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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ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

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

@tomwarren Thank you, Tom. It means so much to us that someone is finally noticing.

I would like to direct you to an interaction I had with Sonos on December 21 of 2022. They had an engineer work directly with me and record pop data while they had my Arc in “devmode”, which provides detailed recordings and diagnostics to Sonos.

I produced multiple on-demand pops, on Xbox, on Apple TV, and even on the Apple TV screensaver when no sound was playing; and submitted the recordings. I have not heard back since. Here is the link:

https://en.community.sonos.com/home-theater-229129/sonos-arc-loud-pop-then-audio-loss-6852340/index21.html?postid=16633668#post16633668

I am not the only user that can easily reproduce the pop. Just put on a Spatial Audio playlist on Apple TV and you should get it within 30 minutes. We have also had reports of at least one user in this thread that was affected by the pop and never had a peripheral connected. It was coming straight from the TV which uses Dolby MAT, a rarity for TVs of course.

controlav

Lead Maestro

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.

Where are you located Tom? Sonos should come visit you to debug this, they have engineering offices in Boston, Santa Barbara and Seattle (and maybe some others too).

As a software guy myself, getting a consistent repro is key to bug determination. Lets not forget the time the MS Office engineer put his actual phone number in an error message in order to get someone to call him when the bug repro-ed. (After the initial euphoria about someone calling him, things got out of hand quickly...)

Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.

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steveriggins

Lyricist I

Sonos could send engineers to people who can reliably reproduce the issue, as Apple did for me one time long ago:

Fixing difficult issues and customer support

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GoVolz

Lyricist II

I have an AppleTV, LGC2, and Xbox Series X, and I do get it, but infrequently. I imagine if I tried to replicate reliably I could do it. I guess I could disable HDMI-CEC if that does indeed fix the issue, but come on.

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tomwarren

Enthusiast I

I just tried disabling eARC and I can no longer reliably reproduce the audio pop. Re-enabling eARC hasn’t reproduced the issue either. Can anyone here who is able to reliably reproduce see if disabling and re-enabling eARC clears something? It might still come back, but it’s interesting that I can no longer reliably reproduce!

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ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

I just tried disabling eARC and I can no longer reliably reproduce the audio pop. Re-enabling eARC hasn’t reproduced the issue either. Can anyone here who is able to reliably reproduce see if disabling and re-enabling eARC clears something? It might still come back, but it’s interesting that I can no longer reliably reproduce!

I’ve tried this on a Sony 900H. Disabling eARC allowed Atmos to still function, but if you go into Sonos App → System → About My System, it will now show Atmos (Dolby Digital) instead of just Atmos. In this state, there will be no pop. The pop seems tied to Dolby MAT encoding.

I had some audio sync issues on some content without eARC, so I turned it back on. The pop came back.

Please note that different users have had success eliminating the pop by disabling various features. But there is no universal fix. I can get rid of it by disabling CEC, which is my current solution. Others can get rid of it by disabling Dolby Vision, which doesn’t work as a fix for me. For yet others, nothing works. :(

It would be nice if Sonos shared a little bit about what their testing shows. You can try pinging @Corry P in this thread and see if you get some info.

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tomwarren

Enthusiast I

I just tried disabling eARC and I can no longer reliably reproduce the audio pop. Re-enabling eARC hasn’t reproduced the issue either. Can anyone here who is able to reliably reproduce see if disabling and re-enabling eARC clears something? It might still come back, but it’s interesting that I can no longer reliably reproduce!

I’ve tried this on a Sony 900H. Disabling eARC allowed Atmos to still function, but if you go into Sonos App → System → About My System, it will now show Atmos (Dolby Digital) instead of just Atmos. In this state, there will be no pop. The pop seems tied to Dolby MAT encoding.

I had some audio sync issues on some content without eARC, so I turned it back on. The pop came back.

Please note that different users have had success eliminating the pop by disabling various features. But there is no universal fix. I can get rid of it by disabling CEC, which is my current solution. Others can get rid of it by disabling Dolby Vision, which doesn’t work as a fix for me. For yet others, nothing works. :(

It would be nice if Sonos shared a little bit about what their testing shows. You can try pinging @Corry P in this thread and see if you get some info.

Yeah I noticed that, and that there’s a slight latency. Le sigh. Hopefully Sonos just starts sharing more info with us.

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mark@scan

Trending Lyricist I

I’ve experienced this problem with LG C9 OLED and XSX, I’ve just recently upgraded to an LG G3 OLED, not experienced the problem as yet but I’ve only had the G3 a few days so will report back if the problem persists with the G3.

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Paul Tsang

Enthusiast II

I just tried disabling eARC and I can no longer reliably reproduce the audio pop. Re-enabling eARC hasn’t reproduced the issue either. Can anyone here who is able to reliably reproduce see if disabling and re-enabling eARC clears something? It might still come back, but it’s interesting that I can no longer reliably reproduce!

I’m going to try this tonight and report back . Disabling CEC on my Xbox series X did not fix the issue . Once outputting at 120hz with VRR then the pop occurs . Will try enable and disable eARC but it may just be a temporary fix . It may happen again after 15 mins to 30 mins after

T

TheFlamesFan

Enthusiast II

I just tried disabling eARC and I can no longer reliably reproduce the audio pop. Re-enabling eARC hasn’t reproduced the issue either. Can anyone here who is able to reliably reproduce see if disabling and re-enabling eARC clears something? It might still come back, but it’s interesting that I can no longer reliably reproduce!

There was a point somewhere in this thread that we discussed CEC state when turning off certain features. It seems that when a change is made the TV holds on to certain setting which if you are lucky results in more stability and less pops. I had this happen to me personally about 6 months back. Things were incredibly stable for over a month and the the second I got one pop. I got a bunch of them

Tom, I am in a rare group where I found disabling Dolby Vision for Gaming on the series X makes a difference. I have been pop free since this change, and since Dolby Vision for gaming is a feature that offers only a small enhancement over HDR, it’s worth it to me to have this disabled in exchange for Atmos. Whether disabling this changes this internal TV / CEC state or its some other technical explanation…all I know is it works for my setup

I have a C1 / Series X / Apple TV / and full Sonos 5.1.2

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