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.
I was able to make the POP go away by unplugging the TV , XBOX and ARC for 60 secs then plug everything back in . CEC also disabled . This is a guarantee fix for me but it’s annoying every time I have to do that when I turn on my TV and XBOX
Is it really a guaranteed fix if it happens again?
I have been using my system without Atmos because I don’t want to hear those loud bangs. I’m not happy about this and Sonos needs a fix soon because I didn’t buy an Atmos system to not use it. Otherwise, I want a refund on my equipment so I can find something that works as advertised.
Yup I have been testing it for couple of days and it works. Give it a try and let me know
cheers
I’m asking if it’s really a fix it it would happen again. I wouldn’t say it is.
For the record I’ve tried this in the past and the bang always came back quickly. That’s what I’m basing my experience off of. If it helps solve your bang I’m happy for you. 😎
It’s not a guarantee fix until sonos fixes this issue on their end . But by using this method at least for now I can ensure myself the POP is not gonna happen and scare myself to death
+1
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...
Perhaps an email to Sonos CEO would help:
Great email, thank you for doing that. Hopefully it will get us an official position and eta from sonos
Also BTW. V14.6 of the software released, maybe a fix is included?
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.
Believing that load of nonsense is the same as believing the story that it’s the front end supports first time hearing about this issue. Sonos knows exactly what’s going on and how to produce it.
I used to have a HD Fury vertex 2 splitter and arcana set up as my older Samsung TV did not have an EARC HDMI port. The Dolby Atmos soundtrack didn’t miss a beat and was perfect through the sonos arc, however that TV didn’t support HDR content.
Just upgraded to a LG C2 TV, ditched the vertex 2 and arcana and connected all devices directly as all ports are HDMI 2.1 compliant. Now when watching DV & DA content through the ATV the sonos arc is randomly popping and banging at an alarming rate.
I’ve stopped using the ATV altogether for now and use the internal apps on the TV for streaming services, thankfully DV & DA content plays fine and I can at least listen to the arc as intended.
I may just reconnect the vertex & arcana back up and to see if that eliminates the issue but it’s a rather expensive solution if there is no fix available.
I’m pleased I found this thread as I had no idea this issue existed, hopefully a resolution is on its way.
Sonos Arc, Gen 2 Sub, 2 x play 1, ATV4K, Sky Q, LG C2
Pops with an Arcana? Thanks for contributing that information!
Yep. Been doing it for ages. I find resetting everything lowers the frequency of the pops and allows me to get through a movie, but weirdly it starts again after a while. I have taken to power cycling my arc before powering everything up which is the best solution I have found.
Only with Dolby atmos content of course. Otherwise sounds great.
Yesterday. Was watching Long Way Up ( a road show with no special effects) on Apple TV and all of a sudden, it felt like something exploded in my family room. First I thought the chimney had crashed into my fire place seriously then my wife pointed it out that it was the Arc. The same thing happened today when I began to watch Mad Max - Fury Road just when the movie began.
Started happening after 14.19.1 update. I replayed the same scenes again when the arc made the exploding sound and couldn’t reproduce.
Everything below is less than a month old which makes up my family room.
LG C2 OLED 55 TV, Apple TV 4K (2022), Sonos Arc, 2 Subs Gen 3 & Gen 2, SL’s as surround.
My bedroom is set up with LG C2 OLED 42 TV, Beam-2, Apple TV 4K (2022) Sub Mini and SL’s as rear. NO ISSUES HERE.
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.
THANK YOU for stepping up to the plate and reaching out to help find a solution! This is more of the level of customer service I expect as a LONG time Sonos customer. As others have mentioned, around 30 minutes always seemed to be the trigger for me. The other “guaranteed” method for me is if I have an Atmos video playing on Apple TV and pause it and let it go to the screensaver, that seemed to always trigger a pop after being on screensaver for 5-10 minutes. I will now look to see if I can find the fastest method to generate this pop so we can hopefully find a resolution for this longstanding bug!
Sorry to hear it, dude. Once you’ve had the first pop, they keep coming back often.
If you want to test, or catch a diagnostic, or get it on video: play an Apple Music spatial audio playlist on your Apple TV. I bet you’ll reliably get a pop inside 30 minutes.
TLoU S2E5 premiered on Feb 10, 2023. Are you telling me support is still doing the “it’s a new problem” song this year!?
Correct
Sorry to hear it, dude. Once you’ve had the first pop, they keep coming back often.
If you want to test, or catch a diagnostic, or get it on video: play an Apple Music spatial audio playlist on your Apple TV. I bet you’ll reliably get a pop inside 30 minutes.
I am playing ‘Made for Spatial Music’ on Apple Music thru my TV and Apple TV. Let’s see. Will post an update.
My Living Room has an older setup as well with Beam, Play-1’s and Gen 2 sub. No serious issues ever for years in that setup.
Many examples, yet not one of them matches the behavior described by this thread? I need at least one valid example of another manufacturer’s product producing this same issue before I can be convinced.
Maybe see if the suggestions in this link below will assist you - it seems some soundbars may make a popping sound in some instances, not that I’ve experienced it with my own Arc or Beam setups here, however this site (and others) do offer some useful suggestions to try:
https://www.theaudiocritic.com/why-does-my-soundbar-make-popping-noises-n25.html
If the matter still persists for you, then you are best to continue to gather the evidence from your own setup, perhaps video & diagnostic data, and continue to report the data gathered to Sonos Support via this LINK
I’m not debating that you are not suffering the issue, I’m just personally not convinced that this is entirely a Sonos issue in everyones case, the description of such incidents do vary, even in this thread… it’s probably best to pursue/report your own ongoing issue.
After months of this problem, I just had an occurrence of the bang that might shed some light on the problem!
It just happened while the Apple TV 4K was on screensaver. I.e., there was no sound playing whatsoever for minutes and then out of nowhere: BANG!
This makes me think it’s a Sonos Arc problem and not related to the sound source.
I currently have my Apple TV Dolby Atmos disabled and my settings set to 4K SDR (60Hz), Chroma 4:4:4 and Match Content Range & Frame Rates set to on. The Dolby Vision is not enabled. However, it is my understanding that with these settings the Apple TV will match whatever video format that is thrown at it. Wouldn’t that mean that it would match content that was in Dolby Vision?
That is exactly the case—if you have your Apple TV set to SDR, it will change to HDR or Dolby Vision depending on the content, and if supported by the TV (or vice versa, if you’re using HDR and the content is SDR).
I’m curious, now that you have it on Port 4 as “Enhanced”, do you still get the options for setting the Apple TV to Dolby Vision, or is it purely HDR and SDR options that are listed? This is more for my understanding of what the different options of “Enhanced” do on Port 3 and Port 4.
If you disable “Match Dynamic Range” — you’ll be locked at whatever you pick as the default format, in your case, 4K60 SDR.
Thank you for pointing out the fact that once I selected Enhanced, the Dolby Vision option no longer exists on the Apple TV settings. Now, only Enable HDR is an option on top (see pics). That answers my concern that the Apple TV would automatically enhance to DV due to the match content being set to on. I understand that is now impossible.
+18
Hi
Same thing has just happened to me, loud pop followed by no sound. Not sure if it's damaged now. Is there any way to check each individual speaker speaker on the arc?
The easiest way is just playing something and putting your ear close to each driver, I’m afraid. You may be able to find a video that plays test tones in 5.1, however - I believe searching for “test” on Netflix will produce some results. Avoid YouTube as they re-encode uploaded 5.1 tracks to stereo (you need 5.1 to test the centre speaker).
Edit: Removed line stating issue was only on XBox
I had time for a small experiment today. I bought a fiber optic HDMI cable to connect the Arc to the TV. Fiber cables contain active chips at each end that convert between electrical and optical signals.
I got the usual pop within half an hour. I believe this eliminates the physical layer of the connection as the problem since there is no electrical connection between the TV (and Apple TV) and the Arc anymore.
Not a huge surprise. I think we are all expecting this to come down to how Sonos decodes Dolby MAT. But there you have it.
I also tried an experiment, I set my HDMI 3 (eARC/ARC) to Enhanced format (Dolby Vision). And when playing DV DA content on my Apple TV with my Apple TV Video format setting to 4K HDR 60, disabling Dolby Vision on my Apple TV. The popping error occurred like clockwork.
Then I changed the HDMI signal format on my HDMI 3 to Enhanced Format without Dolby Vision. With my Apple TV format setting to 4K HDR 60, disabling Dolby Vision on my Apple TV. The popping error did NOT occur, and the Sonos Arc was able to play Dolby Atmos as long as the Dolby Vision was disabled in both my Sony TV HDMI setting and my Apple TV.
This is somewhat confusing — so you attempted to use the “Enhanced (Dolby Vision)” HDMI profile for your Arc, which is connected to HDMI 3 (for eARC reasons), despite that setting being an Input profile i.e. the Arc doesn’t output DV, or even 4K for that matter. Confused as to what difference this would make, unless the Arc is getting heavily confused at the EDID settings 🤔
Also assuming that whilst your Apple TV was set to 4K60 HDR, you also had “Match Dynamic Range” turned off in settings?
I’m assuming user has a Sony TV where you have an edid option to either enable Dolby vision or 4k/120 but not both. User says he gets the error with Dolby vision option enabled but when the TV does not have DV support enabled its fine
Further proof that DV is loosely linked somehow into all of this
I played Apple Music for more than an hour (atmos) for nearly 2 hrs now. No issue.
Hi
i just bought the xbox x , 2 days ago and out of nowhere a very loud pop appeared, so loud it scared the hell out of my kid and my self. This happend now 2 times in 2 days.
for sure something is damaged now.
what wil sonos do to resolve it. Do we need to change a setting to prevent this till a solution is coming.
For sure you could replicate this in your test center?
report 635463561
You know, I can’t help but think that if it’s a known issue, ethically, Sonos should put a warning on the product page. Or maybe mention the malfunction in an FAQ.
Right now we keep having new customers that have to go through all these steps to figure out what’s even going wrong.
Hi
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.
I get the pop on Xbox at 4K60. I always use 4K60 because Sony fibbed about 4K120 support on the 900H TV. It actually displays 4K120 input at 3840x1080, making fine elements such as text and icons blurry. At 4K60 you get full UHD resolution however.
I understand this may never be fixed for me and all the other users in this thread.
I think the time has come for Sonos to acknowledge this problem via press release or product disclaimer. Customers deserve to know before they buy.
+1
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.
What would really be a good test if you can stand it is watch the same 3 episodes again (or at least put them on and listen for the same audio dropouts). That would have every one of the very same variables in place EXCEPT Trueplay. If there are no audio drops with the exact same signals, this concept of “blame AppleTV” or “blame ATMOS” or “Dolby MAT” etc starts getting more meaningfully undermined. And the confidence that perhaps it is something in the Trueplay algorithm that needs Sonos attention would rise.
Thanks for going to the trouble of at least trying my guess. Hopefully a few more with such issues do too and we begin to see a pattern that could lead to an actual remedy vs. expecting a bunch of other players to do something and/or “don’t use ATMOS” and/or “turn off CEC.”
+22
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.
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