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.
Further testing:
My current state is Apple TV both CEC options on, Xbox all CEC off. Atmos on both, no pops yet. If you are affected by the pop, please try the following steps:
I’m about 30 mins in, no pops 👏👏👏 hopefully not just a premature celebration!
No XBSX but have a PS5 / ATV 4K (2022) / Arc / Sub / One SL and been popping for the last 1.5 years.
haven’t switched the CEC on on my PS5 yet
+3
Hi Everyone
If any of you are able to reproduce one of these “popping” events more or less at will, please help us by getting in touch with our technical support team, as we’re looking for more information on this matter. It does seem to occur most often when an audio stream starts/stops or changes from one to another or , e.g. going from a playing movie to a menu, rather than when something is playing uninterrupted. We need some additional testers to assist us in getting a direct recording of the feed from an affected unit, as it happens.
This is somewhat outside of our normal case handling procedures, so if/when you have a support case, please reference this thread to the agent you speak to, and ask the agent to message me, Corry P, the case details so I can get you in touch with an engineer directly.
Thank you.
Thanks for the update — that said, I’m not entirely sure about “audio stream starts/stops or changes from one to another”, as the pops that myself and others seem to endure are mid-stream. And even then, it’s not part of the audio track that’s the trigger. Rewinding over the same spot will not induce the same issue.
Whilst there are crackles and pops that occur when changes sources, such as the Netflix auto-play of trailers when navigating the menu, that’s a different kettle of fish entirely. A small static pop compared to the “bang” followed by a full frontal audio dropout most of us are describing here.
I’ve previously submit several audio captures to a Tier2 support engineer via the Sonos ARC’s “devmode” — hopefully these have made it up the chain…
Had this happen again today & scared the heck out of me, 4th time in as many months when I was turning off the series x, every-time this happens I feel as if it will be the one to break a speaker, so frustrating.
You tried the solution just above your comment? Have tried myself and hopefully has resolved the issue :)
Quick update.
So the replacement Beam Gen 2 I got was fine up until today when playing Rocket League on the Xbox Series X with Atmos enabled. The Series X is set to pass through and I have eArc enabled, but I have the HDMI control off on the console.
So it looks to be a software issue. Any advice on how to avoid this happening?
+1
I’m living with the CEC-off solution at the moment. The least annoying compromise for me.
I still expect Sonos to acknowledge the issue in an FAQ or disclaimer though. New customers should be warned about the potential problem so that they can make an informed decision.
I really wonder why this problem occurs with so many different patterns. For me, for example, it doesn't do any good to turn off CEC. I turned it off on the Xbox and the TV and the bang still comes with Dolby Atmos. The only thing that works for me is switching to Dolby Digital 5.1
Have you tried factory reset and not to trueplay?
FYI: now many weeks later since prior posts and this (reset to factory but don’t run Trueplay when setting back up) completely solved the problem with Arc + twin 300s.
Nutshell version: executed initial setup to the “run Trueplay” step but couldn’t Trueplay for a few hours due to uncontrollable noise in the environment. Enjoyed the speakers for those few hours: they sounded as great as we all expect of Sonos speakers. When the noise ceased, ran Trueplay and the Pop-fest immediately followed (only variable changed was running Trueplay)… not just from ATMOS sources but even Sonos HD Radio and when touching the buttons on top of the Arc. Any source whether simple stereo to ATMOS was popping in a way that made us worry about the speaker. We initially believed it was blown speaker(s).
Reset to factory but bailed on the setup process again at the “set up Trueplay” step. No pops since. No other variables changed (same source, same cables, same kinds of content). CEC is on and ATMOS playback, Dolby playback, Stereo & Mono playback, sounds from the interface (button pushes on Arc) yield NO pops at all.
Gut says that if we ran Trueplay again, the pops would return… which would be a verifying step if we repeated it and got the same (popping) results. But they play and sound great now and we don’t want to re-stir this pot.
While only a single instance and thus not ideal from which to draw broad conclusions, those frustrated with no other remedy may want to give this one a try. Given the variety of hardware sources, cables, audio types, etc in play, it seems common ground variables like internal software would be much more likely to be the cause than select implementations of ATMOS, CEC, Dolby MAT, cables, AppleTV, Xbox, et all. Since Trueplay is something most people automatically run soon after pulling these out of their boxes, if it is the cause or plays a role, obviously most/all(?) of the speakers with the problem likely ran Trueplay.
If it’s everybody else that must change their tech to work with Sonos, it seems this will NEVER get resolved. But if it’s internal software, that could be a bug(s) for Sonos to find & fix. Those willing: test & report. If there is something here, it will give Sonos an area on which to focus and maybe a fix for up to everyone.
hello everyone.
I have just started to have this issue and I contacted sonos support, I have owned the arc for 18 months and the issue only started now after the latest update.
They mentioned the engineers are working on it and there is only 2 known workarounds at the moment, which is crazy considering this has been a known issue for atleast 2 years.
I am using Xbox series x on a Sony x9000h, does anyone have any better ideas other then the workarounds provided by sonos below?
Workaround 1: Disable CEC on HDMI connected devices, then reboot these devices as well as the TV by unplugging from power for 60 seconds then plug it back in. a. This may allow Atmos content to be played, but cannot be guaranteed. Workaround 2: Disable Dolby Atmos and use Dolby Digital 5.1 instead.
I tried all their methods , still didn’t work . I really hope they get this issue fixed this year . I’m so fed up , the pop gives me anxiety
Chris Welch from The Verge is soliciting questions for an interview of Sonos CEO Patrick Spence on Reddit. Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/119bkie/if_you_could_ask_patrick_spence_a_sonos_question/
if you want to put this issue on the table.
+3
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. 👍🏻
Just ordered both beam and arc to see which is best. With all this going on, should I just return the arc and keep the beam?
If you do end up going with Sonos, depending on your space and living situation, I would go with the Arc with two Sonos One Gen 2 for surround (and the subwoofer if you live in a house), for the living room and Beam Gen 2 for the bedroom.
Just don’t ever hook up an Xbox Series X to your Sonos. Ever! Lol. I wish I hadn’t. PS5 and Switch had no problems for 2 years. Until I bought an Xbox Series X. And Apple TV 4K is fine as long as you never ever hook up an Xbox Series X. I never tried the beam, the beam has their own issues apparently.
Had I known about all of this prior I would never have gotten the Xbox, this is a good time now to look into the Sony HT-A9 with the Black Friday sales.
Got it. Stay far away from Xbox 😂😂. Thank you.
Same issue here. Has happened while streaming and also playing Xbox. Have owned arc for about 3 weeks. Has happened a handful of times. Also concerned something could be damaged. Sound is gone until I change inputs or reposed device. Anyone figure this out yet? Seems like an ongoing 2 year issue
It is an ongoing issue that was first reported 2 years ago, unfortunately for all of us, there was no warning, no information, nothing to tarnish or affect the sales of the Sonos Brand.
We all bought into this system blind, believing we were purchasing a top tier product of the sound bar category.
And here we all are.
Anyone with pops: I encourage you to test this hypothesis, especially if you can make the pops happen in a predictable way
If anyone is willing to reset to factory, set up again and then see if the pops continue, post your results.
I’m using a Beam Gen 2 with an Apple TV 4K 2022. I haven’t had pops like people in this thread describe, but have suffered audio dropouts every 5-10 mins when using Netflix with Dolby Atmos enabled. If I select Dolby 5.1 the pops go away, so I suspect this is the same issue.
we watched three episodes of a show last night and there were regular audio dropouts throughout. So I’ve taken your advice and have reset the Sonos and set it up again without Truplay and so far so good. We watched two more episodes and had no dropouts at all.
Obviously early days but seems promising so far. I’ll test for a few more days and report back.
i also encourage others to give this a go and report your findings here.
I’ve been running an Arc w/Sub since April while connected to an Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch OLED, PS5 and an Apple TV 4K. Of course, I don’t always have Atmos content playing but when I do I never had any issues. Upon booting Forza Horizon 5 up on my Sony A80J OLED this week my Arc made that loud banging noise followed by an orange light. The light eventually turned white but no audio came from the Arc. I unplugged it and once it booted back up it worked fine but I did disable Atmos on my Xbox and Apple TV.
Hopefully there’s a fix soon because Atmos is a major selling point here. I am a home theater installer and am quite surprised that this has been happening for 2 years (based on this thread) as none of my clients (nor myself) have experienced or at least mentioned this (until now).
I also have a Beam in my bedroom on an A80J but as with the Arc setup I haven’t had any issues with the Apple TV setup yet.
Welcome to the club
I’m not so sure there is that much of a difference between Atmos (compressed/uncompressed) audio, compared to either Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 (compressed) or McPCM 5.1 (uncompressed) surround sound audio to warrant going out and selling the Sonos HT devices. I admit I’ve not got the popping issue, but if I had, I would certainly prefer to just switch off Atmos and shift the height audio to other channels, rather than sell up. I’m personally quite okay with 5.1 surround audio, to the extent I would not personally sell.
That’s otherwise perhaps a case of "cutting off your nose to spite your face" if you’re seriously considering selling all as a viable option.
Your loss in that situation, would just be someone else’s gain IMHO, as they may not experience the issue with their TV setup, particularly if they are not using the LPCM codec, which seems to be a key component in many of the reported cases in this thread.
I would just wait and see if there is a fix …and just enjoy the 5.1 surround sound in the meantime.
Doesn't sound degraded. Ran a few different audio feeds after I power cycled the arc. All sounded normal.
There does seem to be some audio & hardware issues surrounding the Xbox series X.
There are noisy audio problems mentioned on YouTube and elsewhere too. Just two examples are linked below:
Plenty of similar issues mentioned on YouTube and elsewhere. Plus see the links in my earlier post.
So it still seems like Sonos is not the cause here, as so many things appear to be mentioned about the Xbox, even when a Sonos product does not form part of the setup.
One final thing I’ll say about all this that I’m sure so many others have already done with the “help” of the Sonos Support. I’ve tried restoring my Sonos Arc to factory settings, and updating etc etc. Nothing worked. Ever since the initial error was caused by hooking up my now sold Xbox Series X, my Sonos Arc has the permanent popping noise loss error when playing Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos content simultaneously from any source.
It’s been over a year that this issue was first reported by multiple Sonos Arc owners. And still no fix. I had recommended the Sonos Arc to my dad. We all are dissatisfied and disappointed that this issue hasn’t been address much less talked about by Sonos. I purchased my Sonos Arc, after watching multiple reviews, one of which had 2 reps from Sonos being interviewed.
I wish I had gone with the Sony HT-A9 now.
As of now there is still no fix, or update to address this. At the very minimum, there should be a warning sent out through the Sonos App or email, to warn customers to NEVER hook up an Xbox Series X to the Sonos Arc, as it will cause permanent damage to the Sonos Arc.
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.
I appreciate the posts might technically break the beta NDA that Sonos enforces on people, but this is an ideal time to be a little more transparent here after years of silence. Folks have been waiting 3 years for a fix on this issue, for hardware they’ve spent thousands of dollars on. The fix isn’t to provide a “better experience” it’s to provide the Dolby Atmos experience that Sonos customers thought they were getting when they purchased a Dolby Atmos soundbar.
Well put. The call for patience while they “work to give us a better experience” is extremely grating language. You guys sat on this for three years and then magically started making progress after a bunch of articles dropped calling attention to the fact that many of your customers aren’t getting the base experience that they paid for.
Hi
It sounds like you have a different issue - especially since the issue this thread relates to is resolved. I recommend you open a new thread where you are more likely to receive help from the community.
I do, however, recommend that you first try rebooting your TV by unplugging it from power for at least a full minute.
I hope this helps.
Thank you both for your help and advice - I’ll open a new thread.
Thanks
Been using different Sonos speakers for almost 10 years now and couple months ago bough Arc. Today was the day when I first time had this issue with LG TV. I don’t have XBox or Apple TV connected, Arc connected directly to TV over HDMI
Here’s a video showing how it sounded. My son was watching Netflix and this happened. My wife thought it’s going to burn whole house, panicked and called me.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bhp8e455jqqkb1g/Video%20Jan%2013%202023%2C%2018%2056%2041.mov?dl=0
If someone could please confirm that this is same sounds that you guys hearing.
Submitted diagnostic 236163412
to be honest this is crazy that this is still ongoing for devices that sold years after first reports of this issue and software hasn’t fixed yet
Called in today because I experienced the issue for the first time in weeks. Didn’t get very far with Sonos support because they wanted me to record the issue happening, which tells me they either don’t understand the issue or they can’t reproduce it themselves. I find it extremely hard to believe that Sonos has not been able to reproduce this in the almost 2 years that this issue has been prevalent.
Has anybody been able to get farther with support like an actual diagnosis on what could be happening here? This is extremely frustrating for what is supposed to be a high end audio product
It popped again 
at least I don’t nearly **** myself when it happens now.
*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*
Sonos has been telling us for 3 years that they can’t reproduce this Arc Atmos BANG issue in their labs. An issue and topic of probably their largest complaint thread on the Sonos Community ever.
I know it sounds crazy and would never happen, but if Sonos was truly interested into getting to the bottom of something they can’t replicate, why not find 3 users who’d be willing to sell their TV, Apple TV, XBox & Arc sets ups to them? Sonos could then have the set ups professionally packed & shipped to their labs? They could then do all the BANG testing they’d ever need. Could be the best $20K their R&D ever spent and could finally put this issue to bed.
You’d think they would be able to find out what’s going on based on the diagnostics we’ve all sent them. A month ago I was told they were looking into it yet here we are and their support that reached out to me has been avoiding me now.
The live chat is already over. Did anybody have a chance to bring up the Sonos Pop? What did they say?
It was one of the first chat questions and was answered within the chat. It was not addressed by the hosts. Here’s the chat dialogue.
Question: Are you guys going to address the pops you get with the arc?
Answer: Good Q, this will focus on Arc, but for issues with your speaker I can post our technical support info in a moment
🤨
Way to brush off the question again . They knew that’s the problem but will never man enough to address it officially . It is not something wrong to say “ we sucked , we can’t fix this issue and you all have to stuck with this issue but we are willing to give you a special voucher code to compensate this problem that caused you .
Hi Everyone
If any of you are able to reproduce one of these “popping” events more or less at will, please help us by getting in touch with our technical support team, as we’re looking for more information on this matter. It does seem to occur most often - but is definitely not limited to - when an audio stream starts/stops or changes from one to another or , e.g. going from a playing movie to a menu, rather than when something is playing uninterrupted. We need some additional testers to assist us in getting a direct recording of the feed from an affected unit, as it happens.
This is somewhat outside of our normal case handling procedures, so if/when you have a support case, please reference this thread to the agent you speak to, and ask the agent to message me, Corry P, the case details so I can get you in touch with an engineer directly.
Thank you.
Corey, I have a video of it happening. I can’t produce it at will as it’s still random. But I know from a series x perspective how to set it up so it happens
let me know how I can get this to you
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