lowest volume in 16.1 and reducing bass

Hello @ema1806, welcome to Sonos Community!

I am sorry to hear you are having audio quality issues with your Sonos Home Theater setup.

As far as we are aware the sound profile of our products didn't change with the latest update. Just to be sure, are you watching the same content via the same service?
I would also recommend to not proceed with further Factory Resets unless advised by Sonos, as useful information is being lost in that process.

Did you reach out to our chat support or phone support? If via chat, I would suggest getting in touch with our Support via phone, as in this case, these issues can be identified easier.

I hope this helps.

Agreed.. Sonos corporate mafia seems to have lowered the volume..again. It’s not what it used to be..aggravating to say the least !

Hi, yeah, the same content in both movies and audio. I had a chat and a subsequent call with you guys. They actually told me to reset everything, both the Sonos Arc and the sub, and nothing happened. I noticed this issue after updating to version 16.1 and experiencing the common errors of the Sonos app regarding updates. I ran some tests and noticed that the volume level decreased, and the bass also dropped a bit.

There have been persistent complaints from some users that Volume step ‘1’ was too loud in their nighttime environment. Evidently, SONOS has decreased the Volume step size such that there are now multiple steps between the former ‘0’ (muted) and ‘1’. This gives nighttime users more control.

Unfortunately, this runs afoul for other users who equate the ‘power’ of a unit with their top listening number. To these users a lower number at their top output implies a more powerful unit. Because the shift near zero results in a higher required number at their regular listening level, these users are certain that some power has been stolen from them — when, in fact, the output energy is as loud as before (with the old number) and ‘100’ would result in the same output level as the prior ‘100’.

In previous eras the “power” of a unit was sometimes interpreted as the position of the Volume control. If a unit got very loud with a slight rotation of the Volume control, it was deemed to be a ‘powerful’ unit, but in my experience next to impossible to control at low listening levels. Low end units would make sure that they became ‘loud’ at small control rotations. If I hung out in the low end section of a mass market store these aggressive volume control units would be accepted as ‘powerful’ while a higher end unit might be rejected as not being powerful if its Volume control needed to be rotated farther for an equivalent output — when the higher end unit was actually much more powerful. The low end units often reached their maximum Volume at ten’o’clock, while the more powerful units would continue getting louder.

For me the number is simply a reference that I can use for setting the output level to the same as yesterday. If SONOS shifts the scale, I’ll be annoyed a bit on day one, but the old numbers will soon be forgotten.

Dear Sonos, it would be nice if you would stop ignoring these complaints and telling us long time users to try this or try that. Your 16.1 software update is majorly broken and causes all kinds of issues with sound volume. Too loud, too soft, dropping out completely. Escalate this to top level management and ensure the software gets fixed or at least gets reverted back to pre-16.1 working functionality.

Doesn’t seem ‘majorly broken’ to me, and is functioning as it did before. I wonder what is different about  our systems, that there is such a wide discrepancy between our experiences. 

@Airgetlam I have been a Sonos owner of many products for over 20 years. I have never had the problems I’m experiencing now with basic volume control. Today, I watched a show on Max and had the volume cranked to 100 and it played at a slight lower volume than I would normally watch TV. In this case, the broadcast signal was PCM. Then I switched to a show on Apple TV+ with Dolby Atmos support and had to playback at 65-75 for comfortable volume. In the past, 20-30 was acceptable.

About once or twice a week, my Apple TV remote stops works and the only way to get any volume at all and get the remote to work is to open the Sonos app and use the volume slider which is pinned to zero when this happens.

This is with Playbar/Sub Mini/2x Play:1 remotes. 
 

I have never had these issues before the 16.1 release.

I, too, have been a Sonos user for over 20 years, but have not been experiencing any of these issues on my S2 16.1 system. So why are we experiencing such different scenarios? 

Were I you, I would submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this various problems, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

And, as an additional thought, there certainly is a thread around here that talks about the potential need to reset the Apple TV remote, although it’s something I’ve not needed to do myself. Since you’re using Atmos, that suggests at least a Sonos Arc, and either an ARC or eARC connection, which implies the system is receiving volume control information from the Apple TV, passed to the TV set, and on to the Sonos. 

Thanks for the info, Bruce. The system I’m using here is a PlayBar so Dolby 5.1. I have an Arc in another setup but that one is not causing me issues.

I’ll capture a diagnostic and see what support can find.

I just updated the latest firmware for my Era 100 and Sub mini, noticed significant drop in the bass and the volume has increased (with Trueplay). Now the Truplay is garbage and SONOS quality has lost its wow, I have invested in lot of money with the trust and specifically the bass quality, but today it is question mark. Instead of deflecting this issue, I request take this seriously and investigate and fix the issue at the earliest.