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samro1094
Contributor I
December 8, 2020

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

  • December 8, 2020
  • 1202 replies
  • 90688 views

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.

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    Pinned Reply By Corry P

    Hi Everyone!

    Good news! We are pleased to share that our team has identified a fix for the popping sound on Arc and it will be shipped to all customers as part of a software release today, Thursday Nov 16 at 09:30 ET, 14:30 GMT, 15:30 CET. Please note that some app stores may take an extra hour or two for it to become available.

    During our investigation we uncovered a rare bug that impacts how Sonos Arc and Beam (Gen 2) in certain home theater configurations process Dolby MAT, a streaming technology which is used to deliver Dolby Atmos audio over HDMI. Occasionally a Sonos product will receive a corrupted audio segment from an external source and needs to filter out unwanted audio data. The bug we identified was allowing our Dolby decoder to play audible errors on certain home theater setups rather than concealing them. The solution we’ve built and tested improves our Dolby decoder so it better filters out corrupt audio data that can manifest as a popping sound. We’ll continue to monitor customer feedback closely after the fix has been released and ship additional updates if necessary.

    We strive to deliver the best listening experience possible and work to address major issues that impact our customers. We apologize for the disruption this bug has caused and want to thank you for your patience while our team developed a fix.

    We would also like to thank our community users for their detailed setup information and steps to reproduce the issue, which were helpful to us in uncovering the cause of the bug.

     

    1202 replies

    Show previous replies
    TheFlamesFan
    Enthusiast II
    March 22, 2022

    Sure would be nice to hear an official statement from Sonos on this.  It’s the bare minimum that I would expect from such a high end audio product


    We all know these boards are monitored, so the fact that people continue to have problems with so Sonos intervention or guidance is really sad.  The problem will not go away on its own

      rchang
      Lyricist I
      March 24, 2022

      Same issue reoccurring since few months ago and it seems more frequent recently.

       

      Sonos Arc / Sub (Gen3) / One SL’s (Gen 2 x2)

      TV is Sony X900H

      Source is Apple TV 4K

      Diagnostic number 2051423738

      Obi-Wan Aloni
      Obi-Wan Aloni
      Trending Lyricist I
      March 26, 2022

      I made a comment here 4 days ago. I reached out to support (case no. 03802500), rebooted my system and was told most chances it won’t recur.

      And here I am again… However, no rep to help me out this time.. New diagnostic # 514444573

       

       

      cornelius5
      Lyricist I
      March 26, 2022

      Same issue here. 

      Loud pop and complete loss of audio on my Sonos Arc within a streaming session on my Xbox Series X. 

      LG OLED TV from 2020 with eARC.

      Diagnostic number: 1635222821

      Obi-Wan Aloni
      Obi-Wan Aloni
      Trending Lyricist I
      March 28, 2022

      Reached out to Support again, I gotta say that the reps are really professional and kind and that the experience is efficient. I appreciate not having to repeat myself and seeing a resourceful person on the other end of the conversation.

      We did a factory reset this time. If the issue recurs, I will most probably have to replace my Arc. Hoping it won’t recur but I’m doubtful. I also hope that if needed, a replacement would help. Looking at the comments here, seeing how many people experience this, and all have a shared scenario of streaming content through Xbox Series-X on an eArc output; I doubt it will help too.

      The Service rep who assisted me promised to escalate this thread internally. I hope someone from Sonos can comment on this.

      jpmarcum
      Contributor I
      March 30, 2022

      UPDATE & ADVICE: after a somewhat frustrating experience with support (call got dropped, email that was promised never arrived, they wanted me to send a video of it which seemed silly since this is such a widely known issue, the pop actually happened twice while we were on the call and their diagnostics couldn’t pick it up) I followed their advice to try a new HDMI cable between TV & ARC. So far, fingers crossed, this has worked.

      The HDMI cable I had been using was the one that came with the ARC - perhaps Sonos shipped a bunch of defective HDMI cables? Anyway, it’s worth a shot to just swap in a new cable and a lot easier to just try it than call support.

      MacD2022
      Lyricist III
      April 2, 2022

      I have a Sony X85 91j with a second gen apple tv 4k.  I set the HDMI interface to Dolby Vision on the Google TV.  The TV was fully up to date and Apple tv is as well.   The apple TV was set to Dolby Atmos as auto and Dolby Vision.  I have a Sonos Arc with  2 Gen 3 Subs and the SL rears using the eARC interface off the TV.  I have the same loud popping sound when playing any movie with ATMOS off the apple tv.  If I use the built in apps on the tv or a Amazon Firestick 4k Max I did not experience the issue.  It has to be something with the appletv.  Im not sure if Sonos or Apple needs to do the update to correct this?

      PadraigOD
      Lyricist I
      April 2, 2022

      UPDATE & ADVICE: after a somewhat frustrating experience with support (call got dropped, email that was promised never arrived, they wanted me to send a video of it which seemed silly since this is such a widely known issue, the pop actually happened twice while we were on the call and their diagnostics couldn’t pick it up) I followed their advice to try a new HDMI cable between TV & ARC. So far, fingers crossed, this has worked.

      The HDMI cable I had been using was the one that came with the ARC - perhaps Sonos shipped a bunch of defective HDMI cables? Anyway, it’s worth a shot to just swap in a new cable and a lot easier to just try it than call support.


      Changed mine yesterday and no luck. Getting seriously annoyed with this.  There won’t be any more Sonos purchases till this is resolved. 

      LG C1 with the Xbox Series X being the main culprit  

       

      Ken_Griffiths
      Ken_Griffiths
      April 2, 2022

      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: 

      https://youtu.be/z0iFqLokyUQ

      https://youtu.be/PJJfhSi2Fdw

      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.

       

        scotsman1000
        Trending Lyricist I
        April 3, 2022

        Loud popping on my Sonos Arc here too followed by sound loss playing Atmos content from AppleTV. So annoying.

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