Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

I still get the loud pop (“pop” is really underselling it) multiple times a week when listening to Atmos content. I get it both on Apple TV and Xbox One Series X. I’ve even gotten it on the Apple TV screensaver. Even though it doesn’t have sound, I guess it counts as Atmos.

Sonos has not been helpful in the matter. I didn’t keep up with this thread enough to be in the know, but do I understand it correctly that they are acknowledging the problem now but pointing the finger at other vendors?

Because this has to stop. I can’t even relax during Atmos anymore because in the back of my mind I’m just waiting for the pop! Are there other forums tracking this? YouTube videos? Is there collective action about this anywhere? 

I’ve not seen any official position in it, either recognizing, or deflecting it.

I’m personally of the opinion that the “pop” is being generated up stream, as is the stopping of further signal , and the Sonos is merely playing what it is receiving from the TV. 

But then again, I’ve not had this experience, so my opinion is not very valuable. 

In all honesty, I’ve not seen a lot of data being passed to Sonos after such an event, so I wonder if they’re having difficulty reproducing the issue, so that they can ‘fix’ it at all. If they can. 

I just have a hard time believing this, because if it WAS truly the AppleTV generating the POP, then ALL vendors that have ATMOS setups would also play the loud pop, however if that were the case it would be all over news media outlets everywhere.  The fact that this seems isolated to Sonos products tells me its on Sonos to fix, which it doesn’t seem they are likely to do at this point.

Certainly possible, although most of the posts I’ve seen have been from XBoxes, not from Apple TV’s. I’ve got two Arcs connected to Apple TV’s and haven’t experienced this issue.

At the end of the day. the Arc is a relatively “dumb” device, at the end of a chain. 

But I surely would love to see more folks presenting Sonos with data about this via diagnostics, so that there could be an official announcement one way or the other. 

Right now, it’s 80% in my mind that it’s an issue upstream from Sonos. But that does leave 20% that it’s a Sonos issue. The proof would be in the diagnostics (hopefully) and a statement from Sonos that they’ve been able to track it down and are working on it.

My experience in working with software engineers is they don’t really react all that well to “me too” posts, and are much more interested in having hard data from a diagnostic, so that they have something to look at. 

Note that I’m absolutely not saying this isn’t an issue, clearly it is. The question is, at least in my mind, as to where the issue is.  

I’ve submitted diagnostics multiple times immediately after the pop. Tech support took down the numbers but didn’t seem that interested.

They asked me to videotape it happening but I don’t know of a way to make it happen on command. 

I hope they’ve passed that data on to the engineers. Thank you for trying to be part of a solution!

I’ve submitted diagnostics 6-7 times on here, the phone & chat. Each time every support ‘tech’ is completely clueless and this has severely lowered my faith in Sonos. Quit frankly, I’m disgusted. 
 

I’ve had to direct all of these support people to this thread just to prove that I’m not crazy and not alone. They all try and send me down the same rabbit holes, wanting me to go through their stock instructions on cable replacement, player rebooting and factory resetting. Which by the way, I had done all of them many months ago. 
 

I agree with previous comments that if this was an AppleTV & XBox issue we’d be hearing about it effecting other sound bars. If anyone from Sonos is reading this, please comment on this thread to at least ease the minds of all of your great customers who are feeling abandoned on this issue. An issue that involves your most premium product purchased by your most premium customers. 

Hi @William_61 et al

We are aware of this behaviour and are investigating it, but we do not have any additional information to share on a resolution at this time. 

We are also aware of other manufacturer brands experiencing the same problem. Some users have reported it with in-built TV apps, so it is not limited to X-Box and Apple TV owners.

The issue only happens when playing Atmos content, so in the meantime, you can prevent this from happening by disabling Atmos audio on the TV or source device - not ideal, I know, but if it has happened to you before and you are concerned about it happening again, this step would prevent it.

I hope this helps.

Thank you @Corry P for your reply. It helps a lot knowing this issue is being investigated.
 

I had been told by Sonos Support that the latest update 14.12 was set to address the issue. After the update I re-enabled the Atmos audio on my ATV4K only to have the pop 30 minutes into my Atmos show. I’ve dis-engaged it since. 
 

One request I have is that you or someone else from Sonos could post here on occasion to update us on any progress or if a solution had been found. That would be great. Thanks again. 

First of all, THANK YOU for at least acknowledging the issue, that is a first major step to put consumer minds at ease a little.  I perfectly understand things taking time (software developer here) but just want to know that the issue is at least being worked on, and if Sonos is sure it is not their issue, then we need to be able to know what to tell other manufacturers (i.e. Apple/Microsoft) so that we can get a resolution at some point.  As many have reported, $800 is no small chunk of change to spend on something that has a glaring issue, so we want to at least know that things are being looked into so we can expect some sort of resolution at some point.

Now for others, I have done some more troubleshooting on my side and noticed after a factory reset of my TV (Sony XBR75X90CH) the issue hasn’t YET repeated.  Now, a setting IS different this time in that when I enabled eARC, it didn’t automatically change the HDMI3 channel to “Enhanced Format”, and it is still in “Standard Format”, which according to Sony means it is running in HDMI 2.0 mode instead of HDMI 2.1 for backwards compatibility.  Now, the strange thing is, the Sonos app is still reporting “Dolby Atmos” when playing content from my Apple TV, but from what I have read it is a compressed version of Atmos instead of uncompressed if HDMI is running in 2.0 mode instead of 2.1.  Long story short, this might be a “better” compromise in the meantime if your TV allows running the ARC port in backwards compatibility mode.  I will report here immediately the first POP that I get, but I went from seemingly every 10 minutes to watching a couple hours without issue so far.  Also for reference AppleTV was on 15.5 when I disabled Atmos, and is now on 15.6 as well.  I’ll take compressed Atmos for the time being over no Atmos if this truly is what is preventing the POP.