.com/2019/10/10/top-gun-maverick-2020-trailer-1-4k-1080p-dts-hd-ma-and-ac3-5-1/

This is the trailer I played for my first test. The first ‘boom’ when Paramount shows up (6-7 seconds) my Arc immediately gives that bottoming out sound. Throughout the trailer it continues to do it as well.

(It used the ac3 audio and showed 5.1 Dolby Digital in the Sonos app.)

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ftm

Trending Lyricist I

I'm second day in and don't think I will keep the arc as the bass is that bad. It sounds like a cheap speaker exceeding its limits.

I am using it as my main speaker in the living room having had a play 5 in the same location.

Music on the play 5 sounds 100 times better than the arc.

Try the film Unbroken on Netflix in the aerial scenes. From about 4mins 40secs when the machine guns are firing from inside the aircraft it just sounds like the speakers cant handle the bass making a totally uncomfortable sound and that's from volume 30 upwards.

It looks like a return from me

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arpatil1

Enthusiast II

It would seem to me that if the “fix” is to apply a high pass filter To cut off the frequencies below 60- 70 Hz (the frequencies which are apparently causing the problems), the Arc end up being very bass light. I am not confident That a software fix will Magically make the device more capable if the individual components are not up to the task.

Yeah, that will just take away all the deep bass, rendering the product unusable.

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RaisinApricot

Lyricist I

I’d like to chime in that after trying out many songs people mentioned in this thread at ~50% volume, I don’t experience any issues with the bass. Not here to gloat or anything, but I just wanted to voice that not all Arc soundbars have this issue. And if you are on the fence about purchasing one because you are reading about this problem, you can still choose to roll the dice, see if you are affected and need to return. In fact my brand new CX TV’s built-in speaker has the exact issue with the bass which was what prompted me to buy the Arc in the first place. I am glad that my Arc doesn’t do this.

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ftm

Trending Lyricist I

I can't see how any software fix will fix this. The play 5 handles any bass heavy music alot better. The reviews didn't mention this. Did they have different spec arc to consumer ones or were they manufactured with different components?

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arpatil1

Enthusiast II

I’d like to chime in that after trying out many songs people mentioned in this thread at ~50% volume, I don’t experience any issues with the bass. Not here to gloat or anything, but I just wanted to voice that not all Arc soundbars have this issue. And if you are on the fence about purchasing one because you are reading about this problem, you can still choose to roll the dice, see if you are affected and need to return. In fact my brand new CX TV’s built-in speaker has the exact issue with the bass which was what prompted me to buy the Arc in the first place. I am glad that my Arc doesn’t do this.

So probably a hardware issue affecting a specific batch ?

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Seeky

Prominent Collaborator II

I’d like to chime in that after trying out many songs people mentioned in this thread at ~50% volume, I don’t experience any issues with the bass. Not here to gloat or anything, but I just wanted to voice that not all Arc soundbars have this issue. And if you are on the fence about purchasing one because you are reading about this problem, you can still choose to roll the dice, see if you are affected and need to return. In fact my brand new CX TV’s built-in speaker has the exact issue with the bass which was what prompted me to buy the Arc in the first place. I am glad that my Arc doesn’t do this.

So probably a hardware issue affecting a specific batch ?

Seems so, I’ve read some other people on reddit who say they don’t notice it either. Hardware issue might be a bad thing though, that definitely gonne cause a lot trouble with all the sending back etc. Especially since the Arcs are backordered.

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Seeky

Prominent Collaborator II

My previous recording has a bit low volume, so it’s not too easy to hear. I’ve remembered the perfect song to find out if your unit is affected:

Fort Minor - Remember the Name (feat. Styles of Beyond)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/de1v8v8heunhxqi/RememberTheName-PLAY5.m4a?dl=0

Arc 50% Volume.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/il1m9kt134k9rsq/RememberTheName-ARC.m4a?dl=0