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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Reefy

Enthusiast I

I am in no way doubting that folks on here are having issues with their Arcs. However, I do think that SONOS employees can identify and fix the issue much more quickly if you would all submit a diagnostic and report the number here within a few minutes of noticing issues. I am reading a lot of specific movie and song examples from the community, and while these are probably helpful in noticing the problem, a diagnostic will give specific software information to the engineers without them having to scroll through all the media examples.

You may be right. But Sonos should communicate this. Instead they are pretty quiet. I did hear from a Sonos support that an other i

fix could be coming this week. Yesterday the support was inquiring about my modem and router models for some reason.

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wds0001

Prodigy I

Thanks for all the great details everyone. The engineering team is looking into this right now. We really appreciate what you’ve shared so far.

If anyone else is experiencing this issue, the more you can share the better as it really helps pin what’s happening down, and also helps the team recreate the issue in their own homes.

The following questions are the sort of details that would help the most:

What are you watching or playing that you’re hearing this on? Be as specific as possible please and let us know if it’s only with music. For music, it helps us build a list of tracks and sources that we can recreate the issue with.
What volume do you experience this at? Does it only show up after a certain percentage or do you notice it most of the time?
Is your 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?
Are you using Trueplay, and does it go away if you turn Trueplay off?
Do you have the Bass EQ setting flat or adjusted in some way?
If it’s possible, can you share an image of the setup?
Please submit a diagnostic from the system with it happening and let us know the number.

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Pawl

Lyricist III

I 💯 % trust in the Sonos engineers that they will remedy the Sonos ARC problem. We don’t live in a perfect world, and these things do happen. Remember, trust and be patient! I love my ARC, and I know it’s going to sound better than ever.

J

jkozlow3

Enthusiast II

I % trust in the Sonos engineers that they will remedy the Sonos ARC problem. We don’t live in a perfect world, and these things do happen. Remember, trust and be patient! I love my ARC, and I know it’s going to sound better than ever.

I hope that you are correct but please stop making excuses for Sonos.

Sonos deserves every return and bad review that is published for rushing an $800 product to market prematurely that sounds like a $200 soundbar. They could have waited to release it until they worked out the kinks but they chose not to. Maybe Sonos will fix/improve the Arc over time (and I hope they do), but there are no guarantees in life.

Your “trust and be patient” advice is bad advice for people that can’t afford to blow $800 on the HOPE that Sonos improves the Arc. Again, I hope that they do, but I sure as heck wouldn’t sit around “trusting” that they will while I watched my return window slip away.

P

Pawl

Lyricist III

I % trust in the Sonos engineers that they will remedy the Sonos ARC problem. We don’t live in a perfect world, and these things do happen. Remember, trust and be patient! I love my ARC, and I know it’s going to sound better than ever.

I hope that you are correct but please stop making excuses for Sonos.

Sonos deserves every return and bad review that is published for rushing an $800 product to market prematurely that sounds like a $200 soundbar. They could have waited to release it until they worked out the kinks but they chose not to. Maybe Sonos will fix/improve the Arc over time (and I hope they do), but there are no guarantees in life.

I respect your comment 💯percent, but you have to TRUST. 🙂

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arpatil1

Enthusiast II

I % trust in the Sonos engineers that they will remedy the Sonos ARC problem. We don’t live in a perfect world, and these things do happen. Remember, trust and be patient! I love my ARC, and I know it’s going to sound better than ever.

I hope that you are correct but please stop making excuses for Sonos.

Sonos deserves every return and bad review that is published for rushing an $800 product to market prematurely that sounds like a $200 soundbar. They could have waited to release it until they worked out the kinks but they chose not to. Maybe Sonos will fix/improve the Arc over time (and I hope they do), but there are no guarantees in life.

Your “trust and be patient” advice is bad advice for people that can’t afford to blow $800 on the HOPE that Sonos improves the Arc. Again, I hope that they do, but I sure as heck wouldn’t sit around “trusting” that they will while I watched my return window slip away.

If you did not get 30% off, I would definitely return and wait until they fix all the issues. There are also far cheaper 5.1 alternatives like Samsung Q90R. Standalone Arc is not worth $799 at all.

P

Pawl

Lyricist III

I % trust in the Sonos engineers that they will remedy the Sonos ARC problem. We don’t live in a perfect world, and these things do happen. Remember, trust and be patient! I love my ARC, and I know it’s going to sound better than ever.

I hope that you are correct but please stop making excuses for Sonos.

Sonos deserves every return and bad review that is published for rushing an $800 product to market prematurely that sounds like a $200 soundbar. They could have waited to release it until they worked out the kinks but they chose not to. Maybe Sonos will fix/improve the Arc over time (and I hope they do), but there are no guarantees in life.

Your “trust and be patient” advice is bad advice for people that can’t afford to blow $800 on the HOPE that Sonos improves the Arc. Again, I hope that they do, but I sure as heck wouldn’t sit around “trusting” that they will while I watched my return window slip away.

If you did not get 30% off, I would definitely return and wait until they fix all the issues. There are also far cheaper 5.1 alternatives like Samsung Q90R. Standalone Arc is not worth $799 at all.

I owned the Samsung r950 soundbar...big mistake! The soundbar was great by itself, but the surrounds and subwoofer were extremely silent (even at maximum volume level), unless the movie track was only Dolby Atmos. My best friend owns the Samsung soundbar now, and I’m enjoying my Sonos 5.1 set-up much more.

A

arpatil1

Enthusiast II

I % trust in the Sonos engineers that they will remedy the Sonos ARC problem. We don’t live in a perfect world, and these things do happen. Remember, trust and be patient! I love my ARC, and I know it’s going to sound better than ever.

I hope that you are correct but please stop making excuses for Sonos.

Sonos deserves every return and bad review that is published for rushing an $800 product to market prematurely that sounds like a $200 soundbar. They could have waited to release it until they worked out the kinks but they chose not to. Maybe Sonos will fix/improve the Arc over time (and I hope they do), but there are no guarantees in life.

Your “trust and be patient” advice is bad advice for people that can’t afford to blow $800 on the HOPE that Sonos improves the Arc. Again, I hope that they do, but I sure as heck wouldn’t sit around “trusting” that they will while I watched my return window slip away.

If you did not get 30% off, I would definitely return and wait until they fix all the issues. There are also far cheaper 5.1 alternatives like Samsung Q90R. Standalone Arc is not worth $799 at all.

I owned the Samsung r950 soundbar...big mistake! The soundbar was great by itself, but the surrounds and subwoofer were extremely silent (even at maximum volume level), unless the movie track was only Dolby Atmos. My best friend owns the Samsung soundbar now, and I’m enjoying my Sonos 5.1 set-up much more.

I have heard of that issue as well. Samsung also does not utilize the rear as good as Sonos for Music. There is also a lack of Airplay 2 capability. Because of all these reasons and 30% off I got, I will be staying with Arc and 2 ones. I don’t notice the bass issue as much as I did before the update. But I do need improvements in the dialogues. I will just have to close my eyes and trust Sonos on fixing it.

Having said this, I still feel $799 is too much for standalone arc. Surround effect on its own is very weak. 2 rear speakers improve things by a big margin.

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Sumit2007

Lyricist II

Thanks for all the great details everyone. The engineering team is looking into this right now. We really appreciate what you’ve shared so far.

If anyone else is experiencing this issue, the more you can share the better as it really helps pin what’s happening down, and also helps the team recreate the issue in their own homes.

The following questions are the sort of details that would help the most:

What are you watching or playing that you’re hearing this on? Be as specific as possible please and let us know if it’s only with music. For music, it helps us build a list of tracks and sources that we can recreate the issue with.
What volume do you experience this at? Does it only show up after a certain percentage or do you notice it most of the time?
Is your 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?
Are you using Trueplay, and does it go away if you turn Trueplay off?
Do you have the Bass EQ setting flat or adjusted in some way?
If it’s possible, can you share an image of the setup?
Please submit a diagnostic from the system with it happening and let us know the number.

@Ryan S , please let us know if sonos planning to release any other patch this or early next week to address midrange and bass issues , as my return window is closing fast and without any fix I have no option but to return arc.

J

jkozlow3

Enthusiast II

Thanks for all the great details everyone. The engineering team is looking into this right now. We really appreciate what you’ve shared so far.

If anyone else is experiencing this issue, the more you can share the better as it really helps pin what’s happening down, and also helps the team recreate the issue in their own homes.

The following questions are the sort of details that would help the most:

What are you watching or playing that you’re hearing this on? Be as specific as possible please and let us know if it’s only with music. For music, it helps us build a list of tracks and sources that we can recreate the issue with.
What volume do you experience this at? Does it only show up after a certain percentage or do you notice it most of the time?
Is your 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?
Are you using Trueplay, and does it go away if you turn Trueplay off?
Do you have the Bass EQ setting flat or adjusted in some way?
If it’s possible, can you share an image of the setup?
Please submit a diagnostic from the system with it happening and let us know the number.

@Ryan S , please let us know if sonos planning to release any other patch this or early next week to address midrange and bass issues , as my return window is closing fast and without any fix I have no option but to return arc.

Just an FYI - someone mentioned that @Ryan S was let go by Sonos along with a ton of their support staff. Not sure if this is true but he has definitely stopped responding to this thread as of late.

Edit: I don’t seen ANY recent posts from Ryan. :(

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