Arc stops working with TV , was working fine

I’ve not seen thousands upon thousands of posts about this, so I’m going to have to say it’s not a common issue….but it may be an issue, for sure, there’s no way around that. And specifically, no there has not ben a recall on the Sonos Arc.

The fact that the Arc works with music streaming, and not while playing the TV stream suggests a couple of potential things to look at. I like your thought of an HDMI issue. I’d certainly be trying a different cable (of at least HDMI 1.4, and preferably higher than that) to ensure that it’s not an issue inside either the cable, or the end ports of the cable not making appropriate connections to the pins on either side. Although if you’ve replaced the TV completely, you’ve re-seated the connection at that end, it’s worth still reseating the connection in the Arc to make sure the pins that carry the ARC connection are working. And I’d be really tempted to try a new cable. Unfortunately, I’m one of those packrats, and I’ve got HDMI cables from the beginning, and most of them aren’t labeled well or at all, so it’s hard to tell which version of HDMI they actually are. I should just throw them away, if they’re from before HDMI 1.4, they’re essentially no good for me at this point.

I’d also be checking, although I’d assume both Sony and Sonos asked you to, the TV has HDMI-CEC (which contains ARC) turned on. If the TV isn’t sending a signal on the ARC pins, the Sonos certainly won’t play anything. There was a poster in another thread today who’d accidentally  crimped his HDMI cable and was unaware that he had, it was only when he put in a new one and it worked that he realized when moving the device, the cable had been crimped, and likely had broken.

To be honest, I’d also be double checking what sort of signal the TV is sending to the Arc. There’s a limited number of types of signal the Arc can process, and since you haven’t told us what your test case is, it’s an open possibility. 

But, as you say, you’ve tried multiple cables. It’s hard to remotely figure this out, with only what you’ve provided. I’d certainly suggest that you run another diagnostic on your Arc, and contact Sonos again, and ask for level 2 support. Unfortunately, even a diagnostic wouldn’t show anything if it was a physical issue with the connectors on the Arc, but it gives them a good starting place to eliminate the more common issues that they have on their scripts.

Thanks for your quick reply Bruce. I do feel like I have exhausted the cable side of things. I tried 2 HDMI 2.1 cables as well as an older HDMI cable. 3 cables I have tried and 2 of those are brand new.

I will take your advice regarding contacting SONOS again. I will ask for level 2 support.

Annoyingly, this started a couple of weeks after the 12month warranty period. Hopefully they will still honour it because I know I haven't done anything wrong. I take care of my gear. Hope it doesn't get to that. Hopefully it is not a physical thing but I fear that it is. The HDMI connection into the ARC is not convincing. I would say almost loose. This could be the problem.

I just wanted to post an update about my situation with some thoughts.

After calling with Sonos we confirmed it was the hdmi port on the sonos itself that had been broken somehow. Still unsure of how that could really happen, but that connection on the beam was the issue.

My Sonos was out of warranty, but they gave me discount on a new one and were able to ship one to me before I even sent the old unit back which was nice (had to put a hold on my cc but thats understandable).

I love Sonos, but man, there has got to be something funky going on with the hdmi ports. I’ve never had an hdmi port break on anything before, and I have been a video editor for ten years, gone through all kinds of machines, monitors, and audio systems with hdmi cables. It’s not like I was plugging and unplugging all the time, I maybe unplugged it 4 times in its life. 

Anyways, Sonos responded quickly and helped me right away, and people on here responded fast so there’s not a whole lot to complain about. Just a couple frustrating hours troubleshooting. Hopefully everyone else’s issues resolve as smoothly.

I hear you….but I’ve got two Arcs, and never had an issue with either them, despite the fact that they both have been disconnected and reconnected several times with various HDMI cables as I’ve both moved and installed the HD Fury Arcana device. 

That’s not to say that there wasn’t a “run” of bad HDMI ports, but so far, it’s only really been you two commenting about that, which sure makes it not feel endemic to me. But that doesn’t make it not a problem, either, so I hope that both of your situations end up well. At least in your case, BenAltrac, it seems like it has, mostly. I’ll hope the same for Dazzia72

I’m a 20 year AV guy with a small company, and have sold and installed probably 50 or 60 Sonos Arcs since it was launched. I have run into this problem with at least 8 or 10 installs (that’s getting close to a 20% failure rate). In every case, the Sonos tech support solutions did not work. It wasn’t the cable. It wasn’t the TV (Sony, Samsung, LG, client’s existing Vizio, Panasonic, etc). Unplugging things for 5 minutes did nothing.

The problem has come around too often and I find it incredibly hard to believe that all of these TV manufacturers are implementing HDMI standards in such a way that they don’t work with Sonos. After all, Sonos only started using HDMI fro Audio Return Channel a few years ago. TV manufacturers have been working with HDMI, for nearly 20 years for US models. Their sheer experience over the years, and the fact that other sound bars using A.R.C. don’t seem to have this problem lead me to believe Sonos needs to figure out why there are problems with their products using A.R.C. Is it a software/firmware issue? Is it a bad HDMI chip set? Is it poor construction (bad soldering, assembly)?

With that said, my most recent Sonos Arc TV audio communication issue is intermittent and I can’t replicate the problem while in the client’s home (3 times in the past week). Unfortunately, the client ends up texting or calling me in the evening to tell me it has dropped AGAIN.

Does anybody have a solution that worked, and has not been mentioned in this thread?

You say it’s not the tv.. how do you know it’s not? I have a Sony . When I got my Sonos system ( Arc, sub, one SL’s… and Sonos in every room of my house) I had issues with no sound from the Arc. I blamed Sonos for the longest time. It turned out to be the Sony tv. They had to do a software update. It resolved the issue and I’ve never had it happen since. Many with Samsung TV’s have this issue. 

Try looking this post up …started w years ago andit’s got 740 replies and the title is “ Arc tv sound cuts in and out” .  
https://en.community.sonos.com/home-theater-228993/arc-tv-sound-cuts-in-and-out-6842963

The Sonons fails to provide TV audion all the time on both systems I have. It really sucks. Unplugging everything is painful. Makes me question if Sonos was the best buy.😑

Mine did the same thing. This worked for me!

This exact situation happened to me. Sound stopped working seemingly randomly with LG TV. Promoted by your post, I checked the eARC settings and sure enough, it had toggled itself off. After turning back on everything returned to normal. Thank you for your post.