Contributor I

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

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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.

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M

Me420

Lyricist III

I turned Dolby Vision off on the Apple TV and left Atmos on, no issues so far. Any loss of Dolby Vision enhancements are not that apparent to me.

I appreciate Atmos and sacrificing Dolby Vision was not a big trade off for me.

I think this solved my Issue!? We will see

W

William_61

Enthusiast II

I turned Dolby Vision off on the Apple TV and left Atmos on, no issues so far. Any loss of Dolby Vision enhancements are not that apparent to me.

I appreciate Atmos and sacrificing Dolby Vision was not a big trade off for me.

Could you please explain how you turned Dolby Vision off on the Apple TV. I have mine set to 4K SDR 60Hz with both Match Dynamic Range and Match Frame Rate set to on. It is my understanding at those settings that the Apple TV will match whatever is thrown at it including Dolby Vision. In other words, at that setting, if a movie broadcast in Dolby Vision the Apple TV will match and play it in Dolby Vision. How could I eliminate the Dolby Vision so the ATV will not broadcast in it? Thanks for your help

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

tl;dr: pop still happens with DV off.

I have disabled Dolby Vision on the TV. The Sony lets you pick settings for the HDMI ports that are essentially EDID settings. Their “VRR” setting disables Dolby Vision.

I confirmed the pop still happening without DV on my Xbox, also double checking that DV had the red X in the Xbox settings. I didn’t bother to also confirm with the Apple TV.

R

Rios

Enthusiast II

I turned Dolby Vision off on the Apple TV and left Atmos on, no issues so far. Any loss of Dolby Vision enhancements are not that apparent to me.

I appreciate Atmos and sacrificing Dolby Vision was not a big trade off for me.

Could you please explain how you turned Dolby Vision off on the Apple TV. I have mine set to 4K SDR 60Hz with both Match Dynamic Range and Match Frame Rate set to on. It is my understanding at those settings that the Apple TV will match whatever is thrown at it including Dolby Vision. In other words, at that setting, if a movie broadcast in Dolby Vision the Apple TV will match and play it in Dolby Vision. How could I eliminate the Dolby Vision so the ATV will not broadcast in it? Thanks for your help

From your screenshot, you already have Dolby Vision off. Changing the format to 4K SDR 60 is all you need to do. However each time you turn off the AppleTV and turn it back on and play any Dolby Vision source, AppleTV will automatically enable Dolby Vision again and you have to manually change the format each time you turn your AppleTV back on. Which is a pain.

When I play my Xbox Series X I just shut off all Dolby settings Dolby vision and Dolby Atmos.

This issue is almost over a year old with zero support.

I’m thinking of selling my Sonos system and getting the Sony HT-A9 instead with Black Friday sales happening now.

R

Rios

Enthusiast II

tl;dr: pop still happens with DV off.

I have disabled Dolby Vision on the TV. The Sony lets you pick settings for the HDMI ports that are essentially EDID settings. Their “VRR” setting disables Dolby Vision.

I confirmed the pop still happening without DV on my Xbox, also double checking that DV had the red X in the Xbox settings. I didn’t bother to also confirm with the Apple TV.

I have a Sony as well with the same VRR setting enabled that doesn’t fix the issue. It’s not the Sony TV, it’s the signal coming from either an Xbox Series X and Apple TV when playing Dolby Vision content. Just because the Sony TV isn’t set to Dolby Vision does not prevent the Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos signal pass through E-Arc to the Sonos arc or sound system.

I’ve read at least 6 others who have tried this on this site and many others on Reddit who all have set their Apple TV to 4K HDR 60, thus disabling Dolby Vision which solved the issue for Apple TVs. I’ve verified this myself.

With my Xbox Series X, I have to disable all Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos settings to not have the issue with my Sonos System, consisting of the Arc and two Gen 2 Sonos Ones. Which defeats the purpose of why I purchased Sonos in the first place. To play Dolby Atmos content.

R

Rios

Enthusiast II

I run my Xbox Series X without Auto HDR. Also Dolby Vision is disabled because my TV lets you have VRR or Dolby Vision but not both. I run it at 4K60 VRR.

I have gotten the pop within the last week with Atmos on. I have since turned Atmos back off.

Dolby Vision off is not the solution.

The Dolby Vision disabled solution only works for Apple TV. With Xbox Series X, both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos must be disabled.

S

sbowesuk

Lyricist I

Just had this happen to my new Sonos Arc. Series of loud electronic popping sounds, followed by the Arc shutting down. Extremely alarming because I sounded like one or more speakers had failed and blown up.

For context, was playing YouTube videos from my PC to my LC C2 TV via HDMI 2.1. On the TV I have eARC with passthrough turned on, and on the PC I had Dolby Access/Atmos set up in the sound settings.

Contacted Sonos support, shared my logs, and got the usual “known issue” response. Clearly this is going to be an ongoing issue, given that it has been happening to people for years now. Definitely don’t want to turn Dolby features off, since I’ve paid a lot of money for said features.

R

Rios

Enthusiast II

Just had this happen to my new Sonos Arc. Series of loud electronic popping sounds, followed by the Arc shutting down. Extremely alarming because I sounded like one or more speakers had failed and blown up.

For context, was playing YouTube videos from my PC to my LC C2 TV via HDMI 2.1. On the TV I have eARC with passthrough turned on, and on the PC I had Dolby Access/Atmos set up in the sound settings.

Contacted Sonos support, shared my logs, and got the usual “known issue” response. Clearly this is going to be an ongoing issue, given that it has been happening to people for years now. Definitely don’t want to turn Dolby features off, since I’ve paid a lot of money for said features.

Yes, we’re all unfortunately in the same boat. This issue has been known for over a year, with no fix, no update and no support.

W

William_61

Enthusiast II

I turned Dolby Vision off on the Apple TV and left Atmos on, no issues so far. Any loss of Dolby Vision enhancements are not that apparent to me.

I appreciate Atmos and sacrificing Dolby Vision was not a big trade off for me.

Could you please explain how you turned Dolby Vision off on the Apple TV. I have mine set to 4K SDR 60Hz with both Match Dynamic Range and Match Frame Rate set to on. It is my understanding at those settings that the Apple TV will match whatever is thrown at it including Dolby Vision. In other words, at that setting, if a movie broadcast in Dolby Vision the Apple TV will match and play it in Dolby Vision. How could I eliminate the Dolby Vision so the ATV will not broadcast in it? Thanks for your help

From your screenshot, you already have Dolby Vision off. Changing the format to 4K SDR 60 is all you need to do. However each time you turn off the AppleTV and turn it back on and play any Dolby Vision source, AppleTV will automatically enable Dolby Vision again and you have to manually change the format each time you turn your AppleTV back on. Which is a pain.

When I play my Xbox Series X I just shut off all Dolby settings Dolby vision and Dolby Atmos.

This issue is almost over a year old with zero support.

I’m thinking of selling my Sonos system and getting the Sony HT-A9 instead with Black Friday sales happening now.

Thanks for your feedback. Each time I turn on my Apple TV 4K these settings stay stable and from what I understand, they allow for whatever content I run through the ATV to match what appears on your screen. If it’s SDR content, I’ll get it in SDR. If it’s HDR content, it runs in HDR. If it’s Dolby Vision, it will play in DV. Here is a good video showing all of this in real time. It explains it very well.

In reading your other posts, I’m a little confused. Have you tried to turn off DV on your Sony TV and had any success watching Atmos through your ATV without the popping issue? I share your frustrations and just wish we’d get more feedback from Sonos Support. Even if it’s to tell us they’ve given up if indeed that’s what’s going on.

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

I wish Sonos would interact with us. I went from having traditional sound systems (Denon+Klipsch) for decades to wanting something simple that just works with minimal time investment and doesn’t require cables once I had kids. I thought Sonos was that brand.

I really want this system to work. But if Sonos doesn’t intend to make it compatible with Apple TV and Xbox, I’d rather they just tell us and I can get started on the painful process of selling it all on eBay and get some other all-in-one system. Maybe Sennheiser.

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