Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss



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Userlevel 2
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As it stands now the end user is suffering and Sonos seem unable to fix the issue. Perhaps they are hoping that Apple and Microsoft can fix it for them, Or LG,Samsung,Sony and other TV brands fix it for them.Or maybe they are hoping that Dolby themselves will fix it for them.

Currently ARC owners may as well just be using a Playbar and Beam Gen 2 owners may as well be using the Gen 1 as we cannot really use Atmos. Now I own both the Apple TV 4K and the Xbox Series X and it really is an unacceptable end user experience.

It really is time this problem is sorted out or simply refund us for our purchase so we can move on to something that does work. 

Userlevel 6
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Hi @Corry P ,

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

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..

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Wait. If using the HDFury Arcana fixes the issue, doesn’t that mean the issue isn’t in the Sonos, but in the TV itself?

I doubt it. The thread has people with all brands of TVs having the issue. Also, most people have their TV set to passthrough, so the TV shouldn’t really be doing anything (as I understand it at least). 

I use an HDFury arcana, epson projector, appleTV and Arc. No TV. Pops all the time…so no fix for me.

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Yesterday. Was watching Long Way Up ( a road show with no special effects) on Apple TV and all of a sudden, it felt like something exploded in my family room. First I thought the chimney had crashed into my fire place seriously then my wife pointed it out that it was the Arc. The same thing happened today when I began to watch Mad Max - Fury Road just when the movie began. 
Started happening after 14.19.1 update. I replayed the same scenes again when the arc made the exploding sound and couldn’t reproduce.

Everything below is less than a month old which makes up my family room.

LG C2 OLED 55 TV, Apple TV 4K (2022), Sonos Arc, 2 Subs Gen 3 & Gen 2, SL’s as surround. 
 

My bedroom is set up with Beam-2, Apple TV 4K (2022) Sub Mini and SL’s as rear. NO ISSUES HERE. 

 

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. 

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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. 

Userlevel 4
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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

Userlevel 3
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Also experiencing this issue with my Apple TV. New OS came out for ATV and it’s still happening. Anyone have a fix for it aside from turning off atmos?

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

Userlevel 6
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FWIW, I think Tom made exactly the right call in his presentation. Apple TV and Xbox are the major consumer devices that are affected by the Sonos Pop at the moment. PS5 probably will be, but that’s only on beta firmware, so too soon to report. I expect additional coverage in the tech press if that beta software goes production and users start experiencing the pop. There are a lot more PS5 out there than Xbox and Apple TV. 
 

On the TV brand side, we have at a minimum lots of Samsung, Sony, and LG users affected. So that’s basically everyone. 
 

And then on the soundbar side, only Sonos Arc and Beam 2 make the Sonos Pop. Yes, there can be problems with other soundbars, such as crackling, rhythmic clicking, etc where users may use the word “pop” to the describe the issue. But a gunshot-like sound followed by audio drop out on the soundbar while the surrounds keep playing? That’s totally unique to Sonos. 

Userlevel 6
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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. 

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Thank you to everyone at Sonos who worked to get this fix out. Can’t wait to re-enable Atmos on my Xbox and PS5!

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

I bought an Arc looking to add more components little by little. While setting up my PS5, pop occurred and my internet research led me to here. 2 years!!! The level of ignorance from Sonos is infuriating. This would happen to most of us after the return period, leaving us stuck with a faulty equipment. They cannot reproduce it? No, I don’t believe the lie. 
 

I won’t turn off cec or dolby atmos. Arc is advertised with those specs and I paid top dollar for it. I will return the Arc, stay away from Sonos, and suggest friends and family the same.

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@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. 

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).

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, this is the first time I seek support from Sonos, I didn’t know the Chromecast didn’t support MAT as the behaviour is identical to the issue that everyone else was experiencing. I’m now in contact with someone from Sonos and I hope that I can get this sorted!

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Funny how AI has been able to give a plausible explanation when Sonos support over two full years haven’t.  
 

Maybe AI can do the fix for us 😬

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I just started having the issue over the past couple of weeks on my personal system at home and I’m shocked to hear it has been affecting people for years. I’m also a reporter at The Verge, so I’ll do my best to get Sonos to comment on this properly. It’s a disgrace that they haven’t so far.

By far the best news we have heard on this thread in a while.  Not that you are having issues, but that there is somebody with deep links to the tech community that can start to put a little exposure on this issue outside this thread.

Welcome Tom, big fan here personally!

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I've only had the problem with my Xbox Series X so far and I've had it a number of times. Today I was able to reproduce it every time I played Forza 5 and then went to the dashboard. A few seconds later there was a loud bang and the LED on the arc burned orange. So I decided to turn off Dolby Vision because I've also read this here in the chat that it's supposed to help. I couldn't believe it, but in the Xbox settings I just unchecked "allow dolby vision" and "dolby vision for gaming" and since then I haven't been able to reproduce the problem. maybe it's just a coincidence, but when I had Dolby Vision active, the bang came every time in connection with Atmos. But this means doing without Dolby Vision and “only” using HDR10.

This has worked for me without fail.  Remember that there aren’t very many games that natively support DV, so to me most games really dont do much more than HDR does anyway.  Atmos sound is far more valuable to have than DV at this stage

I’m glad it works for you. As I mentioned above it happens with HDR10 without fail every time in my case. 
 

Sonos needs to fix this nonsense

As I said, I have to test this over a longer period of time, but yesterday evening it banged continuously with Dolby Vision and atmos and after I switched to HDR it didn't anymore. I have tested with HDR for a maximum of 30 minutes so far.

has unfortunately settled again. Just as Forza 5 went into the game, there was a loud bang... Whether it's HDR or Dolby Vision, it doesn't matter.

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Diagnostic 427286041

 

Just tried again after the tvOS 16.3 update that supposedly improved Atmos.  Still loud bang and audio gone.  It REALLY sucks because when I turned Atmos on for the first time in almost a year it sounded so good...and then I was reminded why I had to turn it off 🤬

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Paul, I highly doubt that. You’d think Sonos would mention that in the patch notes considering it’s such a big deal. 

I am also here to report the pop 🤦‍♂️.  New sonos user.  Sony xf900 with arc, sub,1’s for surrounds.  Xbox user.  Popping has got really bad.  Multiple times a session.  I had to change audio to 5.1 because it doesn’t happen with that setting.  Boo sonos!  This issue should be resolved,  this thread was created 2 years ago! 

Userlevel 2

Does this damage the speaker at all? I believe the Sonos rep has said they haven’t seen any indications that it does, but Rios said that it does?

Clarification, Sonos reps are not technicians. Neither am I. My theory (which is all it is) is based off of my experience as a Quality Assurance Tester for a hardware and software company.

I am alluding to the fact that there has been zero update, fix, acknowledgment or announcement of this known issue that is 2 years old. And no software update to address this issue.

And when I’ve stated multiple times over how I and many others are able to play Dolby Atmos on the Sonos Arc as long as Dolby Vision is disabled from all sources. After the popping error has occurred. 

Meaning, there is nothing wrong with the actual speakers. I have previously stated that it MIGHT be a component that is “fried” and is no longer able to process the signal.

My posts are long to specify exactly what I mentioned to avoid confusion or misinterpretation. 

Anything we say as customers are speculation. The purpose of this thread is to help us the customer understand the issue and whether or not this issue has been or will be addressed by Sonos. 

We all know the answer to this.

I tend to agree with this view. They were aware of it when I reported the issue a week ago. It is a bit of a concern that they have an Atmos product out there that cannot reliably play this format. It seems there are a number of different configurations/sources that I think eliminate anything upstream of the ARC. 

I hadn't experienced this before as my previous TV only had ARC and not EARC so could not pass lossless atmos. It surprised me how long this issue has been going and I wonder how many others have not experienced it due to their TV not being able to pass through a full Atmos signal.

Userlevel 4
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I can now confirm that his problem is TV Independent.  I just had this problem on my new LG C1 whereas before I was experiencing it on the Sony X900h

I’m wondering if there any common denominator devices connected to the TV, such as the Xbox or Apple TV - I’ve seen those mentioned in some of the posts here and elsewhere online, with different Soundbars too, having this same issue?

There is, devices that use the Dolby MAT container for Atmos (Xbox, Apple TV and now Roku).   There was some debate before as to whether the TV passing through the MAT signal was doing it properly and since I’ve had failure with two different TVs now.  I’m more confident it has nothing to do with the TV passing through the signal but the signal itself

 

Userlevel 4
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Maybe see this link to a thread (8 pages) I found online:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254099712

It still seems like this is not a Sonos issue, as other TV connected products are mentioned.

Not entirely convinced that this is the same issue as we are experiencing.  I read this to be a series of small popping sounds, not a big gunshot type pop that this thread is about

In all my searches on the internet around this issue, nobody produces a pop like the Sonos hardware does

 

Userlevel 6
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It is my understanding that we have users in this thread who have the pop but have never had an Xbox connected.

@Rios : I have a Sonos Arc.

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