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Sonos Arc extremely poor dialogue levels VS Music and Action

  • 6 November 2020
  • 70 replies
  • 22807 views
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70 replies

G
Userlevel 4
Badge +5

I'm beginning to think that I am the problem. A lifetime of loud music and noise, so I usually have to crank things up to louder than others in the family. Also likely my ability to differentiate at the margins doesn't work too well. I am sure everyone else has perfect hearing.

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I'm beginning to think that I am the problem. A lifetime of loud music and noise, so I usually have to crank things up to louder than others in the family. Also likely my ability to differentiate at the margins doesn't work too well. I am sure everyone else has perfect hearing.

My ears are horrible, severe hearing loss.

With or without my hearing aids I have issues with the low voice volume on my Arc center channel.

M

Any Sonos Bar set up is a compromise for convenience over a AVR based HT wired speaker set up with a dedicated centre channel/speaker and this is one of the prices paid for the compromise.

One workable solution is to use subtitles for dialogue. It does not take long to get used to it.

Turn on subtitles, because our $900 soundbar isn’t capable of producing dialogue that can be heard consistently?   You can’t be serious.   

M

I’ve been plagued with the same problem for months now. It all began when I plugged my laptop into my living room TV (LG webOS NANO90UNA) for a webinar. I must’ve toggled a setting that caused the dialogue to sound as everyone has described: muffled, underwater, etc. Today I decided I was going to figure this out. Nothing on the app helped. On the TV itself I went to Settings>Sound>Additional Settings>Digital Sound Out, which was set to <Auto>. When I switched it to PCM, boom. Problem fixed! Perfect. 

I can’t speak for any other brand, obviously, but this fixed my issue. Good luck!

When you switch to PCM you lose the ability to listen to 5.1 audio.

To echo everyone else, I am having the exact same issues. Extremely disappointing.
On top of that I also have audio delay.

I have the Arc, Sub (Gen 3), 2xOne. On an LG CX tv.

K

Any Sonos Bar set up is a compromise for convenience over a AVR based HT wired speaker set up with a dedicated centre channel/speaker and this is one of the prices paid for the compromise.

One workable solution is to use subtitles for dialogue. It does not take long to get used to it.

M
Userlevel 5
Badge +7

Yes. still have dialogue problems, never bee fixed, just ignored by Sonos. Still the amount of times I have to turn up the volume to hear the dialogue and then turn volume down when action etc kicks in. Need some sort of centre channel control.

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Subtitles aren’t a good option if you don’t constantly look at the TV. A lot of my watching time I am not looking at the screen as I’m also doing something else. You can also get some spousal grumpiness when they cover up parts of the screen they want to see. 

I passed on the Sonos Amp for the single reason that it had no dedicated center channel. 

 

 

Ken_Griffiths

Same problem.

I am very unhappy with the dialogue performance.

I wish there was a solution.

I appreciate we may each hear some things ‘differently’, there may already be a solution to this, but that depends on what is/isn’t being heard and the troubleshooting that has actually been undertaken so far with the various options currently available in the App and the local environment🤔?

M

Hi Ken

I appreciate your support. Unfortunatly I am pretty certain I tried all possible solutions already.

I own a Arc, Sub and 2 Ones SL. Driven from TV with eArc.

Did TruePlay with Iphone 12 Pro.

Mids are generally washed out. Not present. Like there is a frequency hump in the 300-600 Hz range.

 

It seams the only solution is to move from Arc to the Beam Gen 2 as others have done and reported a significant imporvement.

The current EQ options in the App cannot fix this and the speach improvment is already on.

To really fix this, there would be a mids EQ option required in the 300-600 Hz range.

It also does not help that there is a True-Play lottery with different IOS devices giving clearly audible different results. It seems that Iphone SE 2020 give the best results.

This can only be fixed with further Software control.

Regards, Michael

K

If it was an Apple TV 4K, it might have been this issue: 

 

M
Userlevel 5
Badge +7

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

C
Userlevel 2
Badge

I am having dialogue issues as well but I wonder if it’s due to using the Apple TV 4K. My arc was working fine for sounds and dialogue when I was using Firestick 4K. My current set up is Sony a90j oled  with eArc hdmi connection to arc with Sonos sub and two play 1’s.  When I leave the Appletv audio set to auto/Dolby atmos the Sonos system showed multichannel PCM 5.1 but the sound especially dialogue was very low. I had to increase volume from 40 to 50-60. When I changed the Apple TV audio to Dolby digital 5.1 the sound and dialogue was back to being good and I was back to setting volume to 40. I hate to change the Appletv audio settings based on Dolby atmos vs Dolby digital for different movies. I didn’t have these sound issues with the Firestick. It didn’t send out any multichannel PCM signal. Is everyone else having these sound issues with other streaming devices?  I am considering returning the Appletv and buying a new Firestick   Any response would be appreciated 

Airgetlam

Have you provided them with hard data, via a diagnostic, and called them so that they will look at it?

I, too, get frustrated, but it’s always with the audio mixer for the original source, and not Sonos, as I can duplicate the issue on non-Sonos setups. 

Bruce
E

I believe I have fixed the dialogue problem on my Arc. Just got my system over the weekend.

I tried a posted fix above but couldn’t because I don’t have that particular sound adjustment. So in my settings under the sound settings, I selected reset sound. I of course had to adjust the default tv speaker selection to receiver…but now I can hear and understand the dialogue! 
 

I'm going to check out more types of programming to make sure but this is great. Perhaps I won’t return my Sonos system after all.

W

Have you provided them with hard data, via a diagnostic, and called them so that they will look at it?

I, too, get frustrated, but it’s always with the audio mixer for the original source, and not Sonos, as I can duplicate the issue on non-Sonos setups. 

 

Why should I have to do their job for them? It's not hard to replicate. 

 

So many people are having the exact same issue to the point they could easily say "you might need to check that your TV or media player settings allow this or this feature to help clear up voice" 

 

Seeing that it's literally only the Arc having the problem, it seems pretty clear where the focus needs to be, including better customer service, regardless whether it's a forum or not. 

A
Badge

Volume Normalization is what you are asking for and, to be frank, doesn’t make sense in a “home theater”.

Other than that, be sure to Trueplay.

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I really see this as a Sonos problem. Yes the bad audio levels aren’t Sonos’ fault, but with an AVR system you can easily boost the center channel to correct for bad content.

No idea if the center level is adjustable on other sound bars or not but if it is that is a selling feature for them when compared to Sonos.

 

 

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Not sure how you can come to the conclusion there’s many people out there having this problem but you contacted Sonos to let them try and solve it?

Airgetlam

Unless it’s something that they have not been able to replicate? I don’t know, I don’t work for Sonos, but if I’m going to complain about an issue, I’m going to try to be part of the effort to fix it, rather than waiting for someone else to maybe figure it out. It’s affecting me, I’m the one who should be helping figure it out, especially if, by some odd chance that it’s an issue with my personal setup. I’ve always assumed bugs get prioritized by how much data is available. That’s certainly one of the key components we looked at when I was managing a software group. A lot better chance of figuring out what the cause was, with multiple data points to look at and compare. Nothing worse than tasking a programmer to look at an anecdotal bug, with no data to support the investigation.

Just complaining isn’t my style. 

Bruce
D

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.

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