Contributor I

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

1202 replies
90736 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.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

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.

View in thread

Show previous replies

J

jrh9765

Lyricist II

I can confirm that I switched off Dolby vision 2 weeks ago. I haven't had a single issue since with Atmos. Just wanted everyone to know!

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

I can confirm that I switched off Dolby vision 2 weeks ago. I haven't had a single issue since with Atmos. Just wanted everyone to know!

Haven’t had time to test this myself, but it would explain why we’ve had no reports from people with Samsung TVs. Samsungs can’t do Dolby Vision! Newer Sonys and LGs can.

Sophie’s Choice: do you kill Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos? Ouch.

B

Bee22

Lyricist III

I can confirm that I switched off Dolby vision 2 weeks ago. I haven't had a single issue since with Atmos. Just wanted everyone to know!

Haven’t had time to test this myself, but it would explain why we’ve had no reports from people with Samsung TVs. Samsungs can’t do Dolby Vision! Newer Sonys and LGs can.

Sophie’s Choice: do you kill Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos? Ouch.

I have a 2022 Samsung S95B which like you mentioned does not support Dolby Vision but as I posted a couple pages back, had the issue occur with this setup on the first game I tried with it on the Series X after hooking up my Arc.
I do have HDR10 enabled but even without Dolby Vision it still occurs on my Samsung so I don’t think it’s linked to that, at least not exclusively.

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

I have a 2022 Samsung S95B which like you mentioned does not support Dolby Vision but as I posted a couple pages back, had the issue occur with this setup on the first game I tried with it on the Series X after hooking up my Arc.
I do have HDR10 enabled but even without Dolby Vision support it still occurs on my Samsung so I don’t think it’s linked to that, at least not exclusively.

Thanks for the data point. I clearly overlooked you (and maybe others)! I guess LGs and Sonys are just disproportionally popular with Sonos owners. I had the impression those were the only brands represented in our thread.

W

William_61

Enthusiast II

Upgraded from a playbar to Arc a couple of weeks back. LG C1 and an Xbox one X. Had popping a number of times now.

Previously zero issues before the Arc. This must be a sonos Atmos issue.

Have they even acknowledged this as a bug? Not really acceptable for any product, let alone one that costs this much.

Sonos?

What is being done about this?

@Corry P Any update on any of this? We see more and more posts like this one with no reply. It’s as if your customers are yelling for help in a dark room. It’s hard to believe the only responses we’ve seen from Sonos is that it’s happening to other un-named Atmos sound-bars. There are no other updates to an issue that’s serious and going on a year old? Thanks for any feedback you can give us.

Btw, when I call Sonos support I’m still told to change the cables. 🤷‍♂️😵‍💫

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

I had time to test with Dolby Vision off today. Used the Xbox to mix things up. Sure enough, pop and audio loss. Interestingly audio came back after changing Xbox settings back to 7.1 LCPM, without having to reboot.

E

Enigmaticsoul

Contributor I

Same thing happened to me today playing Xbox. This sucks since I was enjoying the atmos effects playing cod

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

@Corry P Any update on any of this? We see more and more posts like this one with no reply. It’s as if your customers are yelling for help in a dark room. It’s hard to believe the only responses we’ve seen from Sonos is that it’s happening to other un-named Atmos sound-bars. There are no other updates to an issue that’s serious and going on a year old? Thanks for any feedback you can give us.

Btw, when I call Sonos support I’m still told to change the cables. 🤷‍♂️😵‍💫

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.

T

TheFlamesFan

Enthusiast II

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.

B

Bee22

Lyricist III

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.

Show more replies

Sign up

Login to the community