Contributor I

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

1202 replies
90732 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

jamie_shaw

Enthusiast I

We have been so far unable to reproduce it ourselves - thus the need for engineers to contact anyone who can reproduce it reliably.

I would get it occassionally with PC → LG CX → Sonos Arc

After I got rid of my LG CX and replaced with a monitor (PC → HDFury Arcana → Sonos Arc) I found that I can now reproduce the popping at will by running the Windows System Sound Test:

System → Sound → Arcana Properties → Select “Dobly Atmos for home theatre” and click TEST.

The pop happens consistently. I’m glad to put in a case if the engineers want to get on a call and monitor in real-time.

This sounds promising. Hopefully the fact that it is an Atmos test can flag *specifically* what’s causing the failure.

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

A small update and big thank you for the community:

Earlier today I spoke with a Sonos engineer. It was a very positive experience. He was knowledgeable about the problem and had been thinking about it for over a year, including having had an interaction with the CEO about it.

He logged into my computer to access my Arc and put it into devmode. The Arc will leave devmode if rebooted. Then he supplied me with three local URLs to access the devmode functions. The first causes the Arc to save the sound data from the last minute. The second downloads that save file. The third files a diagnostic, same as the app but more convenient.

So far I have submitted three pop files to him. Two files from two different Apple Music songs on Apple TV and one while the Apple TV was on screensaver and not playing any sound. I hope to also generate a file from the Xbox doing it, but I have not had time to get that done.

A big thank you to all of you in the community for contributing your experiences in this thread. If we had only been individually reaching out to support, I am sure we would still be changing cables, factory resetting, etc. The reason I am in a position to have real interactions with Sonos now is because I am standing on your shoulders.

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

Bingo! I captured and submitted an Xbox pop as well.

I’ll stop now as this is quite time-intensive work. I’m looking forward to hearing what insights come out of this process.

jamie_shaw

Enthusiast I

We have been so far unable to reproduce it ourselves - thus the need for engineers to contact anyone who can reproduce it reliably.

I would get it occassionally with PC → LG CX → Sonos Arc

After I got rid of my LG CX and replaced with a monitor (PC → HDFury Arcana → Sonos Arc) I found that I can now reproduce the popping at will by running the Windows System Sound Test:

System → Sound → Arcana Properties → Select “Dobly Atmos for home theatre” and click TEST.

The pop happens consistently. I’m glad to put in a case if the engineers want to get on a call and monitor in real-time.

Humour me on this one, just because I'm curious, if the Arc is muted during the test, does it still pop? Is it volume driven, i.e. is the pop louder if the volume is? And/or does the “Audio in” signal change on “About my System” only, when muted (not real-time, requires a page refresh).

I would try myself but as it's inconsistent, I'd rather not watch several movies in silence 😅

T

TheFlamesFan

Enthusiast II

Bingo! I captured and submitted an Xbox pop as well.

I’ll stop now as this is quite time-intensive work. I’m looking forward to hearing what insights come out of this process.

On behalf of the user community, thank you for all your hard work on this

T

TheFlamesFan

Enthusiast II

We have been so far unable to reproduce it ourselves - thus the need for engineers to contact anyone who can reproduce it reliably.

I would get it occassionally with PC → LG CX → Sonos Arc

After I got rid of my LG CX and replaced with a monitor (PC → HDFury Arcana → Sonos Arc) I found that I can now reproduce the popping at will by running the Windows System Sound Test:

System → Sound → Arcana Properties → Select “Dobly Atmos for home theatre” and click TEST.

The pop happens consistently. I’m glad to put in a case if the engineers want to get on a call and monitor in real-time.

Humour me on this one, just because I'm curious, if the Arc is muted during the test, does it still pop? Is it volume driven, i.e. is the pop louder if the volume is? And/or does the “Audio in” signal change on “About my System” only, when muted (not real-time, requires a page refresh).

I would try myself but as it's inconsistent, I'd rather not watch several movies in silence 😅

I can confirm that I still get the pop if the Sonos itself is muted. If the Xbox is muted, no pop

SidAlmond

Lyricist III

Might as well add my experience. Recently bought an Arc and Sub (Gen 3) in November 2022 and experienced the popping issue. I experienced the popping issues in the Xbox Series X (in-game, in-app, in a menu, etc.) and an Apple TV 4K. Similar to everyone here, it’s random (i.e. I can’t create it on-demand) but after troubleshooting with Sonos support and submitting multiple (at least 5) diagnostic reports, it was determined to be with Dolby Atmos content coming out the aforementioned devices. (The Xbox is really bad with this as it’s in Dolby Atmos the entire time, it does not change audio codec/format automatically or based on the content...that’s a whole other issue!)

Besides submitting diagnostics to support, I have had 3 Arcs, one of which was sent to me by Sonos directly. And like everyone else, I have disabled Dolby Atmos on the Xbox Series X and Apple TV 4K. Support confirmed the error is a faulty amp error.

In addition to buying an Arc, I also upgraded my TV to a LG C2 77”. The webOS versions of Netflix, HBO Max, etc. play Dolby Atmos fine (or at least I don’t recall experiencing the pop when playing Dolby Atmos content from said apps).

I’ve called a few times asking for an ETA/status update on the supposed fix and I keep getting told to “rest assure they are working on the issue”. At this point, I’m willing to wait since it appears to be device specific AND the quality of the Sonos Arc and Sub are good. Even the mobile app experience is nice, so for now I’m dealing with it. I really hope that Sonos can address this OR Microsoft/Apple can address this for.

Lastly, I haven’t combed through all responses but has anyone spoken to Microsoft or Apple about this? I get the sense that they will deny the issue, say it’s not happening, or it’s not their fault.

Thanks!

Sid

M

Marakk

Lyricist II

Just had this pop while playing music from YouTube on my PC which sends the audio to my C2 and then Sonos Arc + IKEA Symfonisk surrounds. Scared the shit out of me. I'm submitting the diagnostic report now. Will update if it happens again. I configured the setup in the settings again after it happened and I set all the speakers to limited range rather than full range.

Playing the songs again, that pop hasn't happened again yet, and I hope it remains that way. I can't afford another Sonos Arc right now. :'(

M

Marakk

Lyricist II

If it helps, it happened on Taylor Swift's Blank Space song played via YouTube. There are some loud...sounds in that sounds... I don't know what instrument it is, but these pops happened on those. It's like the system couldn't handle that. Configuring to ensure the speakers were set to full range seems to have resolved it for now.

M

Marakk

Lyricist II

Not able to get to anyone on technical support. My diagnostic report number for this issue is 1264212766

Show more replies

Sign up

Login to the community