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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blunderdome

Enthusiast I

I don’t understand the point of NDA’ing a bug fix test, especially as the public know it exists and is happening. What’s the worst case, it doesn’t work and you’ll get bad press? That’s going to happen anyway if the fix doesn’t work… Maybe there’s some kind of proprietary info protection rolled into the same NDA, fine, but you can separate those topics in your restrictions.

I’d strongly recommend for increasing transparency and communication in a crisis than shutting it down, deleting info, and gagging people trying to help you. There are no upsides, only downsides.

Sincerely, 20-year CM/PR vet.

The best part about this is that if they had just left it alone it would have been an unverified claim by one user with not supporting evidence to back it up. But because they felt compelled to enforce the NDA we now have an official statement and confirmation that the user was under NDA, which would seem to validate those claims.

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simps100

Avid Contributor I

Can anyone affected by this issue join the beta?

Given the huge amount of users with these issues it seems like it would be a good idea to have as many people testing in as many different setups as possible.

Dogdad

Headliner III

😂😂..you guys wanting more transparency?? They aren’t even transparent on the every month updates “ bug fixes and performance enhancements” we get.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

You can always ask to join the Beta team, it is not a small commitment and may have consequences not related to the bug you are interested in.

I was in the beta program for several years but it got to be more effort and inconvenience than enjoyment so I dropped out.

Doing it again I’d likely split my Sonos into two households and only put one in the beta program to minimize spousal aggravation and always have some Sonos working as expected.

Airgetlam

When I ran beta programs for software, there were several cohorts, each testing a specific ‘fix’. There was no way to guaranty that you were going to be in a specific cohort, testing the fix you wanted. I don’t know if Sonos does this, but I’d be willing to bet that just offering yourself to join the beta program is no guaranty that you’ll get that particular fix.

We also never promised a roadmap, or dates for when things would roll out. Especially for bug fixes, since they may or may not work once they got in the hands of the beta testers. I can’t tell you how often I heard ‘but it fixed things on my computer’ from engineers, once we got feedback from a statistical representation of the beta testers. Plus, there’s the fact that a ‘bug’ that expresses itself in one fashion may indeed be more than one, so the engineer may be correct, in X% of cases, it fixed ‘that’ problem. It was just that X was not 100%. We learned in the 90s that promising a fix to be out by a certain date was a lie, since it hadn’t been fully tested internally, and then sent to the testers for approval. And if we missed a date, boy, were the complaints twice as much. We ended up announcing the fix, much like Sonos does, when it had gone through all of those rigors, and was released to all the users.

If Sonos has a ‘fix’ for this issue, rest assured they’ll release at the earliest date possible.

Bruce

buzz

Grand Maestro

Continuing on the beta NDA discussion: If there are multiple potential causes of the issue and tester ‘A’ is sent a beta that fixed issue ‘1’, but tester ‘A’ had issue ‘2’ not ‘1’, when tester ‘A’ squabbles publicly “they said it was fixed, but it’s still an issue!” an unnecessary public relations issue is created.

Also, there may be slightly different hardware builds involved. The fix must be verified on all builds and early releases might not be ready for this. Further, a beta release might not be intended to fix anything because it only has enhanced data logging — attempting to help better understand the issue.

With respect to these “pops” I can imagine that a module licensed by SONOS is causing the issue by corrupting memory outside of its own boundary. This greatly complicates identifying and resolving the issue. Multiple 3rd parties could be involved. A temporary fix might be to rearrange modules such that a seldom used memory area is at risk. Another temporary workaround could be to reboot the system every few hours or days.

There is no need to discuss these details publicly. This reminds me of the child who needs to proudly prove to everyone that it knows a secret, but the only way to do this is to divulge the secret.

B

blunderdome

Enthusiast I

With respect to these “pops” I can imagine that a module licensed by SONOS is causing the issue by corrupting memory outside of its own boundary. This greatly complicates identifying and resolving the issue. Multiple 3rd parties could be involved. A temporary fix might be to rearrange modules such that a seldom used memory area is at risk. Another temporary workaround could be to reboot the system every few hours or days.

Whatever the root cause ends up being, I hope (but doubt) we get some kind of postmortem once a patch goes live. Genuinely curious as to what this was and why it took so long to nail down.

C

Cord

Enthusiast I

At least we now know progress is being made and I will just be happy if ARC and Beam Gen 2 users can finally enjoy the Dolby Atmos system that they paid for.

Y

yusuflimz

Lyricist III

Hi all,

We've seen the need to remove some posts from this topic as they're breaking the Beta NDA, which we take very seriously. With that said, yes, there is progress on a fix for the Arc popping that some users have experienced, so we kindly ask you to continue to be patient while we’re working to give you a better experience.
We will of course let you know if there is any news around this topic that can be shared.
Thank you for respecting our terms and conditions for participating in both this forum and our Sonos Beta program.

We’ve seen your need to remain largely silent on a 3 year old issue. With that said you’ve been making “progress” on a fix that many of us have experienced, we kindly ask that you give priority to your customers as opposed to an NDA so we can have a better experience. We will of course continue watching in 5.1 without the atmos that you advertised our product as. Thank you for selling us products that have made us feel like we’re in a conflict area when they pop and for the lack of transparency in both this forum and after sales support

jgatie

I know when I want to feel like a tough guy, I always find a lower level support person who is only following the rules. I then proceed to mock and ridicule them for something over which they have no control. That really pumps my anonymous internet muscles. Then I go out into the real world and kick a kitten, cause that's how I roll.

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