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.
But if that’s true they sold a product as Atmos certified only for it to be incapable of doing so. I don’t care if it only has issues with MAT. It’s their responsibility to release a product that works as described. It doesn’t say “incompatible with MAT” which puts them as the accountable party in these issues if it cannot be fixed.
The funny part is I have yet to experience this on an Apple TV 4K even when using Dolby Vision and Atmos on both my Arc and Gen 2 Beam. It’s only been my Xbox. I’m sure it’ll happen on my Apple TV soon enough but I don’t understand why I’ve had the issue with Xbox but not Apple yet.
I don’t know if you even want to do this to yourself, but the most reliable method I have for triggering the pop is to fire up the “Hits in Spatial Audio” playlist on Apple TV Music and letting it run. Almost always pops within 30 minutes. But you can just let it go while you’re not even in the room and return to it later checking if the Arc has entered the “on but no sound” state after a pop.
Details, please?
Oh, and after submitting, you should call Sonos Support to discuss it.
There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.
When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and network.
Happy 1,000 posts everyone!
How do you view the Sonos Pop finally getting media coverage?
I assume you mean the Verge coverage? If so, then yes it was helpful to read the summary and that Sonos are continuing to work on trying to reproduce and (hopefully) fix the issue, but it seems there’s no announcement just yet, I guess🤷♂️.
It’s still not clear where the problems actually lie, if it’s certain hardware/TV’s, or software etc. I still think the Atmos metadata moving out of sync from the audio stream, as being one plausible possibility, but here’s hoping the matter can get resolved soon for you and the others here that may encounter this issue. 🤞
Thanks for sharing the data point. I get the pop on Xbox even with DV turned off. For EDID reasons, I always have DV off on my Xbox. I also don’t use auto HDR.
Another Victim here 😞 (from Mexico)
The first time I experienced the (super loud/explosive) pop was when I was navigating the menu of my XBox Series S. (It was soo scary BTW, I almost had a heart attack).
The first thing that crossed my mind was that my 2 days brand new Sonos Arc was dead because that pop literally sounded like something exploded inside, causing physicall damage of the speakers.
I inmediatly googled the issue and found several post here and on Reddit of people having the same issue.
I also had the problem with my Apple TV 2022 hearing weird noises/mini-pops and cuts in Apple Music when listening songs in Dolby Atmos.
Just a moment ago I was watching The Last Of Us (first episode) in HBO Max and having a lot of mini-pops (annoying but tolerable) but in the minute 22 (when we see the infected old lady) again an extremely LOUD and horrible pop happened (I swear my soul leaved my body). Even my dogs went crazy or scared or both.
I ended watching the episode in the native TV App and had no pops but the Sonos App showed only Dolby Digital 5.1 and no Atmos. BTW my TV is a Hisense U8G 65) .
As described in this post, the pop only happens whith dolby Atmos content (or in the Dobly Atmos Mode in the case of X Box Series S).
After disable Atmos in both devices the pop is gone, but of course what is the point of spending this ridicously ammount of money for a product if you can’t use it for what was designed and marketed. Truly shocking that the recommendation of the Sonos support was turning off Dolby Atmos (a key feature) 🫠
I am honestly very dissapointed of Sonos and now I regret of buying this thing because it’s celar that the company is aware of the problem and after all this time not even a formal statement or answer has been released (and not to mention a fix for the issue). For what I see the users are the ones who are making an effort to try to solve this or at least know the cause of the problem.
I will surely going to end returning tIhe Arc to Amazon before it Kills me of a scare.
There’s a solution posted a few posts up. Did you try it?
Yes, i just disabled CEC (both Apple TV and TV), and still had the Loud Pop in the HBO Max (The Last Of Us) in Atmos.
Gone back to 5.1 too 😢
Did you fully reboot your TV and devices after disabling CEC? This is important as CEC settings seem to hang around as the TV never acutally gets turned off….it only turns off the screen
Fully
Yeah, I should have specified. I meant The Verge, Ars Technics, and Tom’s Guide.
I wonder if it will hit the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, or if it’s too in-the-weeds for that.
I’m glad to hear that there are no audio distortions after hearing this “pop”. If this issue happens repeatedly, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system.
ive been waiting for a response from the engineer team for 4-5 days. Do you know when I might hear back from them? Case number is 02710177.
thanks
It’s probably too late for my specific case since I already restarted the Arc to get sound back, but I went ahead and submitted one now. 1617994945
I disagree that contacting support one by one is the way to go though. We would never know that the problem is widespread if we did that. And what has been posted here as results from support (“Send us video proof. It’s your specific sources that are causing the problem. Etc.”), I would refer to as the run around. I honestly do not have time to try and record this issue.
I’ll wait until we hear in this thread about what the issue is, or what Sonos is doing to resolve it, before I reach out to support.
Another Victim here 😞 (from Mexico)
The first time I experienced the (super loud/explosive) pop was when I was navigating the menu of my XBox Series S. (It was soo scary BTW, I almost had a heart attack).
The first thing that crossed my mind was that my 2 days brand new Sonos Arc was dead because that pop literally sounded like something exploded inside, causing physicall damage of the speakers.
I inmediatly googled the issue and found several post here and on Reddit of people having the same issue.
I also had the problem with my Apple TV 2022 hearing weird noises/mini-pops and cuts in Apple Music when listening songs in Dolby Atmos.
Just a moment ago I was watching The Last Of Us (first episode) in HBO Max and having a lot of mini-pops (annoying but tolerable) but in the minute 22 (when we see the infected old lady) again an extremely LOUD and horrible pop happened (I swear my soul leaved my body). Even my dogs went crazy or scared or both.
I ended watching the episode in the native TV App and had no pops but the Sonos App showed only Dolby Digital 5.1 and no Atmos. BTW my TV is a Hisense U8G 65) .
As described in this post, the pop only happens whith dolby Atmos content (or in the Dobly Atmos Mode in the case of X Box Series S).
After disable Atmos in both devices the pop is gone, but of course what is the point of spending this ridicously ammount of money for a product if you can’t use it for what was designed and marketed. Truly shocking that the recommendation of the Sonos support was turning off Dolby Atmos (a key feature) 🫠
I am honestly very dissapointed of Sonos and now I regret of buying this thing because it’s celar that the company is aware of the problem and after all this time not even a formal statement or answer has been released (and not to mention a fix for the issue). For what I see the users are the ones who are making an effort to try to solve this or at least know the cause of the problem.
I will surely going to end returning tIhe Arc to Amazon before it Kills me of a scare.
There’s a solution posted a few posts up. Did you try it?
Yes, i just disabled CEC (both Apple TV and TV), and still had the Loud Pop in the HBO Max (The Last Of Us) in Atmos.
Gone back to 5.1 too 😢
Did you fully reboot your TV and devices after disabling CEC? This is important as CEC settings seem to hang around as the TV never acutally gets turned off….it only turns off the screen
Turned off everything fully
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 got my first scary pop last night at about 12:30 am. Scared the heck out of me. Thought something exploded. I was using my Xbox Series X connected to my LG C9 with EARC HDMI connection to Sonos Arc.
I recently switched the HDMI input on my C9 that the Xbox Series X is using to PC Mode to unlock 4:4:4 full bandwidth signal. Not entirely sure it was related, but was an interesting coincidence.
+3
I have a Sony 900H and replicated some of this testing today. For those unfamiliar with the TV, it has 4 possible settings for HDMI ports 3 and 4: Standard (HDMI 2.0), Enhanced (HDMI 2.1, No DV, No VRR), Enhanced (with DV, no VRR), Enhanced (with VRR, no DV). HDMI 3 is the eARC port, so where the Sonos Arc is plugged into.
I think this is partly where the confusion lays, and one of the issues with the language are on that screen. All ports support DV, but I don't get why 3 and 4 have a separate setting for it. My Apple TV is on HDMI 2, and between Dec 2020-Oct 2021, served both DV and DA without fail. There's been no hardware changes, either inclusions, removals, or reconfigures since Dec 2020. Only software changes.
We have a response, but all it largely says is that they can’t reproduce the issue. I’m going to offer to ship my TV, Sonos Arc, and Xbox to Sonos.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/10/23824258/sonos-arc-dolby-atmos-problems-loud-audio-pop
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254099712?answerId=258137714022&page=8
Mabye it would help to get a statement from other manufacturers like Apple as well?
II do not know what should be so difficult to reliably reproduce the problem. Can’t they just send the devices to each other? I do not know who is to blame and who can solve it (if possible at all). Imho disabling eARC is the way to go for now.
Hi everyone
just wanted to give an update to my post 8 days back about the issue maybe not being a Dolby atmos issue entirely and could be due to devices / TVs pushing through a Dolby Vision / Dolby Atmos signal together
I disabled the force Dolby vision option in the Xbox Series X and re-enabled Atmos and after a week of playing I have yet to encounter the “pop” that we have described on this thread. I would usually encounter this at least once a day when quitting games and returning to the home screen
I think there could be merit to this approach, but obviously need the community to try this as well. Also not ruling out that bug fixes from the October Xbox update and Sonos 14.18 could of fixed this issue entirely from their end as they have also been released during this timeframe
Will keep everybody updated!
+18
Hi
Thank you. We appreciate that, but at this point I don’t think a video will be of any help - nor will diagnostics, unusually. We’re seeking to be connected to an Arc in devmode and recording while one of these events happen (see it as telemetry for a race car) so we can analyse the incoming feed. This will involve having an engineer on the phone with you at the time (most probably), so it’s a difficult task if an event can’t be triggered within a few minutes.
+3
I have a Sony 900H and replicated some of this testing today. For those unfamiliar with the TV, it has 4 possible settings for HDMI ports 3 and 4: Standard (HDMI 2.0), Enhanced (HDMI 2.1, No DV, No VRR), Enhanced (with DV, no VRR), Enhanced (with VRR, no DV). HDMI 3 is the eARC port, so where the Sonos Arc is plugged into.
I think this is partly where the confusion lays, and one of the issues with the language are on that screen. All ports support DV, but I don't get why 3 and 4 have a separate setting for it. My Apple TV is on HDMI 2, and between Dec 2020-Oct 2021, served both DV and DA without fail. There's been no hardware changes, either inclusions, removals, or reconfigures since Dec 2020. Only software changes.
Just to confirm my own thoughts — this was the screenshot before the VRR update on the X900H around Oct 2021, and I think is why the language is used. You have the option for either DV, or HDMI 2.1 features such as 120fps.
I guess the newer options on the 3 and 4 equate to being limited to the following feature sets depending on what you select.
Also worth noting that these seem to do little for Arc itself. I believe mine is set to “Standard” as it outputs nothing more than 1080, but eARC works just fine (with it’s handshaking being controlled by the eARC option in Audio Output settings).
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).
+3
It’s a shame we don’t have a HDMI splitter-type device that can pass through the audio from an Apple TV to the Arc, and video to a TV. Isolate the TV as not being part of the issue…
Another Victim here 😞 (from Mexico)
The first time I experienced the (super loud/explosive) pop was when I was navigating the menu of my XBox Series S. (It was soo scary BTW, I almost had a heart attack).
The first thing that crossed my mind was that my 2 days brand new Sonos Arc was dead because that pop literally sounded like something exploded inside, causing physicall damage of the speakers.
I inmediatly googled the issue and found several post here and on Reddit of people having the same issue.
I also had the problem with my Apple TV 2022 hearing weird noises/mini-pops and cuts in Apple Music when listening songs in Dolby Atmos.
Just a moment ago I was watching The Last Of Us (first episode) in HBO Max and having a lot of mini-pops (annoying but tolerable) but in the minute 22 (when we see the infected old lady) again an extremely LOUD and horrible pop happened (I swear my soul leaved my body). Even my dogs went crazy or scared or both.
I ended watching the episode in the native TV App and had no pops but the Sonos App showed only Dolby Digital 5.1 and no Atmos. BTW my TV is a Hisense U8G 65) .
As described in this post, the pop only happens whith dolby Atmos content (or in the Dobly Atmos Mode in the case of X Box Series S).
After disable Atmos in both devices the pop is gone, but of course what is the point of spending this ridicously ammount of money for a product if you can’t use it for what was designed and marketed. Truly shocking that the recommendation of the Sonos support was turning off Dolby Atmos (a key feature) 🫠
I am honestly very dissapointed of Sonos and now I regret of buying this thing because it’s celar that the company is aware of the problem and after all this time not even a formal statement or answer has been released (and not to mention a fix for the issue). For what I see the users are the ones who are making an effort to try to solve this or at least know the cause of the problem.
I will surely going to end returning tIhe Arc to Amazon before it Kills me of a scare.
There’s a solution posted a few posts up. Did you try it?
Yes, i just disabled CEC (both Apple TV and TV), and still had the Loud Pop in the HBO Max (The Last Of Us) in Atmos.
Gone back to 5.1 too 😢
Did you fully reboot your TV and devices after disabling CEC? This is important as CEC settings seem to hang around as the TV never acutally gets turned off….it only turns off the screen
Just so I’m clear, CEC was disabled on the Apple TV 4K and Xbox Series X (the two devices that I’m affected by) as well as the TV? A lot of tests say 3 hours, which is a decent amount of time, but has anyone tested for a longer period of time? While disabling Atmos in both devices is annoying, I haven’t really missed it as I’ve been watching my Atmos content directly from webOS and it really hasn’t affected me in any meaningful way!
I’ve had the Sonos Arc since October and safe to say I’ve had this popping issue happen to me on multiple occasions at this point. I thought it was an issue with my Xbox Series X but seeing that people are having similar issues on the Apple TV makes it seem that this is definitely a Sonos issue. Hopefully that fix comes out sooner rather than later.
+3
So I was very curious this weekend. I was thinking perhaps Xbox had fixed the issue and that my disabling Dolby vision and auto HDR wasn’t necessary, as I had been symptom free for over a month
So I deactivated both and within two days of light play I got the pop, and it was with a game that uses both natively (Forza Horizon 5). There is definitely something behind this line of thinking that Dolby Vision is causing some of the issue
I have since deactivated both again and have been symptom free again
Stay Tuned
It wouldn’t surprise me — I’ve been saying for a good while now that the culprit is specifically the Dolby MAT container, and it’s usage with Atmos. Definitely smells like there is a potential bandwidth issue, somewhere.
Hi all,
Experienced this a while ago, it frightened me and my cats so much I immediately turned of HDMI-CEC on the Xbox Series X.
Didn’t happen again until yesterday when launching Starfield for the first time, I had a series of loud pops over about 30 seconds, the cats ran out of the house in shock! It settled while playing, though it happened again on quick resuming Starfield after about an hour off. The cats went again and they’d only just returned to the house. Suffice to say they are very suspicious of the Sonos Arc now.
Adding my identical experience to this thread.
Sonos Arc. Xbox Series X with Dolby Atmos selected. CEC disabled. LGC1 utilizing eArc.
Loud pop (like a gunshot) whenever I leave a game running Dolby Atmos and return to the Xbox dashboard. Horrifying every time.
Grateful for RC12’s advocacy on this thread.
C’mon Sonos.
Cleary, you have identical hardware and setup to me. If you disable “Dolby Vision” and “Dolby Vision for gaming” on your Series X. Do you get the pop?
Heh, I hear you, but ‘should be’ and ‘are’ are wildly different. And if using the Arcana ‘fixes’ the issue, it sure seems to me to point the finger upstream from Sonos. What that does is effectively remove the TV set ( and the CEC computer in it) out of the equation.
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