Contributor I

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

1202 replies
90733 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

L

LuiG

Enthusiast I

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!

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

I had time for a small experiment today. I bought a fiber optic HDMI cable to connect the Arc to the TV. Fiber cables contain active chips at each end that convert between electrical and optical signals.

I got the usual pop within half an hour. I believe this eliminates the physical layer of the connection as the problem since there is no electrical connection between the TV (and Apple TV) and the Arc anymore.

Not a huge surprise. I think we are all expecting this to come down to how Sonos decodes Dolby MAT. But there you have it.

jamie_shaw

Enthusiast I

I had time for a small experiment today. I bought a fiber optic HDMI cable to connect the Arc to the TV. Fiber cables contain active chips at each end that convert between electrical and optical signals.

I got the usual pop within half an hour. I believe this eliminates the physical layer of the connection as the problem since there is no electrical connection between the TV (and Apple TV) and the Arc anymore.

Not a huge surprise. I think we are all expecting this to come down to how Sonos decodes Dolby MAT. But there you have it.

If this is indeed down to the Sonos’ decoding of MAT, this was introduced during 13.4 (The one bringing DTS support). Well, for me at least.

From Dec 2020-Oct 2021; I had no issues with the exact same setup that I had now. Both DA and DV enabled from the Apple TV. 🤷‍♂️

R

Rios

Enthusiast II

I had time for a small experiment today. I bought a fiber optic HDMI cable to connect the Arc to the TV. Fiber cables contain active chips at each end that convert between electrical and optical signals.

I got the usual pop within half an hour. I believe this eliminates the physical layer of the connection as the problem since there is no electrical connection between the TV (and Apple TV) and the Arc anymore.

Not a huge surprise. I think we are all expecting this to come down to how Sonos decodes Dolby MAT. But there you have it.

If this is indeed down to the Sonos’ decoding of MAT, this was introduced during 13.4 (The one bringing DTS support). Well, for me at least.

From Dec 2020-Oct 2021; I had no issues with the exact same setup that I had now. Both DA and DV enabled from the Apple TV. 🤷‍♂️

As I’ve said before, prior to connecting an Xbox Series X, I had zero issues playing DV and DA content simultaneously on my Apple TV for over a year. Then as soon as I plugged in the Xbox Series X, Pop error, and now my Sonos Arc has a permanent error playing any DV DA content from my Apple TV or any source with DV and DA content playing through the arc. And of course all of us (with Sonos Arcs) are connecting our Sonos Arc on the e-arc hdmi input on our TVs.

This is now a 2 year old problem, and the entire point of “upgrading” to the Sonos Arc was to utilize Dolby Atmos, but now we can’t.

Dogdad

Headliner III

I had the same issue last night, twice whilst mid stream on Netflix. I reported through support and was provided with a reference. I have got a new TV with Atmos/EARC capability.

I have been advised to turn off Atmos which defeats the point of paying a significant amount of money for this functionality and not being able to use it.

I was surprised reading the comments on here as to how long this had been going on for.

Curious..what tv do you have and I take it you have nothing else hooked up to your system?

R

Rios

Enthusiast II

I had time for a small experiment today. I bought a fiber optic HDMI cable to connect the Arc to the TV. Fiber cables contain active chips at each end that convert between electrical and optical signals.

I got the usual pop within half an hour. I believe this eliminates the physical layer of the connection as the problem since there is no electrical connection between the TV (and Apple TV) and the Arc anymore.

Not a huge surprise. I think we are all expecting this to come down to how Sonos decodes Dolby MAT. But there you have it.

I also tried an experiment, I set my HDMI 3 (eARC/ARC) to Enhanced format (Dolby Vision). And when playing DV DA content on my Apple TV with my Apple TV Video format setting to 4K HDR 60, disabling Dolby Vision on my Apple TV. The popping error occurred like clockwork.

Then I changed the HDMI signal format on my HDMI 3 to Enhanced Format without Dolby Vision. With my Apple TV format setting to 4K HDR 60, disabling Dolby Vision on my Apple TV. The popping error did NOT occur, and the Sonos Arc was able to play Dolby Atmos as long as the Dolby Vision was disabled in both my Sony TV HDMI setting and my Apple TV.

jamie_shaw

Enthusiast I

I had time for a small experiment today. I bought a fiber optic HDMI cable to connect the Arc to the TV. Fiber cables contain active chips at each end that convert between electrical and optical signals.

I got the usual pop within half an hour. I believe this eliminates the physical layer of the connection as the problem since there is no electrical connection between the TV (and Apple TV) and the Arc anymore.

Not a huge surprise. I think we are all expecting this to come down to how Sonos decodes Dolby MAT. But there you have it.

I also tried an experiment, I set my HDMI 3 (eARC/ARC) to Enhanced format (Dolby Vision). And when playing DV DA content on my Apple TV with my Apple TV Video format setting to 4K HDR 60, disabling Dolby Vision on my Apple TV. The popping error occurred like clockwork.

Then I changed the HDMI signal format on my HDMI 3 to Enhanced Format without Dolby Vision. With my Apple TV format setting to 4K HDR 60, disabling Dolby Vision on my Apple TV. The popping error did NOT occur, and the Sonos Arc was able to play Dolby Atmos as long as the Dolby Vision was disabled in both my Sony TV HDMI setting and my Apple TV.

This is somewhat confusing — so you attempted to use the “Enhanced (Dolby Vision)” HDMI profile for your Arc, which is connected to HDMI 3 (for eARC reasons), despite that setting being an Input profile i.e. the Arc doesn’t output DV, or even 4K for that matter. Confused as to what difference this would make, unless the Arc is getting heavily confused at the EDID settings 🤔

Also assuming that whilst your Apple TV was set to 4K60 HDR, you also had “Match Dynamic Range” turned off in settings?

D

Del487

Lyricist I

I used to have a HD Fury vertex 2 splitter and arcana set up as my older Samsung TV did not have an EARC HDMI port. The Dolby Atmos soundtrack didn’t miss a beat and was perfect through the sonos arc, however that TV didn’t support HDR content.

Just upgraded to a LG C2 TV, ditched the vertex 2 and arcana and connected all devices directly as all ports are HDMI 2.1 compliant. Now when watching DV & DA content through the ATV the sonos arc is randomly popping and banging at an alarming rate.

I’ve stopped using the ATV altogether for now and use the internal apps on the TV for streaming services, thankfully DV & DA content plays fine and I can at least listen to the arc as intended.

I may just reconnect the vertex & arcana back up and to see if that eliminates the issue but it’s a rather expensive solution if there is no fix available.

I’m pleased I found this thread as I had no idea this issue existed, hopefully a resolution is on its way.

Sonos Arc, Gen 2 Sub, 2 x play 1, ATV4K, Sky Q, LG C2

B

bromos

Lyricist III

Hi Everyone

If any of you are able to reproduce one of these “popping” events more or less at will, please help us by getting in touch with our technical support team, as we’re looking for more information on this matter. It does seem to occur most often - but is definitely not limited to - when an audio stream starts/stops or changes from one to another or , e.g. going from a playing movie to a menu, rather than when something is playing uninterrupted. We need some additional testers to assist us in getting a direct recording of the feed from an affected unit, as it happens.

This is somewhat outside of our normal case handling procedures, so if/when you have a support case, please reference this thread to the agent you speak to, and ask the agent to message me, Corry P, the case details so I can get you in touch with an engineer directly.

Thank you.

THANK YOU for stepping up to the plate and reaching out to help find a solution! This is more of the level of customer service I expect as a LONG time Sonos customer. As others have mentioned, around 30 minutes always seemed to be the trigger for me. The other “guaranteed” method for me is if I have an Atmos video playing on Apple TV and pause it and let it go to the screensaver, that seemed to always trigger a pop after being on screensaver for 5-10 minutes. I will now look to see if I can find the fastest method to generate this pop so we can hopefully find a resolution for this longstanding bug!

jamie_shaw

Enthusiast I

Hi Everyone

If any of you are able to reproduce one of these “popping” events more or less at will, please help us by getting in touch with our technical support team, as we’re looking for more information on this matter. It does seem to occur most often - but is definitely not limited to - when an audio stream starts/stops or changes from one to another or , e.g. going from a playing movie to a menu, rather than when something is playing uninterrupted. We need some additional testers to assist us in getting a direct recording of the feed from an affected unit, as it happens.

This is somewhat outside of our normal case handling procedures, so if/when you have a support case, please reference this thread to the agent you speak to, and ask the agent to message me, Corry P, the case details so I can get you in touch with an engineer directly.

Thank you.

THANK YOU for stepping up to the plate and reaching out to help find a solution! This is more of the level of customer service I expect as a LONG time Sonos customer. As others have mentioned, around 30 minutes always seemed to be the trigger for me. The other “guaranteed” method for me is if I have an Atmos video playing on Apple TV and pause it and let it go to the screensaver, that seemed to always trigger a pop after being on screensaver for 5-10 minutes. I will now look to see if I can find the fastest method to generate this pop so we can hopefully find a resolution for this longstanding bug!

Interesting about the screensaver thing — I’ve been wondering about this myself for a while. I’ve been curious if it’s been something to do with the source change triggered on the screensaver activation 🤔

Show more replies

Sign up

Login to the community