Contributor I

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

1202 replies
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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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I

IrishStephen

Lyricist III

I’m having my issue when using my Apple TV so turning off Dolby Vision will have an impact I think.

R

Rios

Enthusiast II

Same issue here. Has happened while streaming and also playing Xbox. Have owned arc for about 3 weeks. Has happened a handful of times. Also concerned something could be damaged. Sound is gone until I change inputs or reposed device. Anyone figure this out yet? Seems like an ongoing 2 year issue

It is an ongoing issue that was first reported 2 years ago, unfortunately for all of us, there was no warning, no information, nothing to tarnish or affect the sales of the Sonos Brand.

We all bought into this system blind, believing we were purchasing a top tier product of the sound bar category.

And here we all are.

I

ilh23mx

Avid Contributor II

Do you turn Dolby Vision off from the TV, Apple TV or Sonos itself?

and once you do aren’t you loosing something?

Thanks

I just removed ALEXA from SONOS ARC and issue was gone! That was changing point from my previous setup (no issue happened before), I added ALEXA a couple of weeks ago (never enabled before). Hope this solution works for all.

current setup is:

XBOX SERIES X DOLBY ATMOS enabled.

EARC MODE AUTO

PASS-THRU AUTO

DOLBY AUDIO DIGITAL PLUS enabled

I

ilh23mx

Avid Contributor II

Just forget it, just happened again!!!

But now this time I changed in SONOS APP from COMPRESSED AUDIO AUTO to UNCOMPRESSED AUDIO and finally is working great. No pop sound and ATMOS working great. And actually makes sense because my tv is configured for uncompressed audio output. That AUTO function from SONOS APP may not be working as expected.

M

Meulen92

Lyricist III

Just forget it, just happened again!!!

But now this time I changed in SONOS APP from COMPRESSED AUDIO AUTO to UNCOMPRESSED AUDIO and finally is working great. No pop sound and ATMOS working great. And actually makes sense because my tv is configured for uncompressed audio output. That AUTO function from SONOS APP may not be working as expected.

Sounds promising! And you don’t get the pops anymore when playing DV+DA content from Xbox?

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

The compressed audio option is for Sonos products that use line in, not HDMI like Beam and Arc. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll test it when I have time. But it shouldn’t do anything on Arc since Arc doesn’t have a line in.

As for the Dolby Vision discussion, please keep in mind that pops happen on the Xbox even if DV is turned off. Turning off DV is not a solution for Xbox.

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ilh23mx

Avid Contributor II

The compressed audio option is for Sonos products that use line in, not HDMI like Beam and Arc. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll test it when I have time. But it shouldn’t do anything on Arc since Arc doesn’t have a line in.

As for the Dolby Vision discussion, please keep in mind that pops happen on the Xbox even if DV is turned off. Turning off DV is not a solution for Xbox.

Thanks for pointing out. However my results are:

I’ve been playing HALO INFINITE for an hour by now and no issue happened. I have DV and DA enabled so far good results.

DV doesn’t have any relation with audio. I played yesterday night with DV de activated and no issue as well

Note: issue happened around 5 or 10 min after initiate a Xbox game

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

@ilh23mx first of all, I appreciate what you’re doing. Maybe, just maybe, you’re the one to have cracked this which would be amazing! I am not trying to dispute that the compressed audio setting matters. I’m saying that it shouldn’t because it’s a setting for line in. So of course nobody will have tried that yet

My DV comment wasn’t aimed at you. Earlier in the discussion there was a recommendation to turn off DV on the Xbox. Turning off DV seems to help on Apple TV, but not on Xbox.

I’m about to go in a 4-day trip, which is terrible timing because I would love to help you replicate your result. If you’re willing to spend the time, I think it would be super helpful for you to try to return to a state where the pop happens. That would give us a lot of information about:

Do Compressed Audio and Alexa matter in combination, or only one of them?
Does your move fix it even when you return the settings to previous? This would lend credence to the hypothesis that Arc works fine until something triggers the “pop vulnerability”, and maybe your steps just happen to clear that trigger.

If you can find a setting where you can make the pop disappear and reappear, you’ve won and solved this! If it’s now gone for good on the other hand, it might reappear and there’s something really complex going on.

I

ilh23mx

Avid Contributor II

@ilh23mx first of all, I appreciate what you’re doing. Maybe, just maybe, you’re the one to have cracked this which would be amazing! I am not trying to dispute that the compressed audio setting matters. I’m saying that it shouldn’t because it’s a setting for line in. So of course nobody will have tried that yet

My DV comment wasn’t aimed at you. Earlier in the discussion there was a recommendation to turn off DV on the Xbox. Turning off DV seems to help on Apple TV, but not on Xbox.

I’m about to go in a 4-day trip, which is terrible timing because I would love to help you replicate your result. If you’re willing to spend the time, I think it would be super helpful for you to try to return to a state where the pop happens. That would give us a lot of information about:

Do Compressed Audio and Alexa matter in combination, or only one of them?
Does your move fix it even when you return the settings to previous? This would lend credence to the hypothesis that Arc works fine until something triggers the “pop vulnerability”, and maybe your steps just happen to clear that trigger.

If you can find a setting where you can make the pop disappear and reappear, you’ve won and solved this! If it’s now gone for good on the other hand, it might reappear and there’s something really complex going on.

No worries I totally understood you previous comment. Also I tried to emphasize your statement.

Before returning to my original setup, I did a step before. I just removed ALEXA and I kept COMPRESSED AUDIO AUTO enabled in SONOS APP and issue occurred (ALEXA may not be the issue)

Final step I changed COMPRESSED AUIDO setting to UNCOMPRESSED and tried both DV on/off and issue disappear.

Later today I’ll go back to first step UNCOMPRESSED to AUTO and report if issue appears again.

Also I will try to enable ALEXA with UNCOMPRESSED setting to re-confirm if works well.

Thanks for the comments and advice, as soon as you return home safely please try my setup and confirm if works.

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

@ilh23mx amazing! You got it to pop and not pop just by changing the compressed audio setting? I’m blown away.

I cannot wait to try this myself. Anybody else have some time to change Compressed Audio to Uncompressed and see if the pop disappears, and reappears when it’s back on auto?

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