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.
For what it's worth I use a Playbar with the Series X and never heard a similar noise, never had loss of audio etc.
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 haven’t experienced the issue. I suspect that SONOS licensed a chipset and decoder software that are included in ARC and other manufacturers using the chipset or decoder are at risk too. This would explain why a few other devices are experiencing the ‘POP’. The pop could be some sort of software overrun or perhaps a variable (from chip to chip) sensitivity to voltage or temperature and AMP’s environment is at an edge.
Since I cannot observe the issue, is there any dependency on the movie? For example, if you replay a ‘POP’ movie, does the event tend to repeat? Does it repeat at the same spot? Does one movie tend to predispose a following movie to ‘POP’?
It would help if ‘POP’ victims kept good logs. The log should be verbose, keeping track of time of day, temperature, play time into the movie, ARC Volume setting, etc. It would be best to submit a diagnostic and include the confirmation number in the log. If you are regularly hit with these events, the developers could be able to provide special builds and access to enhanced diagnostic procedures.
Everyone should keep an open mind. Once you decide that the problem must be […] or cannot be […], you are likely to be blindsided. One should not assume that there is a single cause. It’s possible that a string of events must occur in a certain order before there is a ‘POP’. This is why logging is important.
Coming in with a one month update since I decided to turn off “Auto HDR” (which in tandem with Dolby Vision forced Dolby Vision for all games) on the series X, and I have been pop free the entire time.
For those that still get the issue with Dolby he series x, what are your settings and where do you get the pop? (During gameplay, streaming movies or music, or returning to the home screen)
I am becoming somewhat confident we are stating to get to the root of the problem and perhaps the fault might not lie entirely in Sonos court. I do think that Sonos could deal with the pop exception a little better though.
I have a Samsung S95B with HDR, HDR10, VRR, ALLM, and sometimes 120Hz enabled and I get the pop issue while playing games. It is not exclusive to Dolby Vision as I don’t have it enabled (tv doesn’t support it). I haven’t tested extensively beyond that in movies, etc because tbh I’m keeping it in Dolby Digital mode most of the time now for fear of damaging my Arc.
I got the pop during gameplay on the Xbox Series X just last month. I was excited about maybe being pop safe without DV based on the posts here, but there it was. Took maybe 20-30 minutes before it popped.
So I’ve been following this thread for a while I got my arc on Black Friday and experienced the popping noise whilst playing my Xbox on the first day. After reading this thread I disabled Dolby vision as suggested by a poster. Since doing so I haven’t had a pop. This might just be luck and it’s a shame to have to sacrifice having nicer visuals for the sake of preserving the soundbar. Let’s hope there’s an update soon.
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.
No reply as of yet, imagine it’ll be tomorrow now. I’ll post any update I get here 🙂
I’m experiencing the same popping issue on my Arc and can reproduce the POP on-demand using the Windows 11 System Sound control test panel and selecting “Dolby Atmos for home theatre” for Spatial Audio. If someone from Sonos would like to contact me I’d be glad to give a demo and do any kind of tracing that might help them resolve the issue sooner rather than later!
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.
It’s entirely possible that it isn’t a Sonos issue at all, but the Sonos is just playing the ‘pop’ signal being sent to it by the TV, which could just be passing on a signal from the originating devices.
Looking at the thread on the Sonos subreddit, I'm surprised to see so many users who had the bang once or twice and it went away; or who have configurations identical to ours but no problems.
Could this be just specific Arcs malfunctioning? Has anybody had their unit exchanged and the problem came back?
If this were as straightforward as "we need new units", that would blow my mind.
I had a replacement sent to me from Sonos and still the same issue. I’m keeping mine because a) it’s specific to Dolby MAT vs DD+ and b) compared to a HT-A7000 (which I tried as a possible replacement), the Sonos killed it. While disabling Atmos on my Xbox and Apple TV sucks, the bar is fantastic and has a fairly good app experience. When it works, it works.
As I’ve said before this is a Sonos hardware bug that can be recreated with the same parameters 100% of the time.
Each time I read how we have to turn off the feature that we specifically paid for is infuriating. And the constant naysayers who are likely Sonos affiliated people is underhanded and shows what we the consumer, what kind of company we invested in.
This is a 2 year going to be 3 year issue. There is Zero excuse and Sonos is Fully aware of this issue. They have contracts with their manufacturers. This is just business. I’ve worked for large corporations in the past that release faulty hardware and software due to contracts with manufacturers and retailers.
It is far more profitable to have the likelihood of poor individuals who made the choice to plug in an Xbox Series X that DOES cause permanent damage to the Sonos Arc, rendering it completely incapable of playing Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision content concurrently from any source.
An issue that did not appear for years prior to plugging in a Sonos Arc.
This is my 3rd Arc. I unfortunately recommended the Sonos Arc to my father who currently has zero issues because I was able to warn him not to plug in an Xbox Series X that my younger half brother has.
Something we all could have benefited from bad we been given notice. Enough with the Sonos isn’t the issue nonsense.
2 of my Arcs now have this issue. Because I like so many of you thought, this might be a singular issue. As there were two releases of the Arc, one with the more expensive packaging and then the “streamlined” “uniform” box aka cheaper packaged one.
This is NOT specific to certain Sonos Arcs. This IS an issue that occurs to ALL Sonos Arcs. Considering the far fewer sales of the Xbox Series X, this is why there hasn’t been more reports than the many that already exist for over two years now.
One final note, this issue has never happened with my PS5 playing on the Sonos Arc. Which I had over a year before I got an Xbox Series X.
I still argue against your theory regarding XSX but something did change.
As I’ve said before, like you, I had period where the Arc worked fine with Atmos. Since I purchased in Dec 2020, up until around September 2021, I had no issues. Again, during this time, the Bravia X90H line, and Apple TV, and the Sonos Arc all had major OS updates. One of which most certainly introduced the issue. No change in my hardware configuration, no connected devices or cables changed or swapped. Just one day… BANG.
I’d be interested to know if you purchased an XSX around September/October 2021.
I have used my Series X with my Arc for 8 months before I heard my first and so far only pop. I don’t know what changed in those 8 months but I don’t necessarily blame Xbox
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?
I am in same boat but with Sonos Arc, and have an option to get a replacement. I am highly doubtful if that will fix this issue. I use Apple TV 4k and PS5. Yesterday it popped for a second and then works fine after that. This is really stupid but I do love the sound from Arc :(
Tick Tock and still we wait for the fix to arrive.
+3
None of those four examples fit the behavior described in this thread.
The only thing any of them have in common is some sort of general “popping sound”. Users here are reporting that their Sonos soundbar, when playing Atmos content from an Apple TV or XBOX, makes a loud noise and crashes, requiring a power cycle to fix. I’ve yet to see an example this exact same behavior reproduced by any other soundbar.
Those were just some ‘examples’ of quite a few sites that I came across during a web search and it’s often different makes of soundbar with either the XBox or Apple-T`V.. if anything, folk should be speaking to Microsoft or Apple, I think… (Unless it’s a Dolby codec issue)?
It has to be a codec issue. The single consistent factor between Apple TV, Xbox One X, and the Roku devices is that they all use the MAT container for Atmos. Disabling Atmos, and the problem goes away on Apple TV (albeit, defeats the point of having Atmos).
I can confirm that the “pop” is caused by, or creates, a loss of signal with the Arc (and I believe the Beam, as this has shown issues also). Following the pop, the Sonos diagnostics show that the signal being received has been dropped entirely.
Who to blame is certainly tricky; Apple and Microsoft are, for sure, the ones creating the signal so potentially introducing something wiggy in it. But then are Sony knackering the pass through some how, and then is it a matter of Sonos not being able to recover from a small blip?
The problem is for me, at least, that Apple released tvOS 15 around the same time that Sonos released it’s major update for DTS, and also around the same time Sony released it’s Android 11 firmware for it’s TVs — which makes pegging which software update to blame difficult. I’ve experienced bugginess in Sony’s firmware since the update too with the TV flat out freezing, so who knows…
From what I’ve heard, these issues weren’t an issue on tvOS 14. Unfortunately, there is no away to downgrade the Apple TV 4K due to a lack of USB port…
+18
Hi
If you are able to produce the sound at will, then I direct you to my earlier post:
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.
No switch here. Apple TV on HDMI 2, XBOX on 4.
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.
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?
I understand where you’re coming from. I really want to upgrade my rears from Sonos One to Era 300.
But if Sonos won’t even put a disclaimer or FAQ on the Arc so that buyers can know about the potential problem with Dolby MAT sources, how can I trust them to buy more equipment?
Product mistakes happen. However, when I’ve had an affected Apple product (widespread MacBook mainboard problem back in the day) or Microsoft product (red ring of death), there was public communication and they offered repair or replacement programs to make it right. That’s part of the reason I continue to buy Apple and Microsoft hardware.
+18
I’m glad to hear that there are no audio distortions after hearing this “pop”. If this issue happens repeatedly, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system.
+3
We have been so far unable to reproduce it ourselves - thus the need for engineers to contact anyone who can reproduce it reliably.
I would get it occassionally with PC → LG CX → Sonos Arc
After I got rid of my LG CX and replaced with a monitor (PC → HDFury Arcana → Sonos Arc) I found that I can now reproduce the popping at will by running the Windows System Sound Test:
System → Sound → Arcana Properties → Select “Dobly Atmos for home theatre” and click TEST.
The pop happens consistently. I’m glad to put in a case if the engineers want to get on a call and monitor in real-time.
This sounds promising. Hopefully the fact that it is an Atmos test can flag *specifically* what’s causing the failure.
Makes one wonder if it’s an issue with the signal coming in from the CEC, and not a Sonos problem per se, especially given the reports that it happens on other company’s sound bars as reported up thread. Perhaps something the CEC alliance needs to answer with regards to MAT? That could be why Sonos hasn’t been able to come up with a firm answer….
Neither one of you have ever been affected by the pop, right? You just like to frequent every thread about it emphasizing that it’s probably not Sonos’ fault.
We’ve been down the path of these isolated reports. They may use the word ‘pop’ but are describing fundamentally different symptoms.
Look at this thread. We’ll be breaking 1,000 posts eventually.
Hi
We are still looking into this situation, but I don't have an update to share with you at this time.
You know this is almost more frustrating to hear than just radio silence. Two years into this thread and “We’re aware of the issue and are looking into it” simply isn’t good enough.
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