Sonos Arc extremely poor dialogue levels VS Music and Action

Hi All. I’m not sure if this is of help to anyone but thought I would post. I was having the same issue with the Arc which I just set up and had upgraded from the Playbar with my LG. I’m using Dolby Atmos. Voices sounded underwater while music and effects sounded normal. I tested several apps but only seemed to have the issue on some but not all Apple TV+ shows and movies. Very weird. I tried all the techniques in this thread to no avail. 
Eventually I paused a show and saw there was an Apple TV setting to ‘reduce loud sounds’ checked. I switched to ‘full dynamic range’ and it appears to have fixed the issue. Perhaps it’s an app by app issue? I hope to be out of the woods and not writing this prematurely. good luck!

I’ve found a fix. Use your native tv apps and your sound will improve drastically. Apple TV for some odd reason, sounds worse and doesn’t let the Arc breath. If you have an LG, you still have access to the Apple TV app on WebOS. Try it out, you’ll be surprised

Turn OFF “Reduce Loud Sounds” on the Apple TV.  It really messes up Atmos on the ARC.  I’m so glad I tried that, it solved the dialog issue for me completely.  Before vocals would jump around in volume depending on the scene.

I’ve had my Sonos Arc Since around launch.. I also had a beam which has just been upgraded to a beam gen 2. I’ve never been happy with the ARCs centre channel speech, it always just feels underwater and not direct in your face which the beam does a better job of, in truplayed and trueplayed adjusted many settings but never get the wow feeling. I’m really hoping Sonos can sort this out, maybe give centre channel customisation like the height channels.

@sonos

in my case  this happens when the Arc receives Dolby Multichannel , and DD at lower bitrates my solution is lower the treble 3 or 2 points behind the bass ( 0 bass and -2highs for example) and turn on the speech enhancement, and this solves the problem in most of scenes  but is kinda annoying doing this every time 

@Ryan A @Ryan S 

Hi Guys do you know if the above issue is still being looked into on the Sonos ARC please?

thanks

Hi all - for what it’s worth… I had a brand new Arc about a week ago… music and effects sounded excellent in stereo, 5.1 or Atmos. Dialogue was generally “fine” in stereo… but as soon as I tried 5.1 or Atmos it was a muddy, mumbly, tinny mess. Certainly nowhere near the sound I paid that sort of price for. 

I spent 90 minutes on a call to Sonos support and tried every setting and little bit of trouble shooting going - I didn’t get anywhere.

I returned the Arc for a Beam Gen 2 and the difference was night and day - dialogue in 5.1 and Atmos was now clear and crisp. 
 

So, for anyone not getting what they want from the Arc, I highly recommend trying a Beam! Sometimes more expensive doesn’t equal a better experience. 

Still have this issue with my ARC and not improved with any of the updates

Have you tried another Arc or a Beam Gen 2 instead? Switching to a Beam resolved all my issues. 

Well I have Beam gen 2 upstairs and yes its much better on this compared to the ARC, but I wouldn't want to lose the wider sound stage as my living room is quite large.