Contributor I

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

1202 replies
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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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yusuflimz

Lyricist III

I haven’t yet had time to test the software fix, holidays and all. Do we have reports from affected users yet if Arc/Beam2 are fixed now?

I’ve been using Arc and beam Gen 2 since the update and no pops yet 🙂 true play has been rerun as well (coincidence as changed the room layout slightly) well done @Corry P @Mark.Wi and team. So far fingers crossed

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Abo116

Lyricist III

I haven't had much time to test the update yet. But if it really works now, I would be interested to know what the problem was and why it took 3 years to fix it.

jgatie

I haven't had much time to test the update yet. But if it really works now, I would be interested to know what the problem was and why it took 3 years to fix it.

Sonos rep Corry was pretty specific in his statement here:

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ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

Based on Sonos’ description, it sounds like a bug in Arc’s error handling was at the core of everything. While it handled some errors correctly, there was a subclass that it instead threw out as a max volume pop, followed by going into limp mode so to speak.

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William_61

Enthusiast II

Been watching & listening to Atmos content all weekend thanks to receiving the long awaited Sonos Arc fix and the heavy rains. No issues at all and the sound has been terrific.

Set Up: Sonos Arc, Era 100 Surrounds, Sub Mini, Apple TV4K, Sony X900H

Thanks to everyone who’s gone out of their way over the years to troubleshoot and help folks through home brew fixes. A real community effort. Thank you also to the Sonos engineers who finally were able to figure out this complex issue. Cheers to all of you! 🍻

J

Julian Cross

Trending Lyricist I

Fingers crossed it’s worked. After 2 years I’ve finally turned Dolby Atmos back on on my Series X. Let’s hope we don’t get any loud pops. Will report back.

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ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

I finally had time to sit down and listen to Atmos music since the fix. I’m happy to report that I did not have a pop in an hour of listening, which is unprecedented. So add me to the voices saying the fix is the real deal.

Of course I did still have latent anxiety about getting hammered by the pop while listening. I wonder how long it will take for that to go away.

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bromos

Lyricist III

I finally had time to sit down and listen to Atmos music since the fix. I’m happy to report that I did not have a pop in an hour of listening, which is unprecedented. So add me to the voices saying the fix is the real deal.

Of course I did still have latent anxiety about getting hammered by the pop while listening. I wonder how long it will take for that to go away.

HA! I also feel the same way. I have been absolutely ENJOYING my setup for the first time in almost 3 years since I got it, but not fully as I have minor PTSD over the whole situation still :x

I am beyond happy with this being fixed finally. I only wonder where all the naysayers are now that it was confirmed a Sonos error handling issue :)

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Robyn4999

Contributor I

After several days without any issues, my random loud pop followed by reduced volume is back. I was watching a show on HBO/MAX, it wasn’t even Dolby atmos.

Airgetlam

Have you submitted a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and called Sonos Support to discuss it? If there is a recurrence of this happening, I’m sure they would love to have hard data to hand to the programmers.

Bruce

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