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’m still somewhat concerned that this isn’t a Sonos issue, but instead an issue up the chain. Perhaps with the CEC interpretation of MAT, which might be faulty at the point of ‘change’.
If so, Sonos may not be in a position to ‘fix’ this issue, since they’re actually playing what has been handed to them further up the chain.
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!
Interesting about the screensaver thing — I’ve been wondering about this myself for a while. I’ve been curious if it’s been something to do with the source change triggered on the screensaver activation 🤔
I would be interested if the Apple TV is changing dynamic range during this time. Maybe you mentioned it before but what are your video settings? 4K sdr or Dolby vision?
Previously, I was using 4K60 DV with both content match options enabled. I'm now on 4K60 HDR with both options still enabled. Currently rocking without Atmos for a whileC see if I still experience static pops and similar when flicking between content sources (like Netflix’s auto-playing trailers).
I did try it for a day, and got through three movies as above without fail, but then, it might've just been a good day. You're welcome to mirror and let me know your experience.
My Apple TV is on 4K SDR 4:4:4 with dynamic range and frame rate matching, and I haven’t had issues. Sounds to me it’s only a issue when systems are trying to force DV as was the case with my Series X
Correct. As previously mentioned in past posts on here and Reddit, by others and myself. The common factor for this popping error that can easily be reproduced. With 3 components. An Xbox Series X set to Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. A TV that has eARC. And a Sonos Arc.
Within 30 minutes the popping error can be reproduced. This would be classified as a critical “A” bug. Affecting functionality and performance.
Specifically because the Sonos Arc is permanently affected after this error occurs. And the Sonos Arc can no longer play any Dolby Atmos Content from a source outputting a Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos signal.
Whereas the Sonos Arc was able to play Dolby Atmos content from a source outputting a Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos signal prior to an Xbox Series X being connected to the Sonos Arc through an eARC TV and outputting a Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos signal.
This is the language utilized in Quality Assurance Testing format for reporting hardware and software bugs/errors.
As someone has previously mentioned on this thread on others. Why a Sonos technician cannot reproduce this popping error is unknown. It’s been 2 years. This has been reported by multiple customers with the same common denominators. Xbox Series X. eARC TVs. Sonos Arc.
This is a known issue. The only reason I can possibly think of as to why there hasn’t been a software update to address or fix this issue. Is because this is a hardware issue. Once the popping error has occurred on the Sonos Arc. It is permanently damaged.
Happy 1,000 posts everyone!
How do you view the Sonos Pop finally getting media coverage?
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.”
Not actually that difficult as I was watching The Good Place on Netflix and each episode is only 20 minutes long. Watched them through again today and no audio drop outs. Fingers crossed you’ve stumbled across something here. We’re also watching Stateless on Netflix which also gives lots of audio dropouts. Will probably watch a couple of episodes tonight so will report back.
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.
Another Victim here 😞 (from Mexico)
The first time I experienced the (super loud/explosive) pop was when I was navigating the menu of my XBox Series S. (It was soo scary BTW, I almost had a heart attack).
The first thing that crossed my mind was that my 2 days brand new Sonos Arc was dead because that pop literally sounded like something exploded inside, causing physicall damage of the speakers.
I inmediatly googled the issue and found several post here and on Reddit of people having the same issue.
I also had the problem with my Apple TV 2022 hearing weird noises/mini-pops and cuts in Apple Music when listening songs in Dolby Atmos.
Just a moment ago I was watching The Last Of Us (first episode) in HBO Max and having a lot of mini-pops (annoying but tolerable) but in the minute 22 (when we see the infected old lady) again an extremely LOUD and horrible pop happened (I swear my soul leaved my body). Even my dogs went crazy or scared or both.
I ended watching the episode in the native TV App and had no pops but the Sonos App showed only Dolby Digital 5.1 and no Atmos. BTW my TV is a Hisense U8G 65) .
As described in this post, the pop only happens whith dolby Atmos content (or in the Dobly Atmos Mode in the case of X Box Series S).
After disable Atmos in both devices the pop is gone, but of course what is the point of spending this ridicously ammount of money for a product if you can’t use it for what was designed and marketed. Truly shocking that the recommendation of the Sonos support was turning off Dolby Atmos (a key feature) 🫠
I am honestly very dissapointed of Sonos and now I regret of buying this thing because it’s celar that the company is aware of the problem and after all this time not even a formal statement or answer has been released (and not to mention a fix for the issue). For what I see the users are the ones who are making an effort to try to solve this or at least know the cause of the problem.
I will surely going to end returning tIhe Arc to Amazon before it Kills me of a scare.
There’s a solution posted a few posts up. Did you try it?
Yes, i just disabled CEC (both Apple TV and TV), and still had the Loud Pop in the HBO Max (The Last Of Us) in Atmos.
Gone back to 5.1 too 😢
Did you fully reboot your TV and devices after disabling CEC? This is important as CEC settings seem to hang around as the TV never acutally gets turned off….it only turns off the screen
+18
Hi
Has this been confirmed to be an Xbox issue though? I didn't have this problem using my LG soundbar and I can't find any other issues online apart from Sonos.
Apologies - I re-read the topic and noticed the Apple TV reports too.
I can only recommend that anyone who experiences this immediately submits a diagnostic and then gets in touch with our technical support team when convenient.
Sonos needs to put a disclaimer on the atmos feature of the Arc.
I agree. Even if this isn’t a Sonos issue, there should be a warning to consumers that Atoms doesn’t work right with Apple TV and Xbox. That’s just being honest at this point.
I had the same issue last night, twice whilst mid stream on Netflix. I reported through support and was provided with a reference. I have got a new TV with Atmos/EARC capability.
I have been advised to turn off Atmos which defeats the point of paying a significant amount of money for this functionality and not being able to use it.
I was surprised reading the comments on here as to how long this had been going on for.
Curious..what tv do you have and I take it you have nothing else hooked up to your system?
I have a Samsung 65QN90A and this happened on the native Netflix app on the TV - nothing else connected
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.
It’s great that there’s coverage, but I’d love to see others than Sonos looking in to it. My current fear is it’s a failure of CEC handling format changes in a MAT container, and the result is that Sonos (and other audio sinks) are just playing what they’re being handed by eARC as part of CEC. Always easiest to lay the blame on the last device, but figuring out whether or not that ‘blame’ deserves to be there or not is a question as yet unanswered. Nor have I investigated the user agreement when companies implement standards such as CEC with sub specifications such as ARC and eARC. It’s possible, in my mind, that there is a legal clause there that says ‘you can feed us back data for us to look at and ‘fix’ , but you can not publicly point fingers’ or some such.
Which of course raises the issue of ‘if it is a failure in CEC’s handling of format changes in a MAT container’, how do all of these TVs get updated with newer, more robust versions. And when?
Step 1 is identifying the issue, and where it lies. Hopefully this community has provided enough detail to assist in that. Where it goes from there really depends on where the issue really lies. If it was Sonos, I’d honestly would have expected a quicker ‘fix’ to be released. Since that hasn’t happened (yet), it makes me wonder how far up the chain it goes, how complex the issue really is, and who is ultimately going to be responsible for fixing it.
Adding my identical experience to this thread.
Sonos Arc. Xbox Series X with Dolby Atmos selected. CEC disabled. LGC1 utilizing eArc.
Loud pop (like a gunshot) whenever I leave a game running Dolby Atmos and return to the Xbox dashboard. Horrifying every time.
Grateful for RC12’s advocacy on this thread.
C’mon Sonos.
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.
+3
I reckon that almost every report I have ever read about this ‘popping’ issue mentioned online in relation to Soundbar’s (not just Sonos ones, but others brands too) that somewhere in the HT setup, is either an XBox or an Apple TV-4K (or both) - those two connected products seem to be a common denominator and it’s certainly happening with other manufacturers Soundbars, if you look online. It makes me wonder if it’s not a Sonos-owned issue🤔??
It might also ‘perhaps’ explain why Sonos is not making any public comment about the issue, if it is partner-related.
And the common denominator between Xbox and Apple TV 4K (and Roku it seems), is that they all use Dolby MAT as the audio container.
At my wits end with this issue guys. Over the last month I completed a RMA process to eliminate the possibility that this is a hardware issue. Everything was working great with new Arc and hdmi cable and all of a sudden this weekend, two pops occurring the same way on the series X (both when playing a upconverted dolby atmos game, and then exiting back to the Home Screen)
This now makes 2 Arcs, 3 different HDMI cables, 2 different TVs (Sony x900H, LG C1) and two different source devices (Latest ATV4K, Xbox Series X) and I’m getting the pop on every combination. Convinced it’s the Dolby MAT container but it’s unclear if it’s a source issue or a Sonos one
Opened a ticket with Microsoft to see if they are aware of any issues that exist on their end, not to mention multiple calls into Sonos all which have not produced an official acknowledgment of the problem or ETA for a fix
I do have difficulty believing with this many people all having the same issues that nobody from Sonos has been unable to recreate it even in random play testing
Will try again with support Monday, in the meantime my two failures have the following diagnostics
1981635273
1052219663
Hang in there guys with enough calls to support we can bring light to this issue
+18
I’d rather not, lol.
Just had the pop again while on the Apple TV screensaver, i.e. with no sound playing. As instructed by support last time, I ran a diagnostic and called it in immediately. I can also confirm that switching to Sonos in-app music and back to TV sound brings the sound back. So that’s faster than a reset or power cycle, you all.
This time support instructed me to stop using the HDMI cable that came with my Arc and buy a third-party cable. I’m supposed to call back if the pop happens again.
Fenway, great response. It’s happened twice in the past week both times with Get Back on Disney+.
I only disabled CEC on my Xbox, which is where I initially heard the pop. No issues as of yet and it’s been about a month. I didn’t disable CEC on my Apple TV and so far, including Last of Us, no pops.
Just had the pop again while on the Apple TV screensaver, i.e. with no sound playing. As instructed by support last time, I ran a diagnostic and called it in immediately. I can also confirm that switching to Sonos in-app music and back to TV sound brings the sound back. So that’s faster than a reset or power cycle, you all.
This time support instructed me to stop using the HDMI cable that came with my Arc and buy a third-party cable. I’m supposed to call back if the pop happens again.
Glad to hear that worked for you as well. The last time I commented I was using a 3rd party cable from Amazon basics. It's an Hdmi 2.1 cable just like the one they provide, and it also happened when I was using their cable. I have changed some settings since it last happened to me and will update if I don't hear the pop for a while.
No pop in the last four days, including both Apple TV and Xbox usage. It sucks not having Xbox CEC (used to be that I didn’t need the TV remote at all), but it’s a price I’m willing to pay and I don’t want to risk the pop coming back after the bad times over the last two years. I’m really hoping that Sonos is paying attention and eventually giving everybody an official statement on the cause and resolution of the pop.
Just because some upstream devices don’t trigger the Sonos Pop in no way implies that the bug isn’t in the Arc/Beam 2. Two facts point strongly, to the edge of conclusivity, to Sonos:
Considering that
Hi everyone
just wanted to give an update to my post 8 days back about the issue maybe not being a Dolby atmos issue entirely and could be due to devices / TVs pushing through a Dolby Vision / Dolby Atmos signal together
I disabled the force Dolby vision option in the Xbox Series X and re-enabled Atmos and after a week of playing I have yet to encounter the “pop” that we have described on this thread. I would usually encounter this at least once a day when quitting games and returning to the home screen
I think there could be merit to this approach, but obviously need the community to try this as well. Also not ruling out that bug fixes from the October Xbox update and Sonos 14.18 could of fixed this issue entirely from their end as they have also been released during this timeframe
Will keep everybody updated!
Just checked my XBox settings... Can't find this force Dolby vision setting... Please can you tell me where to find it?
I believe it’s called Force HDR. If you also have Dolby Vision enabled it auto forces Dolby Vision instead of its HDR equivalent
Thanks for chiming in with info on a third-party cable. BTW everybody, they have a link to this thread in my case ID. If everybody makes sure to reference this thread and have it added to their case, it might make it easier for Sonos to track the problem across users.
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