Contributor I

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
December 8, 2020
1202 replies
90685 views

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.

Show previous replies

jamie_shaw

Enthusiast I

So I thought this issue was resolved for me but I've continued to running into it. A resolve is to restart the Sonos Arc (which is more cumbersome now the :1400 pages no longer exist) but will return for Atmos content on Apple TV.

I've come across two different versions of the “pop” – one which the centre channel drops out, one where the “pop” is just audible in the audio track.

Drop out can be found under 1272885458.

Popping in audio track is 1786177697.

S

SLO hombre

Avid Contributor I

This is happening to me on a Beam Gen 2, connected to an Apple TV 4K and a Sony XBR TV. It has occurred quite often while playing Apple Music on the Apple TV. Done all the resets and cable connections and no luck…still happening. Have switched the Apple TV to stereo and have not encountered the problem but I bought the Beam for Atmos sound and now feel ripped off.

jamie_shaw

Enthusiast I

Attempting to pattern match for some common ground…

From what I can tell from this thread; it’s pretty much exclusively Atmos, if not entirely.
It seems to be common from Xbox and Apple TV — both encode into Dolby MAT, which I think might be a root cause here.

What’s the ground on the televisions people are using? I’ve seen people report issues with Sony and LG — I’m a Sony owner myself. Curious if the TV is garbling the signal in the middle of the chain. I’ve not had any issues since I bought everything this time last year, so I’m curious, why now… software issue, somewhere?

F

Fenway

Lyricist II

I’m on a Sony 4k (X900 I believe) with HDMI 2.1. When I watch the same Dolby Atmos content through the native apps on the Sony OS I have no issues. That ATV+ And the ARC do not seem to get along.

jamie_shaw

Enthusiast I

Looks like 13.4.1 is out — we’ll see if it fixes anything I guess…

I did reach out to Sonos support with my diagnostics yesterday, and was told the following:

Sonos CS Rep: Alright then, I've checked now with one of our senior engineers, and in your system all products are working properly. Indeed that sound which is coming up on the TV is made as we have there a switch between audio codecs used. Right now we are working to solve this matter and to remove that pop sound.
Me: So the issue is a known bug?
Me: Just to note, the "pop" occurs midway through content — not when transitioning codecs (between content).
Sonos CS Rep: Our engineers are aware of that pop sound, and right now they are working to solve this issue as fast as possible. As a temporary workaround as you mentioned would be to disable the Atmos on Apple TV and will work without that "pop" sound.

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

I reached out to Sonos support (by phone) as well. The tech did a lot of putting me on hold to talk to her level 2, but I never got to talk to that person myself. They seemed unaware of the issue. I mentioned this thread.

The main takeaway was that they said my diagnostics couldn’t be used because they were more than 24 hours old. I should call them immediately after the Pop happens. However, there was one useful piece of diagnostic advice. I haven’t had the pop since (yet), but perhaps one of you can try it.

After the pop, before resetting, while the Arc is still dropped out; open the Sonos app and play music from it. Does that work?

jamie_shaw

Enthusiast I

I reached out to Sonos support (by phone) as well. The tech did a lot of putting me on hold to talk to her level 2, but I never got to talk to that person myself. They seemed unaware of the issue. I mentioned this thread.

The main takeaway was that they said my diagnostics couldn’t be used because they were more than 24 hours old. I should call them immediately after the Pop happens. However, there was one useful piece of diagnostic advice. I haven’t had the pop since (yet), but perhaps one of you can try it.

After the pop, before resetting, while the Arc is still dropped out; open the Sonos app and play music from it. Does that work?

Will see if it occurs during Hawkeye tomorrow, and attempt if it happens. 👍🏻