I may not have $1,700 to drop on another sound system. But I am genuinely happy for you that you can now enjoy Atmos without the constant dread of a Sonos Pop on your mind.

For now I have to hold out hope that Sonos will do right by us. 

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:

1. The vast heterogeneity of source devices triggering the Sonos Pop. Xbox and Apple TV passing through LG, Sony, and Samsung TVs. Some Samsung TVs even with native apps. The counterfactual hypothesis is that all of these makes are bugged while Sonos is blameless.
2. Switching to any other brand soundbar eliminates the pop.

Considering that @Airgetlam and @Ken_Griffiths have never been affected by the pop, yet they spend extensive time in any thread discussing it trying to divert from Sonos, my hypothesis is that we are looking at an undeclared conflict of interest.

In my experience, once one starts starts with the ad hominem accusations of others of being shills, they’ve lost the argument.  Shills or not, if you cannot dispute the facts, then you cannot dispute the facts.

I also find it highly ironic that in the same threads where people are asking for “official” updates or statements from verified Sonos personnel, others are vilified for being “shills” with absolutely no proof they are working for Sonos.

I have tried, unsuccessfully, to apply to work at Sonos. I am a user, just like everyone else. All Sonos employees are required to identify themselves as such in their avatar. 
 

I trust your word. But just to clarify to you, I wasn’t hypothesizing something as scandalous as you being a sock puppet for a Sonos employee.

It’s just, to me, your approach comes across as trying to latch onto any evidence that this might not be a Sonos problem while simultaneously encouraging affected users to not post about it publicly and instead reach out to Sonos one-by-one.

So the impression formed for me that you may have a friend that works at a store selling Sonos systems, or works for Sonos itself, or you have been a beta tester and want to maintain that status, or a similar conflict of interest.

Obviously, I was wrong. However, I think it is possible that you come across similarly to other posters. As such I think it is great and productive that could dispel any such concerns.

@ProfessorFrag 

I’m personally retired (15 years this July) and live with my Wife (Jane) here in the U.K. (Midlands area). Our children have flown the nest long ago … I am not, nor have I ever been, employed by Sonos.

I, and several members of our family & friends, are admittedly Sonos enthusiasts and between us all, own a fair amount of different Sonos products. My own reasons for hanging around various threads here are mostly two-fold… to try to help fellow Sonos users and to also keep abreast of the current hardware and software developments.

Amongst other things, I’m also a bit of a home-network enthusiast too these days and so hang around other forums with a similar purpose in mind, that’s mostly to improve me own knowledge in this areas and to keep up-to-date with home WiFi mesh networks.

I’m not sure how to begin to convince you that that is the truth, but it is what it is‍♂️ …and you’re correct when you say I’ve not had the Arc popping issue here with our Sonos Arc/Surrounds/Sub, but as mentioned many times here, I do not own an Apple TV 4K, or an XBox - so have not ever come across any ‘popping’ noise as described in this thread.

I have come across other people though, who got rid of their XBox and Apple TV 4K and replaced them with similar hardware and not had the popping issue since.

So I’m still not sure, personally speaking, that this issue is entirely down to Sonos and hopefully I am free to express that personal view in the thread here, as there is evidence in the posts that the same/similar popping noise has been encountered on other brands of Soundbar/Receiver whilst playing LPCM uncompressed Atmos audio from an Apple TV 4K and/or Xbox. 

I hope that clears up any thoughts you may have about my purpose for being part of the Sonos community here.

I’m sorry to hear you’ve been affected. Once the Sonos Pop has struck, there is no way to go back. 

Some of us have had success with keeping it from triggering by disabling certain features on our devices. Unfortunately there isn’t one approach of that that’s worked for everyone. We just know too little. 
 

What are all the devices you use?

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.

There haven’t been any updates as of yet. I also haven’t heard a thing despite following up with them by email regarding an open ticket I have with Sonos. 

I like to think @Corry P would come in here and tell us if Sonos had any hope that they had fixed the pop. 

I asked an online AI about this issue and the reply was this shown below (summarised)…

…..

When playing LPCM Atmos audio to a soundbar, the popping noise output is caused by the audio format's metadata. LPCM Atmos audio contains metadata that instructs the soundbar to switch between different audio channels and speaker configurations. This switching process can cause a brief interruption in the audio signal, resulting in a popping noise.

To prevent this popping noise, it is recommended to use an HDMI connection between the source device and the soundbar. This allows for the audio and metadata to be transmitted together, reducing the likelihood of interruptions in the signal.

…..

Make of it what you will, but it left me with the impression that the metadata is sometimes arriving at the speaker out of sync and causing the issue. If that’s the case not sure how Sonos could fix this, as any attempt to buffer the audio would throw the video on screen out of sync.

Maybe decent (short) high speed HDMI cables and an audio extractor, like an Arcana HDFury would both help improve things, bypassing the TV altogether?

I don’t suffer this issue, but thought I would just mention the response I got back from my AI search.

Atmos works in many configurations. But there really should be a disclaimer that it may not work with Apple TV or Xbox, whatever the underlying reason. 
 

I like to think @Ken_Griffiths and @Airgetlam would even agree with that. 

Pop is an understatement. We tested again last week and BANG is a much more appropriate word for what happens. 

I would say that the Arc definitely supports the advertised Atmos audio in the form of Dolby TrueHD (uncompressed) and Dolby Digital Plus (compressed), as I have used/use both those codecs and not seen an issue with those formats. There’s no pop/bang noise at all. So any mention by others here that the Sonos soundbars do not support Atmos, as advertised, is a non-starter in my book, as clearly Atmos audio works just fine on Sonos Soundbars for the majority.

I’ve also not personally had any issue with LPCM 5.1 audio (in general) when it comes to surround sound audio, or other surround sound audio, like DTS 5.1 - So it seems to be that issue only occurs with LPCM (Atmos) uncompressed audio only. I think many perhaps might now agree with that comment.

The AI search I mentioned earlier, seems to infer it’s the ‘sending’ device that’s sending the Atmos metadata, required for Atmos channel distribution, which is arriving at the (destination) soundbar out of sync when using the LPCM codec and that, in-turn, is then causing the ‘pop’, or ‘bang’, noise. 

If the AI response is correct (and I have no supporting evidence to say it is at this point in time) then I’m not sure how other Soundbar manufacturers may have fixed the issue (thats if they have?), as it appears to me to be outside ANY soundbars capability to make that Atmos metadata arrive alongside the sent audio, in perfect sync. 

Anyhow those are my thoughts and I’m just throwing it about here for discussion, as when I read the AI answer to my question, it just seemed that it was a somewhat plausible explanation. If it is true, I’ve no idea how to fix the issue, that’s something that the software/hardware Engineers will have to try to resolve. I’m not (yet) convinced though that it’s an issue that (just) Sonos should be solving, particularly as Atmos audio is working fine with all the Sonos Soundbars when using the mentioned Dolby codecs

In relation to the AI response mentioned earlier, I think what this Sonos Support Page (link below) mentions is also quite interesting too…

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/supported-home-theater-audio-formats

As the footnote highlights the Atmos format used by Apple TV and other devices within the Dolby MAT container and make reference to the ‘Atmos object data’.

There probably needs to be a warning: ‘Crunchy, Raw, Unboned Real Dead Frog’….but only if it’s an issue in Sonos’ software, and it isn’t just playing a pop being handed it by the CEC /ARC signal by the TV set. 

Doesn’t really matter whose fault it is. Customers deserve to know before they buy. 

For all I care they could write it up as “Xbox and Apple TV send flawed Atmos signals that may produce an incompatibility with Arc. And they should feel bad.”

It seems unfair that Sonos knows of many users being affected, often not until after the return period, and there’s no official acknowledgement.

Not specifically ‘no’ and my own reasons for saying that, is because generally speaking, manufactures normally only state what their products do support in their marketing literature and not what they don’t support, (otherwise that would be quite an exhaustive list in some cases). Sonos do not disclaim that they do not support DTS:X audio, or various other codecs, for example. It would seem odd to disclaim just this one specific issue and, of course, it appears the matter is still being investigated anyway at the moment.

Sonos Staff have advised users here in the community that they should use LPCM 5.1 surround audio from these 3rd-party devices instead, whilst the matter is being investigated.
 

My god the amount hubris…. I can’t even reply to this absolute nonsense. 

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. 

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.  

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.

Hi. I came across this post from Reddit. I just had this “pop” issue with my beam gen 2 while watching the new transformers movie on my Apple TV 4K and Sony 900h. This has never occurred with any other Atmos streaming. I haven’t changed any settings either. What’s the troubleshooting for this? Or am I understanding that there’s no fix and I own a brick now if I want to play atmos content?

Apparently Sony dropped a beta update today for the PS5 to enable Dolby Atmos for games. Anyone have access to the beta and has been able to test if the popping issue is prevalent on the PS5? 

Will definitely try once I have access to the beta. PS5 doesn’t have Dolby Vision (should that be involved in the Dolby Atmos pop), but will be eager to test regardless.