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samro1094
Contributor I
December 8, 2020

Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss

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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    Abo116
    Lyricist III
    June 9, 2023

    Tomorrow is the 3 year anniversary of the Sonos Arc. At this point, I’m chalking this up as an inherent design flaw of the Arc and that this issue won’t be resolved until the release of the Arc 2. If it hasn’t been fixed by now, it probably never will…

    The funny part is I have yet to experience this on an Apple TV 4K even when using Dolby Vision and Atmos on both my Arc and Gen 2 Beam. It’s only been my Xbox. I’m sure it’ll happen on my Apple TV soon enough but I don’t understand why I’ve had the issue with Xbox but not Apple yet. 

    I operate my Apple TV in the bedroom, but I also had it in the living room on my ARC and couldn't find the problem. But I think that's because most of the movies and series I streamed had no atmos at all. Most of the time they only have atmos on the original soundtrack. I'm from Germany and I always look at German audio and this is usually "only" Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus

      ProfessorFrag
      Enthusiast II
      June 9, 2023

      But if that’s true they sold a product as Atmos certified only for it to be incapable of doing so. I don’t care if it only has issues with MAT. It’s their responsibility to release a product that works as described. It doesn’t say “incompatible with MAT” which puts them as the accountable party in these issues if it cannot be fixed. 
       

      The funny part is I have yet to experience this on an Apple TV 4K even when using Dolby Vision and Atmos on both my Arc and Gen 2 Beam. It’s only been my Xbox. I’m sure it’ll happen on my Apple TV soon enough but I don’t understand why I’ve had the issue with Xbox but not Apple yet. 

      I don’t know if you even want to do this to yourself, but the most reliable method I have for triggering the pop is to fire up the “Hits in Spatial Audio” playlist on Apple TV Music and letting it run. Almost always pops within 30 minutes. But you can just let it go while you’re not even in the room and return to it later checking if the Arc has entered the “on but no sound” state after a pop.

      KrylonBlue
      Enthusiast II
      June 9, 2023

      I’d rather not, lol. 

        Cavecanem
        Lyricist III
        June 13, 2023

        Hello there, beautiful people of this nefarious and long thread. Life´s too short and SONOS customer care, engineers and everyone involved at least for the matter that gets us here, are a bunch of AH that couldn´t care less of us and our “new problem that just developed and OMG our engineers just heard about and OMG we have them in our dungeons with no food and little to drink until they solve this ultra new and rare issue for you, our beloved customers”, so I took a very nice offer that SENNHEISER recently had on their website and now I can happily say I can actually hear whatever I like without any popping, banging, ringing or whatever. Super rare that the APPLE TV and the PS5 no longer have any issues and work as they´re supposed to...super super rare. I still don´t know what to do with the POS soundbar that now lies quiet and still in the cold hard floor of the guest room, I can´t resell it without any guilt. I took the legal action but I know it´s gonna take a looooooooong for that to even start with the first hearings. I wish you all well and hopefully someone at SONOS has a sudden attack of conscience and guilt and actually does something or at least comes clean and says “you´re right, this thing will not work on...”. I´ll keep you posted on the legal action. Have a good one.

        ProfessorFrag
        Enthusiast II
        June 13, 2023

        @Cavecanem just to clarify for slower folks like myself: all you changed was Sonos Arc to Sennheiser Ambeo and the pop is gone?

          KrylonBlue
          Enthusiast II
          June 13, 2023

          @Cavecanem just to clarify for slower folks like myself: all you changed was Sonos Arc to Sennheiser Ambeo and the pop is gone?

          Wow, that’s amazing! Who would have thunk?!

          Cavecanem
          Lyricist III
          June 13, 2023

          @Cavecanem just to clarify for slower folks like myself: all you changed was Sonos Arc to Sennheiser Ambeo and the pop is gone?

          Correct. Since the AMBEO has 4 HDMI ins I played a little to se if it changed anything or something happened. First all connected to the TV and TV to soundbar…nothing, all ok. Then I did it the other way around…nothing, all ok. I left all connected to the soundbar and works like a charm, all CEC enabled and working smooth like mountain fresh snow.

          Cavecanem
          Lyricist III
          June 13, 2023

          @Cavecanem just to clarify for slower folks like myself: all you changed was Sonos Arc to Sennheiser Ambeo and the pop is gone?

          Wow, that’s amazing! Who would have thunk?!

          Xmas miracle in June.

          ProfessorFrag
          Enthusiast II
          June 13, 2023

          I may not have $1,700 to drop on another sound system. But I am genuinely happy for you that you can now enjoy Atmos without the constant dread of a Sonos Pop on your mind.

          For now I have to hold out hope that Sonos will do right by us. 

            Cord
            Enthusiast I
            June 13, 2023

            It is time Sonos sorted this Dolby Mat issue for Apple TV and Xbox out, I can use the HDFury Arcana which does fix the issue. But sadly it introduces other issues with my Samsung Qled.

            Beam Gen 2 user

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