Beam Gen 2 - sudden full volume hammering sound

  • 28 December 2021
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Hi everyone,

Last week I got a Beam Gen 2 + Sub Gen 3 to replace my Beam Gen 1. So far everything's been running smoothly. Then today when I was listening to music with said setup while working a sudden hammering sound interrupted the music. The noise must have been at full volume despite the volume limit which I set to 40%. I jumped up from the couch and instantly pulled the plug. Music kept playing in the adjacent dining room on a pair of One/One SL for a bit before it stopped.

I tried to find the problem online and only found this video. This is exactly what I experienced with my Beam as well. However, this video does not give a good idea of how loud this really was.

Since I couldn't find a solution online, I called the support hotline. The lady on the phone told me, that such a problem has not come up yet. She asked me to replug the Beam and let some music play. After just a few minutes the noise interrupted the music again. So at least the support lady had some impression of it and I managed to send a diagnostic while the noise was on. After a few seconds the noise stopped. She then instructed me to reset the Beam/Sub setup and couldn't really help me otherwise.

Anyone here experienced this problem and possibly has a solution or knows what's the reason for this issue?

@Staff please help me out. This is really creeping me out as I feel this could come up again anytime... No fun watching movies or listening to music this way. My neighbours must hate me now.

Thank you.

Corry P 6 months ago

Hi @Luc45 et al

We now consider this issue of a hammering sound issuing from Beam (Gen 2) resolved with the latest update (v15.7).

If you still encounter this issue, please ensure your Sonos system is up to date, then contact our technical support team for assistance. Thank you.

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I agree with your statement, great sounding speakers, but would have loved a warning about this so that it wouldn't have woken us up in a huge scare at 3 in the morning 

It’s only happened to me once at 4 AM in the morning after I passed out watching TV. I bolted from my couch and tried to lower the volume with the remote. I finally just pulled the plug on it and left it unplugged for about 8 hours. It has not happened again and have not called customer support just yet. Wondering if this is a ticking time bomb. I went away for the weekend worrying that the machine gun blast would scare my cat to death or have my neighbors call the cops with no one to pull the plug as quick as I did. Fingers crossed this was a one time thing.

I purchased a Beam 2 and 2 One SL speakers today. Not but a few hours after I set it up I experienced this loud jackhammer sound. I was quietly watching TV at 10:30pm when it happened. I nearly had a heart attack! The remote would not turn the volume down so I jumped up and pulled all of the cables out of the back. It didn’t stop until I pulled the power cable.

This is my first experience with a Sonos product and will likely be my last. I can’t have something like this in my home. No way! I purchased this because I thought it was quality, but I’m very disappointed.

One thing I wanted to point out is that I was using a Samsung TV, as it seems like many of you were. Was anybody NOT using a Samsung? Could there be some incompatibility between the two?

I purchased a Beam 2 and 2 One SL speakers today. Not but a few hours after I set it up I experienced this loud jackhammer sound. I was quietly watching TV at 10:30pm when it happened. I nearly had a heart attack! The remote would not turn the volume down so I jumped up and pulled all of the cables out of the back. It didn’t stop until I pulled the power cable.

This is my first experience with a Sonos product and will likely be my last. I can’t have something like this in my home. No way! I purchased this because I thought it was quality, but I’m very disappointed.

One thing I wanted to point out is that I was using a Samsung TV, as it seems like many of you were. Was anybody NOT using a Samsung? Could there be some incompatibility between the two?

i have a sony tv, the annoying part is that its a well know thing for over a year and nothing is being done about it, except replacing the speaker for “free”, but at that point the damage is done and your very bother and annoyed, like i mention on my post, it happened to us at 3 am, and we were up all morning after that, this is a lawsuit waiting to happen

I purchased a Beam 2 and 2 One SL speakers today. Not but a few hours after I set it up I experienced this loud jackhammer sound. I was quietly watching TV at 10:30pm when it happened. I nearly had a heart attack! The remote would not turn the volume down so I jumped up and pulled all of the cables out of the back. It didn’t stop until I pulled the power cable.

This is my first experience with a Sonos product and will likely be my last. I can’t have something like this in my home. No way! I purchased this because I thought it was quality, but I’m very disappointed.

One thing I wanted to point out is that I was using a Samsung TV, as it seems like many of you were. Was anybody NOT using a Samsung? Could there be some incompatibility between the two?

 

I have a Samsung TV and it happened while watching TV.

I purchased a Beam 2 and 2 One SL speakers today. Not but a few hours after I set it up I experienced this loud jackhammer sound. I was quietly watching TV at 10:30pm when it happened. I nearly had a heart attack! The remote would not turn the volume down so I jumped up and pulled all of the cables out of the back. It didn’t stop until I pulled the power cable.

This is my first experience with a Sonos product and will likely be my last. I can’t have something like this in my home. No way! I purchased this because I thought it was quality, but I’m very disappointed.

One thing I wanted to point out is that I was using a Samsung TV, as it seems like many of you were. Was anybody NOT using a Samsung? Could there be some incompatibility between the two?

 

Sonos Support doesn’t rank this random loud deafening jack hammer noise as a priority issue and probably does not escalate it to the attention of management. Since Support doesn’t generate revenue this will not get the attention it deserves.

Patrick Spence, Sonos CEO quoted “we had a record quarter of sales …”.  As long as their products continue to sell the Audio Engineering department will focus on development and not resolve problems. To be heard send an email to the CEO and Maxime Bouvat-Merlin, Senior VP-Hardware & Operations let him know your dissatisfaction. I sent and received a reply. Check my past post under nuevo123.

BTW I returned my Beam Gen 2.

Email CEO: ceo@sonos.com

Email Sr. VP: Maxime.Bouvat-Merlin@sonos.com

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So this just happened to me yesterday while watching HBO. Bought my beam gen 2 in 2021 and never had an issue with it before. When it happened it was not as loud as some of you describe but it was the same sound. It also seemed as if the beam lost connection to my LG OLED because when I tried to turn down the volume (I thought the sound was related to what I was seeing) it was as if I was adjusting the tv’s speakers and not the beam. 

 

Quick question - do you guys have trueplay turned on when it happens? Something tells me that the issue is related to software and the difference in my scenario was that yesterday I updated the firmware and for the first time in quite a while used trueplay.

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I don’t have a Beam but have an Arc/Sub/Surround (Play 1s) setup and this exact same thing has happened to me. Suddenly seems like a helicopter is inside my house. I thought it was coming from the sub but maybe it’s the Arc. I’m usually so panic-ed to turn the entire system off before my elderly mother has a heart attack that I can’t isolate which device the sound is coming from. I have not had it happen while watching TV. Only when playing music through the home theater setup and then, usually only happens when playing CD quality sources (Deezer, Amazon, Radio Paradise). Driving me insane and very reluctant to play HD music sources through the Arc/Sub/Surrounds which is wrong wrong wrong for how much I paid for this stuff. No issues with the 9 other speakers (Play:1’s Play:3s and current gen Play 5:s with Sub mini. Anyone have this issue with an ARC? I just upgraded to the 15.2 firmware on 3/27/23 and am going to brace the inhabitants of my house for a very loud noise. 

Oh my god. I cannot put into words the dissatisfaction I have with Sonos and the absolute SH*T experience this was. I still have PTSD from this incident. I received the Sonos beam sound bar as a gift from my mother, and I was very excited to set this up. I have a play 1 that I purchased years ago which I love and has been phenomenal. Within 15 f****ing minutes of setting the beam up and turning on my TV the most atrocious soul piercing jack hammer/ machine gun sound that you all have described on this thread came out of the speakers. I quickly tried to mute my TV but that did nothing to deter the sound, I had to unplug from power to make it stop. Since I had used this product for literally 15 minutes fresh out of the freaking box using it in the recommended ARC HDMI port on my Samsung TV and using it with all the SONOS provided cables I called support and demanded they give me a new system as this experience was unequivocally unacceptable. Support wanted me to run a diagnostic - which apparently came back completely normal and wanted me to plug the speaker back in and play music… somehow expecting the noise to just magically reappear again while I had them on the phone? Sure enough, after the exchange I told myself maybe it was a fluke and attempted to use the speaker again after my call and not even 20 minutes later the same deafening sound came on and now that speaker is back in the box. I had neighbors run over and ask if I was okay because of the sound that this thing projected. 

 

A $500 speaker should NEVER do what this speaker just did in my household. This seriously makes me never want to buy another SONOs product ever again. I’m scared to get my replacement. I am genuinely scared to use this product and to leave it plugged in. Who feels like this after buying a $500 freaking home theater system??? Only SONOs customers. 

 

Dear SONOS, if you're reading this: DO SOMETHING.

Long Story Short: Unpacked a new SONOS-Home-Cinema-Package (Beam2, SubMini, 2x ERA100). Tested the Beam in connection with SubMini by just playing Music (Apple Music ==> SONOS S2 App ==> Beam+SubMini). After a few Minutes of Enjoyment the described Terror brokes out. After pulling the Power-Plug, the damn Thing rebooted normally, as never a thing was happen...Changes NEtwork-Connection of the BEam from WLAN to Cable-Ethernet (the SubMini still uses WLAN) and give it another try….after few Minutes it happend again. Now i was somwhat “stealed” an managed to run a Diagnosis fromout the SONOS-App and called to Support.

RMA-Process is ongoin atm, the dangerous Beam Gen 2 is back in the Box awaiting for Sending Back and i’m just listening with the “Remains” of the above mentioned SONOS-Setup (2 x ERA100 + SubMini) as 2.1 Stereo… Hopefully the replacement-Beam will NEVER EVER doing this MAchine Gun-Cacophony again...

It’s not looking good guys… Got Our Beam (Gen 2) Friday 28th April (6 days ago) and have had the issue 4 times already! 
As mentioned the only way to stop the noise is unplugging the power cord whilst being deafened. 
 

Logged diagnostics instantly after each time and kept each reference number. 
 

Called support and am going through the replacement process, not ideal and pretty poor from only owning less than a week! 
 

Will give the replacement 1 try but if it happens again then it will be changed for BOSE etc, cannot imagine it happening at 2am etc or whilst away for a weekend! 


Fitted to a Samsung TV via the recommended HDMI eARC.

Fingers crossed. 

Repleacement-Beam has just arrived, just unpacking and setting it up….will keep You up to date here in this Thread…Finger crossed too…

I had the same thing happen to me on 2 occasions.  My 6 year old daughter was shocked traumatised and upset by the sudden loud machine gun hammering noise.  Product is just 2 weeks old.  Is there a fix for this?  

My Replacement-Beam runs better but not perfect, it crashed again in same way as above BUT with more silent „machine-Gun-Sound“ at Living-Room-noise-level. Rest of the Behavior was identical: It crashed (no reaction of Keys or Commands from Smartphone/Sonos-App, rest of 5.1-Setup (Rear+Sub) fall silent immediately.) and  does self-restarting/resetting after appr. 30sec. after that, normal operation…

I got a Beam 2 recently from Costco and had this problem a couple of times. But then for a while after the most recent software update nothing happened. Until today.

Every time it happened during music playback via Airplay.

Returning this to Costco and getting a replacement. Not very hopeful that's going to solve anything tbh. Very concerning that this issue has been going on for so long and Sonos hasn't had a fix.

2nd time it happened now. Ive purchased this thru the military base; had it for 6 months now.  Great sound when watching shows and movies. 

Then the deafening MACHINE GUN sounds;

1st time was at 3am, I woke up running out of the bedroom trying to figure out whats going on.  Woke up our 6yr and 3yr old kids, crying and horrified.

2nd time is today, both kids ran to the bedroom  terrified and the 3yr old ran so fast he couldn't control himself and hit the door knob on his head.  

The sound was deafening machine gun sounds, FULL BLAST even though volume of movie being watched was only 30%.

I do have PTSD from the war and I hate that feeling.  

Sonos need to fix this asap! 

Wow, hard to believe this thread dates back over a year ago… I’ve had my Beam 2 for 3 months. I have personally had this experience for the third time and I can’t bring myself to plug it back in. This last time I had trouble getting the cable out and so I was lingering near the speaker for a few seconds fiddling with the cord and now my ear hurts hours later. I dropped my plate of food. And I wasn’t even using the sound bar or tv… just sitting on my couch and thought I was under attack. Even after experiencing it before, nothing can prepare you for 100db out of nowhere during pure silence. It's also happened while playing music for a party(embarrassing) and while watching TV. 

 

Sounds like this isn’t an issue that is resolved by replacing the unit and frankly I don’t want to experience this ever again so I’ll be returning it tomorrow. Hard to believe this issue has been going on for this long and there is still no solution. Had heard great things about SONOS so I'm really disappointed. 

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Hi @Luc45 et al

We now consider this issue of a hammering sound issuing from Beam (Gen 2) resolved with the latest update (v15.7).

If you still encounter this issue, please ensure your Sonos system is up to date, then contact our technical support team for assistance. Thank you.

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