Contributor I

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

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I was playing on my Xbox when the arc suddenly made an extremely loud pop sound and then lost audio completely. The app wouldn’t let me adjust the volume and Alexa wake up didn’t emit its usual tone. I had to remove the power from the arc and reapply which resumed the audio. I’m concerned that one of the speakers in the arc may have been damaged when this happened. Has anyone had this issue?

We have had no issues with the arc since purchasing it earlier this year.

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Pinned Reply By Corry P

Hi Everyone!

Good news! We are pleased to share that our team has identified a fix for the popping sound on Arc and it will be shipped to all customers as part of a software release today, Thursday Nov 16 at 09:30 ET, 14:30 GMT, 15:30 CET. Please note that some app stores may take an extra hour or two for it to become available.

During our investigation we uncovered a rare bug that impacts how Sonos Arc and Beam (Gen 2) in certain home theater configurations process Dolby MAT, a streaming technology which is used to deliver Dolby Atmos audio over HDMI. Occasionally a Sonos product will receive a corrupted audio segment from an external source and needs to filter out unwanted audio data. The bug we identified was allowing our Dolby decoder to play audible errors on certain home theater setups rather than concealing them. The solution we’ve built and tested improves our Dolby decoder so it better filters out corrupt audio data that can manifest as a popping sound. We’ll continue to monitor customer feedback closely after the fix has been released and ship additional updates if necessary.

We strive to deliver the best listening experience possible and work to address major issues that impact our customers. We apologize for the disruption this bug has caused and want to thank you for your patience while our team developed a fix.

We would also like to thank our community users for their detailed setup information and steps to reproduce the issue, which were helpful to us in uncovering the cause of the bug.

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Bjmort

Avid Contributor I

I have owned my arc since release and never had an issue. I use my Apple TV every day with Dolby atmos. Never had a pop. Noticed the other day that Atmos was now available on ps5 so enabled it.

played Jedi survivor for a whole week with no issues.

soon as I started playing Spider-Man 2 tonight I get a huge pop and no audio. Have to change inputs to get audio back. Play for 45 seconds huge loud pop and no audio.

tv is a Sony A80J.

Spider-Man 2 is running at 120hz with HDR and VRR.

there you go ! As I always say when you play games on 120hz with VRR on the POP happens . You probably didn’t play any games on VRR with 120hz before therefore you never experienced it

Jedi survivor is 120hz VRR I believe. Anyway played Spider-Man all day today and it didn’t happen so no idea what’s going on.

A

Abo116

Lyricist III

A friend of mine has been playing PS5 with Dolby Atmos MAT for days and has no problems. He has an Arc + LG CX (2020) and I have the same setup only with the LG CS9 (2022). For me it pops within 10 minutes and for him it doesn't pop at all. The only question is, is it the TV or isn't every Sonos Arc affected? He plays today Spider-Man 2 for 6h and no pop.

D

Darkii89

Lyricist III

A friend of mine has been playing PS5 with Dolby Atmos MAT for days and has no problems. He has an Arc + LG CX (2020) and I have the same setup only with the LG CS9 (2022). For me it pops within 10 minutes and for him it doesn't pop at all. The only question is, is it the TV or isn't every Sonos Arc affected? He plays today Spider-Man 2 for 6h and no pop.

Both of you using same graphic mode with vrr?

saw someone in reddit with pop in spiderman 2, he change the audio setting in ps5 to av and 7.1 channels and the pop no more

HobeSoundDarryl

Lyricist III

Every Sonos Arc is NOT affected. I’ve had one for maybe 4 years without a single POP.

And the blame game redirection implies that it’s not any one thing- like not just AppleTV or Xbox or PS5 or a television or a cable or ATMOS setting on or CEC setting on. There’s too many different third party potential catalysts while others have no issue for me to believe it’s any 1+ (external) thing.

I go back to the common denominator- the Arc itself- (me) guessing either a bad batch (if hardware) or something in on-board software is driving this issue. It’s easier to sling blame at other stuff but look at the example I offered:

my own has never popped in maybe 4 years of ownership
my friends was fine for a few hours before running Trueplay, then pop-mania for anything that generated audio (including stereo music or just touching the buttons on the arc) starting immediately AFTER running Trueplay, then factory reset + setup again but skipping Trueplay step: no more pops for weeks now. All other variables & settings (TV, cable, sources of video & audio, etc remain consistently the same) but no more pops. What changed? For them, it was not re-running Trueplay on a fresh setup. If not Trueplay (bug, which some have since seemed to negate), the factory reset seemed to fix it.

If it’s ATMOS or CEC or TV or cable, it would consistently repeat by using that same tech and the same settings. But it seems that it is not replicable for many, which implies it is probably NOT much of the stuff getting the (redirection) blame.

I have to think it is some bugs in software or a bad batch of hardware production. Else, if it is any one thing, someone could:

set up an Arc, hook it to the catalyst thing, generate pops.
Factory reset, bypass the catalyst thing, no pops.
Insert the catalyst thing again, generate pops.

Pinning it down like this would allow others to run the same test, generate the same result and then the blame game would have more credibility… and SONOS themselves could execute the same test to replicate it themselves. Instead, we have 45 pages of “my setup is generating pops” with others saying “my <different> setup is generating pops” and other people sharing their same setup does NOT generate pops or that their Arc- like my own- has NEVER popped.

Collectively find an absolute, repeatable cause & effect catalyst, repeated/repeatable on more than one Arc and it would give SONOS an absolute point of focus. As is, we’re all over the place with possible causes and possible remedies with others countering each guess.

Y

yusuflimz

Lyricist III

Every Sonos Arc is NOT affected. I’ve had one for maybe 4 years without a single POP.

And the blame game redirection implies that it’s not any one thing- like not just AppleTV or Xbox or PS5 or a television or a cable or ATMOS setting on or CEC setting on. There’s too many different third party potential catalysts while others have no issue for me to believe it’s any 1+ (external) thing.

I go back to the common denominator- the Arc itself- (me) guessing either a bad batch (if hardware) or something in on-board software is driving this issue. It’s easier to sling blame at other stuff but look at the example I offered:

my own has never popped in maybe 4 years of ownership
my friends was fine for a few hours before running Trueplay, then pop-mania for anything that generated audio (including stereo music or just touching the buttons on the arc) starting immediately AFTER running Trueplay, then factory reset + setup again but skipping Trueplay step: no more pops for weeks now. All other variables & settings (TV, cable, sources of video & audio, etc remain consistently the same) but no more pops. What changed? For them, it was not re-running Trueplay on a fresh setup. If not Trueplay (bug, which some have since seemed to negate), the factory reset seemed to fix it.

If it’s ATMOS or CEC or TV or cable, it would consistently repeat by using that same tech and the same settings. But it seems that it is not replicable for many, which implies it is probably NOT much of the stuff getting the (redirection) blame.

I have to think it is some bugs in software or a bad batch of hardware production. Else, if it is any one thing, someone could:

set up an Arc, hook it to the catalyst thing, generate pops.
Factory reset, bypass the catalyst thing, no pops.
Insert the catalyst thing again, generate pops.

Pinning it down like this would allow others to run the same test, generate the same result and then the blame game would have more credibility… and SONOS themselves could execute the same test to replicate it themselves. Instead, we have 45 pages of “my setup is generating pops” with others saying “my <different> setup is generating pops” and other people sharing their same setup does NOT generate pops or that their Arc- like my own- has NEVER popped.

Collectively find an absolute, repeatable cause & effect catalyst, repeated/repeatable on more than one Arc and it would give SONOS an absolute point of focus. As is, we’re all over the place with possible causes and possible remedies with others countering each guess.

I think it’s absolutely within their capability to fix this, but they’re far more driven by money and new products.

i would push back on just blaming the arc though as there’s other sound bars which have the issue

D

Darkii89

Lyricist III

Every Sonos Arc is NOT affected. I’ve had one for maybe 4 years without a single POP.

And the blame game redirection implies that it’s not any one thing- like not just AppleTV or Xbox or PS5 or a television or a cable or ATMOS setting on or CEC setting on. There’s too many different third party potential catalysts while others have no issue for me to believe it’s any 1+ (external) thing.

I go back to the common denominator- the Arc itself- (me) guessing either a bad batch (if hardware) or something in on-board software is driving this issue. It’s easier to sling blame at other stuff but look at the example I offered:

my own has never popped in maybe 4 years of ownership
my friends was fine for a few hours before running Trueplay, then pop-mania for anything that generated audio (including stereo music or just touching the buttons on the arc) starting immediately AFTER running Trueplay, then factory reset + setup again but skipping Trueplay step: no more pops for weeks now. All other variables & settings (TV, cable, sources of video & audio, etc remain consistently the same) but no more pops. What changed? For them, it was not re-running Trueplay on a fresh setup. If not Trueplay (bug, which some have since seemed to negate), the factory reset seemed to fix it.

If it’s ATMOS or CEC or TV or cable, it would consistently repeat by using that same tech and the same settings. But it seems that it is not replicable for many, which implies it is probably NOT much of the stuff getting the (redirection) blame.

I have to think it is some bugs in software or a bad batch of hardware production. Else, if it is any one thing, someone could:

set up an Arc, hook it to the catalyst thing, generate pops.
Factory reset, bypass the catalyst thing, no pops.
Insert the catalyst thing again, generate pops.

Pinning it down like this would allow others to run the same test, generate the same result and then the blame game would have more credibility… and SONOS themselves could execute the same test to replicate it themselves. Instead, we have 45 pages of “my setup is generating pops” with others saying “my <different> setup is generating pops” and other people sharing their same setup does NOT generate pops or that their Arc- like my own- has NEVER popped.

Collectively find an absolute, repeatable cause & effect catalyst, repeated/repeatable on more than one Arc and it would give SONOS an absolute point of focus. As is, we’re all over the place with possible causes and possible remedies with others countering each guess.

I think it’s absolutely within their capability to fix this, but they’re far more driven by money and new products.

i would push back on just blaming the arc though as there’s other sound bars which have the issue

Which soundbars and how often it occurs ?

A

Abo116

Lyricist III

Every Sonos Arc is NOT affected. I’ve had one for maybe 4 years without a single POP.

And the blame game redirection implies that it’s not any one thing- like not just AppleTV or Xbox or PS5 or a television or a cable or ATMOS setting on or CEC setting on. There’s too many different third party potential catalysts while others have no issue for me to believe it’s any 1+ (external) thing.

I go back to the common denominator- the Arc itself- (me) guessing either a bad batch (if hardware) or something in on-board software is driving this issue. It’s easier to sling blame at other stuff but look at the example I offered:

my own has never popped in maybe 4 years of ownership
my friends was fine for a few hours before running Trueplay, then pop-mania for anything that generated audio (including stereo music or just touching the buttons on the arc) starting immediately AFTER running Trueplay, then factory reset + setup again but skipping Trueplay step: no more pops for weeks now. All other variables & settings (TV, cable, sources of video & audio, etc remain consistently the same) but no more pops. What changed? For them, it was not re-running Trueplay on a fresh setup. If not Trueplay (bug, which some have since seemed to negate), the factory reset seemed to fix it.

If it’s ATMOS or CEC or TV or cable, it would consistently repeat by using that same tech and the same settings. But it seems that it is not replicable for many, which implies it is probably NOT much of the stuff getting the (redirection) blame.

I have to think it is some bugs in software or a bad batch of hardware production. Else, if it is any one thing, someone could:

set up an Arc, hook it to the catalyst thing, generate pops.
Factory reset, bypass the catalyst thing, no pops.
Insert the catalyst thing again, generate pops.

Pinning it down like this would allow others to run the same test, generate the same result and then the blame game would have more credibility… and SONOS themselves could execute the same test to replicate it themselves. Instead, we have 45 pages of “my setup is generating pops” with others saying “my <different> setup is generating pops” and other people sharing their same setup does NOT generate pops or that their Arc- like my own- has NEVER popped.

Collectively find an absolute, repeatable cause & effect catalyst, repeated/repeatable on more than one Arc and it would give SONOS an absolute point of focus. As is, we’re all over the place with possible causes and possible remedies with others countering each guess.

I think it’s absolutely within their capability to fix this, but they’re far more driven by money and new products.

i would push back on just blaming the arc though as there’s other sound bars which have the issue

It's not just about the Arc, but also about the Beam 2 (all Sonos soundbars that support Dolby Atmos)

Do you know of a soundbar that isn't from Sonos that produces the banging sound?

Y

yusuflimz

Lyricist III

Every Sonos Arc is NOT affected. I’ve had one for maybe 4 years without a single POP.

And the blame game redirection implies that it’s not any one thing- like not just AppleTV or Xbox or PS5 or a television or a cable or ATMOS setting on or CEC setting on. There’s too many different third party potential catalysts while others have no issue for me to believe it’s any 1+ (external) thing.

I go back to the common denominator- the Arc itself- (me) guessing either a bad batch (if hardware) or something in on-board software is driving this issue. It’s easier to sling blame at other stuff but look at the example I offered:

my own has never popped in maybe 4 years of ownership
my friends was fine for a few hours before running Trueplay, then pop-mania for anything that generated audio (including stereo music or just touching the buttons on the arc) starting immediately AFTER running Trueplay, then factory reset + setup again but skipping Trueplay step: no more pops for weeks now. All other variables & settings (TV, cable, sources of video & audio, etc remain consistently the same) but no more pops. What changed? For them, it was not re-running Trueplay on a fresh setup. If not Trueplay (bug, which some have since seemed to negate), the factory reset seemed to fix it.

If it’s ATMOS or CEC or TV or cable, it would consistently repeat by using that same tech and the same settings. But it seems that it is not replicable for many, which implies it is probably NOT much of the stuff getting the (redirection) blame.

I have to think it is some bugs in software or a bad batch of hardware production. Else, if it is any one thing, someone could:

set up an Arc, hook it to the catalyst thing, generate pops.
Factory reset, bypass the catalyst thing, no pops.
Insert the catalyst thing again, generate pops.

Pinning it down like this would allow others to run the same test, generate the same result and then the blame game would have more credibility… and SONOS themselves could execute the same test to replicate it themselves. Instead, we have 45 pages of “my setup is generating pops” with others saying “my <different> setup is generating pops” and other people sharing their same setup does NOT generate pops or that their Arc- like my own- has NEVER popped.

Collectively find an absolute, repeatable cause & effect catalyst, repeated/repeatable on more than one Arc and it would give SONOS an absolute point of focus. As is, we’re all over the place with possible causes and possible remedies with others countering each guess.

I think it’s absolutely within their capability to fix this, but they’re far more driven by money and new products.

i would push back on just blaming the arc though as there’s other sound bars which have the issue

Which soundbars and how often it occurs ?

LG SK9Y and a few others.

won’t know the frequency but perhaps you can ask on the Reddit posts of other brands that are complaining about it.

uahero

Contributor I

Hi, I have used Sonos ARC for 2 years with Apple TV 4K without any issues connected via old Samsung UE65HU7505 from 2014 which downsampled everything to Stereo PCM.

I have changed TV (finally) to Samsung OLED S90C a couple of weeks ago with the same Apple TV 4K from 2017 and have experienced this Bang-pop-knock couple of times which was a horrifying experience.

I really hope that Sonos will fix this issue soon...

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

Welcome to our not-so-small club @uahero . I’m sorry to hear you are affected. I encourage you to get a case ID from Sonos tech support just to be put on the radar. If the tech makes you do big time trouble shooting, e.g. “factory reset” or “buy new cables”, I would probably not play along.

The following solutions each work for some posters. None of them seem to be a universal fix:

Turn off Dolby Vision.
Turn off CEC.
Turn off Trueplay.

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