Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

Does everyone get the pop everytime? I have noticed audio dropping out with Atmos content in general. Sometimes I notice the loud pop, but also sometimes it seems to drop and then the Arc almost resets with a green LED on the front blinking before it picks up the signal again.

The pop does not happen at a specific point in time during content. It is however relatively easy to reproduce as it happens usually within 30 minutes of playing Atmos content. 
 

I (and others) have worked directly with Sonos in documenting the pop. Not just using “submit diagnostic” that’s available to all users. But also by having my Arc remotely put into dev-mode by Sonos, which allowed me to submit an extended (~60 seconds) data dump when encountering a pop. 
 

I have submitted such dev mode files for multiple pops both when using Apple TV and Xbox. 
 

There is no evidence that the pop happens outside of the Sonos Arc and Beam 2. 

How do you know that Apple TV and Xbox are the major consumer devices that are affected? That's an assumption?

With a PS5, I can unfortunately reliably get loud pops when using multichannel PCM 7.1 with an eARC TV. It sounds like small loud bangs, if something was breaking.

I think, like many others in this discussion, that it has something to do with high bitrate multiPCM or encapsulated dolby atmos MAT (which includes multichannel PCM),

The cause must be with HDMI eARC, which is buggy when using high bitrate streams from external devices. I never have problems when streaming Atmos directly from my TV apps. That is the way I actually listen to Atmos now.

There must be flawed error handling when external HDMI devices are involved, and HDMI switch manufacturers like HDfury or Feintech seem to know how to work around these errors. But I'm not willing to pay more for unsupported devices and my system was expensive enough.

Have you read this thread? Apple TV and Xbox are hands down the most common source devices affected at this moment. Yes, PC and some TV app can have it happen as well. But those are smaller install bases because not as many people hook up a PC to an Arc for the former and because few TVs output in Dolby MAT for the latter. I suspect that will change once the PS5 Atmos firmware goes from beta to production, since beta users have been affected by the pop.

You are correct that the pop seems to happen when devices using Dolby MAT are connected. That is the common denominator. You are describing getting “pops” when using multichannel PCM on PS5. I assume that this is a series of pops that are nothing like the problem that this thread is about. The Verge story about our problem has a nice video of the Sonos Pop. It is loud. And then the Arc cuts out while the surrounds keep playing.

In any event, I suspect you haven’t read this thread. Give it a read! It’s a wild ride and will answer all of the questions you currently have.

This is some farcical BS.  The onus for comprehensive and useful logging is not on the end user.  Sonos has a submit diagnostic feature for a reason that has been used countless times by the users in this thread.

Re: “keep[ing] an open mind”, you might have missed the part where this has been ongoing for almost three years.  We’re passed the point of giving Sonos the benefit of the doubt and just want some kind of resolution.  Even if that’s just in the form of better error handling so that we get a drop out instead a heart stopping gunshot.

Hi 

I believe I just had this issue, I have had my arc for almost a year and regularly used my xbox series x to watch blue rays but tonight I turned my xbox on and it was just sitting on the dashboard when it happened.

However when I contacted sonos support to have a diagnostic ran on my arc just to be safe they advised me they found the below fault

" see. I can see that your Sonos Arc is having an Amp Fault. And for this one, we just need to reboot the Sonos Arc. Just unplug it to the power outlet and plug it back in after 10 seconds. Then observe if the Arc is still producing the loud pop noise so we can further isolate the issue"

Correct me if km wrong but would thag not suggest a hardware fault, I rebooted the arc and re ran the diagnostics and he said the fault has cleared. Has anyone else had sonos say the above when they experienced the pop or should I push for a hardware swap.

Not really, I’ve been part of solving some other difficult issues (I won’t mention company names) and I’ve been aware of this issue from the first post. Since I’m not able to observe this issue, I can’t contribute any data. From my seat it mostly seems like barking at the wall.

One case the I was involved with was interesting. I came across an intermittent issue. It could present a few times an hour, days, or weeks. It was a few millisecond mute in the audio output, barely perceptible by many users. It was real easy to blame something that had no relation to this issue, but could exhibit similar symptoms. I became aware of a few people unsuccessfully attempting to get a handle on the issue. The manufacturer was not able to help. I built a little hardware monitor and was able to observe some erratic activity that usually culminated in an “event”. I suspect that relative humidity was part of the package. I contacted the manufacturer and they were aware that some users had reported an issue, but the issue could not be observed in their service shop. When I described my monitor they were excited and suggested a potential fix. They couldn’t verify the fix in their shop because they didn’t have any misbehaving units and If I am correct that relative humidity was in the mix, I don’t think that they would ever have had a misbehaving unit in their shop (due to their location). Anyway, I applied the proposed fix and had an immediate positive response from my monitor. A couple days later the manufacturer called to check in and I reported that my monitor had logged zero events. It was an easy, cheap fix and lot of people were happy.

I mention this because we may not yet have figured out which end of the ‘POP’ dog to bark at. It seems to be a multi-dimensional issue. The common dimensions seem to be PS5, X-Box, AppleTV, and versions of Atmos. The shutdown is easy to understand. The ‘POP’ is at maximum output and ARC is designed to shut down in order to protect itself.

I understand the point you’re making.  I disagree that the end users should be responsible for recording extraneous data in the hopes that it might somehow be helpful in tracking down the root cause of the issue.  If support needs data points like time of day and relative humidity, I would expect that their diagnostic tools would collect that data.

Again, bear in mind the amount of time that Sonos has had to figure out which “end of the dog to bark at.”  They’ve had nearly three years to throw oddball ideas at the wall and see what sticks.  We have no idea what they have and haven’t tried as so far they’ve been pretty tight-lipped about it.

I don’t know the depth of the issue. If licensed software is involved there could be contract details that prevents SONOS from imbedding proper logging code.

I don’t want to be an apologist. Everyone in the chain: hardware, software, SONOS, and users wants to pass the issue up the chain, while the chain wants to push the issue down in order to minimize their support costs. It’s the nature of companies at this point. Maybe all big business managers take the same courses and this is how they are taught to run a “smart” business. It takes weeks and weeks to justify, build, and schedule a team to take on a project. Meanwhile, users need to wait.

Anyone with eArc extractor and still having this issue?

i have had this issue but when i used the eArc extractor, the issue is gone

Using apple tv 4k 3rd gen + xbox x+ ps5 beta software, all tested with atmos, the issue is no more, no more pop