At least we now know progress is being made and I will just be happy if ARC and Beam Gen 2 users can finally enjoy the Dolby Atmos system that they paid for.

@Corry P : First of all, that’s excellent news! Let’s get to testing everyone!
 

And then how about a Black Friday only 40% coupon for those of us who have had an open case number with this problem for years? :)

Yay, great news.  Hopefully after almost 3 years of this we can finally put this issue to bed.  Kudos to this great community which helped to get some temporary relief of the issue while the true fix was being worked on.

I’m not understanding this post (sorry) …as I read that the current fix is to address a Dolby MAT issue with components like Apple TV 4K, Xbox and PlayStation-5 - whereas your issue sounds like a different problem altogether here.

It almost sounds like a cable or port hardware problem, but I assume you’ve investigated those things already.

I would certainly go onto reproduce the issue and submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and then contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to resolve the matter.

(edit: @blunderdome beat me to it, but I agree, it sounds like a different issue).

Sonos rep Corry was pretty specific in his statement here:

Yes I mentioned. When I logged a support call with Sonos they did the remote diagnostics thing and said they saw some ‘high frequencies on the atmos feed’ or something to that effect. I was told that there is a fix being tested now in beta firmware, but given no ETA on when to expect. So by that I took it as acknowledgement of the problem.

Would be nice to turn on Atmos on my xbox one series x again! Thankfully not had this happen for me on Apple TV 4K Atmos content… yet.

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

The official line from Sonos for its premier Dolby Atmos $900 Arc soundbar is to turn off Dolby Atmos. 

Bruce,

It doesn't have to be 24/7 support; when did I say that? I run a business and we offer email/ticket support. The idea is pretty simple, send an email to our support, we pick it up in office hours. It gives the customer opportunity to reply when they like, it's not rocket science. I guess Bruce, you have never run a customer focused business or business which demands your time Monday to Friday 7am - 19.00pm? I can't sit on a phone to support, I'm running a business and I guess most people would be at work during these hours?! Giving customers a chat bot which can't even generate a support email is really lame. 

had this happen to me for the first time last night, did it three times, honestly thought the speaker had blown electrically… what a noise, like a shotgun going off, then no sound at all.

after searching online about it i found this forum, and by the looks of it, this has been an issue for some time now.

I was running my signal from a xboxone x, in dolby atmos to a Hdfury which splits signal to the tv and Sonos Arc, since disabling atmos and forcing the xbox to output 7.1 instead it hasn’t happened again. 
The bang was definitely from my Arc, not the SL surrounds or the sub.

Hope they find a fix for it, an Atmos speaker that wont play Atmos..

I second the request for an update. It’s been 2 months since @Corry P last posted in this thread. Is there any progress? Has Sonos at least been able to reproduce the problem? Are any combinations of components (subs, surrounds, TVs) immune?

At this point, I’m willing to spend literally $1,000 if it means I can finally enjoy Atmos from my Apple TV and Xbox.

Welcome to the club. Nice meeting you. You have an awesome and expensive set up. From what we’ve all been told by Sonos support your Arc is not damaged even though the pop was incredibly scary and loud. We’ve all been there. But that’s where the Sonos involvement kind of stops. You will find here a lot of Sonos’ premier customers discussing the serious issue of not being able to play Dolby Atmos on their premier Dolby Atmos product, the Sonos Arc. You’ll also find lot of incredible in depth good faith troubleshooting by many great Sonos customers. Even more discussion about whether it’s the fault of Sonos, the TV manufacturers, Apple or Microsoft. Unfortunately that’s about it. We all ask for Sonos updates from time to time but get none. The recommended solution is to turn off Dolby Atmos on your Apple TV. We all hope one day Sonos will take us more seriously, show us some respect and update us on any progress. 

With all due respect, have you tried lately? I called (again) in early October and was told by a very nice operator to ‘change my cables.’ Something Sonos Support told me to do 10 months ago when this first started for me. Something I did even though I knew my cables were up to date. Just more money I wasted. 

Thank you @ProfessorFrag for stepping up to the plate and helping us all here. We look forward to any feedback from your experience and hope it helps Sonos come up with a solution. Good luck! 

FYI, if you have an Xbox Series X the best way to replicate the pop issue is by switching between a Dolby Atmos enabled game and the Xbox Dashboard constantly. It should trigger the pop after a few attempts.

also thanks @Corry P for looking into this. This issue has been ongoing for around 2 years!

I agree this might be a codec issue, however I have tried to look for articles of other sound bars from other manufacturers, however I have not been able to find this issue with the same mitigating factors.
 

As of now I do not see a correlation. As you mentioned in jest, other sound bars may have had popping issues and Sonos came out with the Arc and then people jumped to buy a new product that supposedly is superior without that problem.

I gave up my 7.1 traditional sound system for minimalistic ideals. My point is, when a company is establishing a reputation, releases and advertises a product that has been sold to a consumer, and the product has been found by the customer to have a defect.

That company has the responsibility to address the issue and provide a solution in a timely manner. Two years is more than enough time to address the issue. 

Hi @Corry P ,

FYI, I have not yet been contacted by Sonos. I continue to be interested in providing replication data in devmode.

Hi @Corry P ,

Just got the email. I’m looking forward to working with your tech. 

This is happening to me also. Started a few weeks ago on my Arc. Massive pop and then sub and surrounds keep working but Arc won’t play any sound including Alexa. 
 

Not what Im expecting from a top tier product. I’ve three arcs so now wondering if I should get worried! The others are not showing the same issue but not in use as much. 

@ilh23mx first of all, I appreciate what you’re doing. Maybe, just maybe, you’re the one to have cracked this which would be amazing! I am not trying to dispute that the compressed audio setting matters. I’m saying that it shouldn’t because it’s a setting for line in. So of course nobody will have tried that yet  

My DV comment wasn’t aimed at you. Earlier in the discussion there was a recommendation to turn off DV on the Xbox. Turning off DV seems to help on Apple TV, but not on Xbox.

I’m about to go in a 4-day trip, which is terrible timing because I would love to help you replicate your result. If you’re willing to spend the time, I think it would be super helpful for you to try to return to a state where the pop happens. That would give us a lot of information about:

1. Do Compressed Audio and Alexa matter in combination, or only one of them?
2. Does your move fix it even when you return the settings to previous? This would lend credence to the hypothesis that Arc works fine until something triggers the “pop vulnerability”, and maybe your steps just happen to clear that trigger. 

If you can find a setting where you can make the pop disappear and reappear, you’ve won and solved this! If it’s now gone for good on the other hand, it might reappear and there’s something really complex going on. 

While it’s nice to know that our equipment will likely not be damaged after these pops, a real firmware update would be even better. I signed up to take part in the beta channel, assuming this would gain faster access to updates but nothing so far. This has been very disappointing…

What’s so strange about the CEC fix is that it works for those of us with an Xbox. Turn it off on the Xbox, and now everything is good even with CEC-on on the TV and Apple TV.

But then there are others with the bang that don’t have an Xbox, or even an Apple TV! I hope support has a nice spreadsheet going of all affected customers and the totality of their equipment (TVs and source devices) so that they can run cross-tabs on whether combinations of equipment produce the bug on Sonos. And then only one of the affected devices would need to go CEC-off.

Plus that would make for the best possible FAQ on the product pages. E.g. “Be advised that this product has a compatibility issue with Apple TV and Xbox being used in combination. CEC will have to be deactivated on one of those devices.” Or something along those lines.

Just to add to this thread. Same problem as everyone. I have contacted in multiple times support via phone and email, with the same corporate response everyone here has experienced. I could never get through the “first tier” of support since they always asked for a video that showed the issue and being such a random thing I didn´t had the time nor the drive to get on with the filming, and always telling me that it was the first report of this issue and nothing more. The last time it happened it did while watching The last of us E5, and noticed that it kept happening everytime at the same spot (moreless 3 min in the episode) so I recorded the event and sent it, now with the video a “tier 2” representative, called Jason, was “in charge” of the case. After almost an hour of keeping me on the phone just going in circles and deflecting he asked me to try to reproduce the problem but with him on the phone, so he could “verify” that the video was good (like I had the time or drive to make a video just to mess around and waste my time with them on the phone), so I did, and when he heard the pop and verified it, he went silent for a moment and told me to wait a little. After 5 min he came back and told me “you know, you´re right. Since more or less 2 weeks ago we have been receiving calls with this issue. Our engineers are working tirelessly to solve this. I´m putting you on a special list with the few others that have been reporting this for the last 2 weeks and we´ll contact you as soon as we have a solution, you don´t need to call us again”. After this, I pointed out at him the existence of this thread and that the company has acknowledged the problem and that in almost 3 years we don´t have a solution and that despite this they are still selling the product without any warning of this known issue. After hearing me he went full defensive (and a little verbal aggresive) mode and basically cut the conversation with the classic “is there anything else I can help you with?” and that was it. Personally I feel a little robbed because they know this issue, do nothing to solve it, not issuing a warning to the customers and still sell the product like nothing is happening. I´ve tried the CEC disabling method with no success, the problem persists with the appletv and with some movies in the PS5. Just a little venting, best regards.

Sorry to hear that. I’ve been pop free since Xbox CEC off. But of course there’s some background anxiety every time I watch Atmos now. 
 

I think that discomfort won’t really go away until we have an official statement from Sonos or a software fix. 

After all this, is there room for a class action lawsuit? any lawyers in the forum?