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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.

Just Audio uncompressed. I don’t use Alexa.


I am also here to report the pop 🤦‍♂️.  New sonos user.  Sony xf900 with arc, sub,1’s for surrounds.  Xbox user.  Popping has got really bad.  Multiple times a session.  I had to change audio to 5.1 because it doesn’t happen with that setting.  Boo sonos!  This issue should be resolved,  this thread was created 2 years ago! 


 

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.

 

Professor, I’m gathering your comment is aimed at my personal experience in which turning off Dolby vision on the Xbox has in fact solved my popping issue.  I have been more than two months pop free with it off.  I even tried turning it back on to which the popping started again just to make sure it was that feature which was causing the issues for me

This leads me to believe it is one of the other pieces of the chain then.  The two that come to mind are

  1.  Passthrough configuration of your TV. My TV is a LG C1
  2. HDMI cables both from the Xbox to the TV and the TV to the ARC.  I use the supplied cable from the Xbox to the TV and certified HDMI 2.1 cable to the ARC

Are any of these different in your setup?


@ilh23mx and everyone: bad news, I have replicated the pop with all voice assistants removed and Compressed Audio set to Uncompressed (and also on auto). 

At first when I removed Alexa and set Compressed Audio to Uncompressed, it took hours of Atmos content for the pop to reappear. I thought we might have a solution! But now that it has happened once, it’s coming back in the usual less than 30 minutes under either setting. 

I completed all testing using Apple TV and did not use my Xbox in between. 


Just bought a Beam Gen 2 that arrived Thursday. I don’t have an X-Box, but I am connected to an Apple TV 4K. I turned on Atmos tonight. Just a few minutes into a show, there was a  pop that scared the crap out of us. It was so loud we expected sparks and fire and smoke. That brought me to this thread.

After reading almost all of this 2 year old thread, I’m shocked that Sonos is sending these out to unsuspecting customers with no warning or recommendations. If I had any faith that Sonos was really doing something, I’d keep it and wait for a fix. But it’s pretty clear after reading this thread that they’re just jerking us around. The sticking point for me is that I don’t believe for a second that they are unable to reproduce this.

Mr. Spence, I’d suggest you read this entire thread and get into the conversation with an honest report of exactly where you are on this issue. Because this is a class action waiting to happen.


Can reproduce this at will flicking between an atmos title on xbox series x and home - vid here: https://1drv.ms/v/s!At6Mgf3ymchZhJBUhmqLsqwM54sik. Fifth time to support today, they said to switch to Dolby 5.1!

“I have checked this and we are aware of this behavior and are investigating it, but we do not have any additional information to share at this time.

Workaround: Disable Dolby Atmos and use Dolby Digital 5.1 instead.”

 

Beyond a joke, this is a company knowingly selling a product that has issues performing what it’s advertised to do to consumers without warning them. After the whole S1 to S2 forced obsolescence debacle, I should have learnt my lesson.

 

Avoid.


It’s not an issue I’ve personally encountered with my Arc or Beam, but then again I don’t use MC LPCM as I don’t have an Xbox or Apple TV 4K etc. (however I do use Dolby Vision FWIW🤔?)

@Ken_Griffiths , I thought you didn’t have an Apple TV or Xbox and that you had never been affected by the pop. 
Has your situation changed? Are you now also affected?

We all get it, you are a huge fan boy, but this exact issue does NOT happen with another manufacturer and lies solely with Sonos.  We are all happy you are happy to cripple your expensive soundbar by removing atmos but the rest of us are wanting our product to function as advertised, and that's why we are working with Sonos to get this issue fixed.  If everything works perfect for you then great!  This topic isn't for you.  For everyone else on the now 24 pages of this thread amongst many others, we are looking for a solution to this common defect that will allow us to use our product as designed without issue.


This has happened twice to me so far.  Here’s a video from last night.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/K1MCjDXJqxQPg3Nx6

Is there any fix?  Does Sonos even acknowledge the problem?


@Corry P could we get an update? Does Sonos foresee that we will be able to reenable Atmos on Apple TV?

About a month ago I worked with you to get some devmode capture of the pop as produced with Apple Tv and Xbox. Both when playing sound and also when the Apple TV was just on screensaver.

After being without Atmos for more than a year, and with Apple releasing its new HomePods today, I have to figure out for myself if it’s time to go through the pain of selling my Sonos system and changing horses so that I can have Atmos back. No hard feelings, it is what it is.


Thanks, dude. I’m just frustrated. I’ll try to hang to hang in there a little longer. 

When it works, it really does sound great.


We were watching a show through our Fios box and had the loud pop with the loss of sound until it had power cycled. I’m very worried about damage it may have caused. We just got this for ourselves as a Christmas gift, so it has only been used for less than 4 weeks. Any progress on a fix.


Diagnostic 427286041

 

Just tried again after the tvOS 16.3 update that supposedly improved Atmos.  Still loud bang and audio gone.  It REALLY sucks because when I turned Atmos on for the first time in almost a year it sounded so good...and then I was reminded why I had to turn it off 🤬


I’m having the same issue as OP but on my Gen 2 Beam (with One and One SL as surrounds) connected via eARC through a Samsung QN65Q80A to an Apple TV 4K 2nd Gen.

Every 30 minutes of play or so there is a loud “pop” followed by a beam restart. Only happens with Dolby ATMOS audio.


Further testing:

  1. Reconnected Xbox One Series X. One hour Apple TV Music, no pop. 
  2. Turned on Atmos on the Xbox. Played one hour Xbox Disney+ Thor Love and Thunder, no pop.
  3. Played one hour Apple TV Disney+ Thor The Dark World, no pop. 

My current state is Apple TV both CEC options on, Xbox all CEC off. Atmos on both, no pops yet. If you are affected by the pop, please try the following steps:

  1. Disable both CEC options on the Apple TV and disable the main CEC option for all CEC functions on Xbox.
  2. Unplug TV, Arc, Apple TV and Xbox. Plug everything back in.
  3. Enable Atmos followed by both CEC options on Apple TV followed by Atmos on Xbox. Do not enable Xbox CEC. 
  4. Report back if or when you get a pop again. 

Over a week has passed, I’ve been using Apple TV and Xbox plenty with Atmos on, and there has been no pop. It appears that CEC-off on Xbox plus power cycling all around has solved the problem. It’s a little annoying that I now have to use the TV remote for input switching and power on/off when using Xbox, but that’s OK. More importantly my family can use Apple TV with just its remote and CEC works fine.

I have to add that I am surprised how much better I feel when watching movies and playing games. I didn’t realize just how much stress and frustration pent up from having dropped thousands on a sound system that didn’t work for its advertised purpose and, perhaps worse, where the manufacturer spent years aware of the problem and still hasn’t publicly acknowledged it.

Will I ever buy another Sonos product? I don’t know. But I’ve learned my lesson that it’s more like AliExpress than the reputable brands (Denon, Klipsch, Sennheiser, etc) from which I typically buy.

If I don’t post in this thread again for a while, bon voyage, fellow forumers. I hope your problem is resolved as well. You have been troopers sharing information, replicating, troubleshooting, etc. Yes, there are a few users who tried to throw us off the solution path through persistent gaslighting that the problem didn’t exist or surely couldn’t be Sonos’. But you all hung in there and we’ve made it. You will always have my thanks.

@ProfessorFrag - Before you leave us...and for the uninitiated (like me) that don’t know how to change our CEC settings (or where they exist)...could you post some screenshots?


 

He provided a couple of possible solutions.  The first was the disable CEC/power cycle idea.  

 

Hah that’s funny, I guess the devs do read these boards after all


I was planning on dropping $1500+ on an Arc home theater system until I found this thread a few weeks ago.

Lurking this forum and reading all these stories of how Sonos support has been deflecting and gaslighting their customers for years has made me reconsider ever purchasing a Sonos product. It’s not even just the Arc, the Beam 2 also has “The Pop” and another persistent issue where it makes a full volume jackhammer-like sound.

WTF Sonos?? It’s completely unacceptable that issues like this get dismissed for years, and the way customer support tries to deny that this is a real issue really rubs me the wrong way.

Thank you to everybody who’s shared their experience in this forum. You’ve saved me a lot of money and headache.


At the time I bought the arc and bass I was between this and the Sennheiser AMBEO (with the advantage that you don´t really need a separate bass with the AMBEO), today I´m hitting my head against the wall. First world problems, I know, but this is very frustrating and again the company does nothing to solve this. Do check it, prob a better choice right now.


I haven’t experienced it since that one time months ago but it just happened twice within 5 minutes of the initial pop while playing the Resident Evil 4 Remake demo on Xbox Series X. I have had CEC disabled on the Xbox side for months which I thought fixed the issue but it didn’t. 
 

I am not disabling Atmos on a Soundbar I bought specifically because it has Atmos. This should have been fixed by now. 


Have the same issue with apple tv & Sony x91j, it’s insane that an atmos capable device is just another sound bar now. Not worth >$2k if this is the support customers get. 


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. 

UPDATE ONE MONTH LATER:

The Pop just happened again, even with Atmos Off 😭

I was watching YouTube in the Apple TV 4K 2022, Atmos disabled, the video was not even in 5.1 and the F*cking LOUD POP scared me again. 
It’s a shame that now I won’t be able to watch any content in my Arc without the fear of the popping. I’ve been lucky this only has happened when I’m watching alone.

Sonos team: if you are reading this I hope you feel Bad, because your work is Bad and you should feel Bad. 


Unfortunately not good news for me.  Ever since I had a pop with the game “contrast” on the series X.   I now have recurring pops on games I never used to have them on.  CEC is disabled and I have done power cycle but no longer having the same luck as I did before.  Seems like getting back to the state I had before isnt as easy as just resetting my configuration to the options I previously had.  Crazy frustrating!!

 

Cory.  Sure would be nice to get an official Sonos update on this. The longer that Sonos keeps to the story that the technical teams are looking at this and nothing more concrete, the more I start to wonder if a fix is actually coming.   The optics sure don’t look good for Sonos, seeing that this has been a problem for 2 years and only under investigation for a few months, I will remember to take my time as well when Sonos wants me to spend more money to upgrade my ones to Era 300s


I turned off all CEC across both TV and Apple TV, power cycled but didn't turn CEC back on.

I’ve had over 2 weeks of seamless Atmos playback until last week when I got a pop in the first quiet moment of an episode of The Mandalorian.

Was *just* starting to relax and enjoy the Arc.

Come on Sonos, this is nowhere near good enough and an update is very much overdue!


Paul, I highly doubt that. You’d think Sonos would mention that in the patch notes considering it’s such a big deal. 


Pop about three minutes into The Mandalorian tonight on Apple TV.

So disappointing, no issues at all on TV native app.

would be good to get any kind of formal update, especially as this problem now seems to be with all Sonos Atmos capable equipment….