Sonos Arc Muddy/Bottoming out Bass

Sonos really need to get on top of this now. What HiFi say this: “There are vast quantities of deep, weighty and tuneful bass, but the lower frequencies never overwhelm and even at its loudest and deepest, the Arc remains remarkably composed” yet the rtings review highlights the bass issue (pre-firmware) that we all notice. It’s still not right with the new firmware. 

The what hi-fi review is so good. As where many many others. What was different other than firmware and/or production issues with customer units? 

Something is amiss and Sonos have been too quiet about this. Someone need to stand up and publicly say there is an issue, and they will fix the firmware and/or replace hardware if needed. Even if its just on the community site. 

I had a 24hr delay on a $60 wall mount in March. I never complained and it did not bother me. But I got 20% discount Code from Sonos anyway. That is customer service. I was singing their virtues. I recommended them and commented on how they have great customer service. I know they are just a company but they always seemed to come though. 

June this happens and… next to nothing. Seriously. What a change. 

My folks want to buy some play fives as their B&O Zeppelin is getting old. I just told them to wait or look elsewhere.

The rating from RTINGS is quite bad, the Beam performed better than the Arc.

https://www.rtings.com/soundbar/reviews/sonos/arc

I hope Sonos will fix it soon, otherwhise it´s going back to the dealer.

I’m in the same boat. I’ve got the boxes all ready. Figure I might as well wait until I get closer to the deadline. My Beam has better low end than the Arc as does my Bose Soundlink. The lack of any commentary from Sonos has been probably the worst part. Communication is so key for situations like this

I find it strange that while rtings.com reported the bass issue that some people have experienced, they didn’t report that they experienced it in their pre-12.0.1 testing.  Unfortunately, I’ve used up all my free views at the moment so I can’t see what ratings they gave to the other Atmos soundbars.  I was able to view the Sennheiser review which was rated slightly higher than the Arc (7.0 vs 6.5).  But if you factor out features that some folks might not care about (e.g., Bluetooth, DTS), the scores might get closer.  Depends on how much they weight those other features.

Is this the case if you also have the subwoofer? I ordered both and it sounds like everything work fine if you have the sub!

The sub woofer essentially masks the issue as all the lower frequencies are directed to the sub woofer and not the Arc.  

To directly answer your question, I don’t think it’s ever been an issue when it’s paired with a sub.  Some have reported it still isn’t perfect but it’s extremely hard to tell unless you’re trying to find the problem. 

The common listener will likely never hear any issues if you pair a sub.  I’ve paired my sub from another room with the Arc and it sounds great, so you have nothing to be concerned about.  If it sounds good to you, I would disregard this entire thread unless you plan to have the Arc without the sub. 

I used to have the playbar but the Arc is so disappointing. I have raised a ticket for my Arc and have sent them video and voice recordings. Bottom line is that unless they find a miraculous fix ASAP its going back and I am happy to go back to the playbar because that was immense! I just can't belend they've waited 7 years to make a soundbar that sounds as poor as this does in low frequencies. I am really disappointed 

I just reordered a playbar. Will have a playbar and an arc. Will most likely return the arc. Sonos support told me today that an arc fix might be coming this week. 

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.  

It would be good to know if there is a fix coming as I mentioned I have an rma ready to go as Sonos decided to ignore my concerns when I asked if it would definitely fix it.

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. 

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.

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

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.

@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.  :(

Oh sad to know that ..not sure why Sonos company  did that specially when they released a new product and having good product support is very critical for product success.

Yep, confirmed that Ryan is no longer with Sonos. :(

I stopped reading the junk that whatHifi puts out. They don’t actually do any testing. They just write and give stars according to how much they are being paid by the sponsors. Or if they are not paid, they just go in accordance to whatever marketing material they are given. If they did any form of testing even at the most rudimentary level or even just a listening test, they would have noticed that the bass is in no way vast , deep, abundant, weighty nor tuneful. Composed at loudest and deepest? This is just one of many times you can catch them doing shit job ‘fake Reviewing’ stuff. 
 

Basically whatHifi has a vocabulary of 100 words they randomly pick to deliver a review. Some words costs more. But honestly, their reviews are worthless. Not worth the paper it’s printed on, Nor the bandwidth it’s delivered through. 

IMO, audio review business is not easy, they depend on Manufacturers to give them gears to review.  Critical opinion is very rare unless the reviewer buy his/her own gear to review.  Also bad reviews will pissed off some ppl that that is bad for business, just look at Rtings as an example with so many viewers not happy.

That was me. And I do not want to speculate regarding the reason Ryan S is no longer at sonos. But he messaged me privately saying he is no longer at the company. I am not sure if it is related to the layoffs but I think that is irrelevant.