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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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    ProfessorFrag
    Enthusiast II
    August 8, 2023

    This thread alone has users affected by the problem on Samsung, Sony, and LG TVs. If this issue appears on the three largest manufactures, as well as both major consoles (with the PS5 Atmos update), and Apple TV; there is nothing limited to it. 

      blunderdome
      Enthusiast I
      August 8, 2023

      here’s the latest official response from Sonos support, which seems to suggest it’s specific to some TVs. I know Microsoft has been working on a HDMI 2.1 problem with the Xbox Series X on certain LG OLED models, where the console would boot up into a resolution from 1995 instead of 4K.

       

      Either way, we’ll get on to Sonos and figure out if this is TV specific or something related to Dolby MAT 2.0.

       

      For context, here’s support’s response (in this same thread) from 2021:
       

      For two years they’ve been aware of the issue, have been working on a fix, and have been suggesting people disable Atmos on their Atmos capable soundbar.

        TheFlamesFan
        Enthusiast II
        August 8, 2023

         

        I just started having the issue over the past couple of weeks on my personal system at home and I’m shocked to hear it has been affecting people for years. I’m also a reporter at The Verge, so I’ll do my best to get Sonos to comment on this properly. It’s a disgrace that they haven’t so far.

        By far the best news we have heard on this thread in a while.  Not that you are having issues, but that there is somebody with deep links to the tech community that can start to put a little exposure on this issue outside this thread.

        Welcome Tom, big fan here personally!

          KrylonBlue
          Enthusiast II
          August 9, 2023

          This thread alone has users affected by the problem on Samsung, Sony, and LG TVs. If this issue appears on the three largest manufactures, as well as both major consoles (with the PS5 Atmos update), and Apple TV; there is nothing limited to it. 

          This was my initial thought when I read their response. I’ve heard of the popping happening on all of the major brands and it’s not limited to the TV being a certain type of panel (OLED, QLED, Mini-LED and so on). 
           

          I don’t disagree with Sonos in saying that it’s not hardware related. The issue does appear to be related to software but the fact that they’ve yet to fix or even say they replicated the issue is concerning. I’m not entirely certain on what information they receive when we send diagnostics in but surely they can see something went wrong when these pops occur. 

          jamesps
          Lyricist I
          August 9, 2023

          I just want to add my voice to this thread as yet another user that has the same problem and I am very frustrated and disappointed to have spent a fortune equipping my whole house with Sonos products and now not being able to watch Atmos content without the constant fear of the ‘pop’. 

          Please Tom Warren, you guys should definitely report on it. I would think that the combination of Apple TV + LG TV + Sonos ARC is very prevalent. They are the TV, the streamer and the soundbar recommended by all sites like The Verge, Wirecutter, etc. 

           

          My config: Apple TV 4k (2nd Gen), LG G2, Sonos Arc + Sub + Amp. 

           

           

            tomwarren
            Enthusiast I
            August 10, 2023

            We have a response, but all it largely says is that they can’t reproduce the issue. I’m going to offer to ship my TV, Sonos Arc, and Xbox to Sonos.

             

            https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/10/23824258/sonos-arc-dolby-atmos-problems-loud-audio-pop

              Paul Tsang
              Enthusiast II
              August 10, 2023

              This is my latest response by Sonos support . They can’t just replicate the pop on their end . 

              Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

                jamesps
                Lyricist I
                August 10, 2023

                Thanks Paul for the insight. What they seem to be saying is not that they can’t reproduce the issue. They can’t reproduce it reliably. So, basically, they have the same problem as we all do, which is that it happens randomly, and there is no sequence of actions that will make it occur on demand. 

                That is all fine and good, but I think Sonos engineers should be adding debugging code in their ARC software that would allow them to figure out what the issue is when the problem occurs. Anyone that has worked as a software/hardware engineer knows that random issues are more difficult to debug, but if you put enough resources to it you can find the issue. 

                  tomwarren
                  Enthusiast I
                  August 10, 2023

                  I’m able to reliably reproduce the issue, that’s how I captured it on video. I’ve offered to work with Sonos engineers to troubleshoot, so we’ll see if they’re able to do that remotely or not. 

                    Yup
                    Trending Lyricist I
                    August 10, 2023

                    I have the pop/bang issue as well.  What has “fixed” the issue for me was disabling Trueplay.  I think there is something getting corrupted in the Trueplay profile that affects Atmos/MAT encoding.  

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