Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

After several days without any issues, my random loud pop followed by reduced volume is back. I was watching a show on HBO/MAX, it wasn’t even Dolby atmos.

Have you submitted a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and called Sonos Support to discuss it? If there is a recurrence of this happening, I’m sure they would love to have hard data to hand to the programmers. 

So glad to finally see this get some attention, can’t believe I’m going back 2 years to page 1 when it first happened to me and has done many times since (LG c9 & Xbox SX) 

Cannot be confident it hasn’t damaged the speakers in some way, let’s see how it progresses but really should not be something that takes this long to address, come on Sonos.

😵‍💫 mine is working properly… mmm very strange issue…

Both gunshot pops (rapid fire) and single pops, mixed and unpredictable. At times it sounded like electrical pop sounds and I did jump to the conclusion that something had blown the Arc speaker(s) until the reset and fantastic sound since. 

Even triggered some Pops while unplugging to try a reboot and accidentally touching the volume buttons on top, so even the interface sounds could generate pops instead of the intended sound. 

I didn’t notice the audio codec but it was popping for anything that we threw at it: both Sonos Radio Rock Pantheon music (and any other stations), Amazon Music, and local CBS television which was likely DD5.1 at that time.

I didn’t know about this and similar threads during the bulk of this, so I can’t say for sure that we threw any ATMOS source at it. But definitely no AppleTV, no Xbox and CEC was turned on (controlling volume up & down with TV remote) and spatial or ATMOS (whichever it is) in the S2 app was also turned on. The former two seem to be getting lots of redirection blame for triggering pops but this was direct HDMI eArc connected to a mid-brand TV. The remedy I’ve read is to turn CEC and spatial/ATMOS off but that seems like a terrible remedy given both are KEY benefits of Arc.

Again, all sounded great for a couple of hours in which I couldn’t run Trueplay due to some uncontrollable environmental noise in the area. After that was silenced, I ran it, expecting Trueplay balancing as I had done several times with another Arc and Move speakers... and that process was immediately followed by Pops (singles and rapid fire). After several restarts, it was the same.

Only sleeping on it and then trying factory reset, setting ARC back up again, linking it with the two 300s again, etc (basically everything I had done the night before EXCEPT running Trueplay) brought back excellent Arc sound with both music and television. Been pounding it all day & evening since yesterday with all kinds of sources included confirmed ATMOS stuff from Amazon app on that TV and not a single pop. Everyone is gushing how great it all sounds (as we all expect from Sonos). 

While it’s terrible to jump to any conclusions on only one instance of any cause & effect, my gut feel is that if I ran Trueplay again right now, the Pops would immediately follow and the whole process would have to be redone again to get back to the great sound I have now. While one should never pass judgment in one instance, those same guts say this problem MIGHT be centered in Trueplay, which in the setup process is something people are told to run. In my case, I bailed on the initial setup process at that point due to some noise I couldn’t control (waiting for silence before running Trueplay). And that led to this potential discovery that may prove to be helpful for others. 

Hopefully, a few with the Pops can recall running Trueplay and opt to give this a try. Resetting to factory is easy, as is setting the reset speaker back up again. When it gets to the Trueplay step, bail on the process and try playing something you know was making it pop before (and play something through AppleTVs and/or Xboxes too). If a few people can confirm this possible remedy, Sonos could dig into the Trueplay programming to find what I suspect could be some selective bugs that basically lead to the pop problem for some of us. 

Some programming bugs makes much more sense (to me anyway) than “turn off ATMOS” or “turn off CEC” for THIS speaker… and it seems doubtful that Apple, Microsoft and select TV manufacturers would ever alter their audio playback hardware or software to “fix” this problem for Sonos if it was really them.

I’ve run Trueplay on my own Sonos stuff several times and never had the problem, so perhaps it’s also linked to select combinations of Sonos speakers? In this case, I had already linked an Arc and two 300s in a single room before running Trueplay. Maybe that’s one of the combinations that can trigger this?

Again, perhaps I’m onto nothing here (a good scientist would run cause & effect several times to see if- in this case- running Trueplay again now would bring those pops back without changing anything else (I suspect it would)), but we enjoyed the same CBS channel likely playing Dolby 5.1 for stretches of time before I ran Trueplay. So if Dolby MAT is at fault, it would seem Arc should have been popping before Trueplay ran too. Sounded great… right up until I ran Trueplay.

After that, every audio source made it pop, including Sonos own radio stations, which are presumably NOT Dolby MAT, nor even running through the television at all (wouldn’t Sonos radio just direct play on Arc via ethernet connection to router?). I use an Arc in another room for music only- no TV connected at all- and listen to Sonos radio on it frequently (has been trueplayed several times over the years and never had any pops).

And again, since the reset early yesterday, the otherwise exact same setup, cables, TV, etc has been playing near non-stop- including more of those local TV stations- with not a single pop. So if Dolby MAT is at fault, it seems there would have been lots of pops when running stations playing Dolby Digital. What’s different since yesterday? The ONLY thing: Trueplay has not been applied.

I’m of the apparently minority opinion that the ‘pop’ is being generated upstream from the Sonos device, and the Sonos device is merely playing what it is handed. That being said, I’ve seen no compelling evidence in particular, other than it appears to be associated with Apple TV and Microsoft XBoxes. 

I, and many others, have experienced the pop at 60 Hz on Apple TV. I have also experienced the pop at 60 Hz on Xbox. The Sony 900H has an issue with 120 Hz where it lowers the vertical resolution to 1080, not the only TV model to do this, so I would play at 4K60 with VRR without Dolby Vision. Still pops when enabling Atmos. 

>>>You are brave and doing your job. But Sonos where are you? Must Ken_Girrifhs do what you should be doing.

Turn it off? Is that the solution?

Somehow all the other soundbars can handle it.

I am amused that a generative AI can make such a plausible-sounding explanation. Mind you, I can reliably produce the pop on Apple TV screensaver with no audio playing. But that of course doesn’t preclude some control signals still being transmitted.

Also had my first reoccurrence of this issue last night with a Series X and Sonos Arc with a Sony x900h TV

I was watching videos from the Dolby App and as soon as I prematurely closed a video by pressing the back key I got the pop sound, Arc stopped working at that point until reset 

Worth noting that the surrounds were still working fine afterwards only the ARC wasn’t.  
 

Obviously I don’t want to do damage to the Arc, so if it is in fact just garbage playing at highest volume I feel a little more at ease, would be nice to see a true diagnosis and a fix though

Happens with my Roku Ultra as well.  It has now happened to me 3 or four times in the last few weeks.  Very annoying and I hope Sonos fixes the issue soon.