Sonos Arc loud pop then audio loss


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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.

Corry P 5 months ago

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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Every Sonos Arc is NOT affected. I’ve had one for maybe 4 years without a single POP. 

And the blame game redirection implies that it’s not any one thing- like not just AppleTV or Xbox or PS5 or a television or a cable or ATMOS setting on or CEC setting on. There’s too many different third party potential catalysts while others have no issue for me to believe it’s any 1+ (external) thing. 

I go back to the common denominator- the Arc itself- (me) guessing either a bad batch (if hardware) or something in on-board software is driving this issue. It’s easier to sling blame at other stuff but look at the example I offered:

  • my own has never popped in maybe 4 years of ownership
  • my friends was fine for a few hours before running Trueplay, then pop-mania for anything that generated audio (including stereo music or just touching the buttons on the arc) starting immediately AFTER running Trueplay, then factory reset + setup again but skipping Trueplay step: no more pops for weeks now. All other variables & settings (TV, cable, sources of video & audio, etc remain consistently the same) but no more pops. What changed? For them, it was not re-running Trueplay on a fresh setup. If not Trueplay (bug, which some have since seemed to negate), the factory reset seemed to fix it. 

If it’s ATMOS or CEC or TV or cable, it would consistently repeat by using that same tech and the same settings. But it seems that it is not replicable for many, which implies it is probably NOT much of the stuff getting the (redirection) blame. 

I have to think it is some bugs in software or a bad batch of hardware production. Else, if it is any one thing, someone could:

  • set up an Arc, hook it to the catalyst thing, generate pops.
  • Factory reset, bypass the catalyst thing, no pops.
  • Insert the catalyst thing again, generate pops. 

Pinning it down like this would allow others to run the same test, generate the same result and then the blame game would have more credibility… and SONOS themselves could execute the same test to replicate it themselves. Instead, we have 45 pages of “my setup is generating pops” with others saying “my <different> setup is generating pops” and other people sharing their same setup does NOT generate pops or that their Arc- like my own- has NEVER popped. 

Collectively find an absolute, repeatable cause & effect catalyst, repeated/repeatable on more than one Arc and it would give SONOS an absolute point of focus. As is, we’re all over the place with possible causes and possible remedies with others countering each guess. 

I think it’s absolutely within their capability to fix this, but they’re far more driven by money and new products. 
 

i would push back on just blaming the arc though as there’s other sound bars which have the issue 

Which soundbars and how often it occurs ?

Userlevel 2
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Every Sonos Arc is NOT affected. I’ve had one for maybe 4 years without a single POP. 

And the blame game redirection implies that it’s not any one thing- like not just AppleTV or Xbox or PS5 or a television or a cable or ATMOS setting on or CEC setting on. There’s too many different third party potential catalysts while others have no issue for me to believe it’s any 1+ (external) thing. 

I go back to the common denominator- the Arc itself- (me) guessing either a bad batch (if hardware) or something in on-board software is driving this issue. It’s easier to sling blame at other stuff but look at the example I offered:

  • my own has never popped in maybe 4 years of ownership
  • my friends was fine for a few hours before running Trueplay, then pop-mania for anything that generated audio (including stereo music or just touching the buttons on the arc) starting immediately AFTER running Trueplay, then factory reset + setup again but skipping Trueplay step: no more pops for weeks now. All other variables & settings (TV, cable, sources of video & audio, etc remain consistently the same) but no more pops. What changed? For them, it was not re-running Trueplay on a fresh setup. If not Trueplay (bug, which some have since seemed to negate), the factory reset seemed to fix it. 

If it’s ATMOS or CEC or TV or cable, it would consistently repeat by using that same tech and the same settings. But it seems that it is not replicable for many, which implies it is probably NOT much of the stuff getting the (redirection) blame. 

I have to think it is some bugs in software or a bad batch of hardware production. Else, if it is any one thing, someone could:

  • set up an Arc, hook it to the catalyst thing, generate pops.
  • Factory reset, bypass the catalyst thing, no pops.
  • Insert the catalyst thing again, generate pops. 

Pinning it down like this would allow others to run the same test, generate the same result and then the blame game would have more credibility… and SONOS themselves could execute the same test to replicate it themselves. Instead, we have 45 pages of “my setup is generating pops” with others saying “my <different> setup is generating pops” and other people sharing their same setup does NOT generate pops or that their Arc- like my own- has NEVER popped. 

Collectively find an absolute, repeatable cause & effect catalyst, repeated/repeatable on more than one Arc and it would give SONOS an absolute point of focus. As is, we’re all over the place with possible causes and possible remedies with others countering each guess. 

I think it’s absolutely within their capability to fix this, but they’re far more driven by money and new products. 
 

i would push back on just blaming the arc though as there’s other sound bars which have the issue 

It's not just about the Arc, but also about the Beam 2 (all Sonos soundbars that support Dolby Atmos)

Do you know of a soundbar that isn't from Sonos that produces the banging sound?

Userlevel 3
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Every Sonos Arc is NOT affected. I’ve had one for maybe 4 years without a single POP. 

And the blame game redirection implies that it’s not any one thing- like not just AppleTV or Xbox or PS5 or a television or a cable or ATMOS setting on or CEC setting on. There’s too many different third party potential catalysts while others have no issue for me to believe it’s any 1+ (external) thing. 

I go back to the common denominator- the Arc itself- (me) guessing either a bad batch (if hardware) or something in on-board software is driving this issue. It’s easier to sling blame at other stuff but look at the example I offered:

  • my own has never popped in maybe 4 years of ownership
  • my friends was fine for a few hours before running Trueplay, then pop-mania for anything that generated audio (including stereo music or just touching the buttons on the arc) starting immediately AFTER running Trueplay, then factory reset + setup again but skipping Trueplay step: no more pops for weeks now. All other variables & settings (TV, cable, sources of video & audio, etc remain consistently the same) but no more pops. What changed? For them, it was not re-running Trueplay on a fresh setup. If not Trueplay (bug, which some have since seemed to negate), the factory reset seemed to fix it. 

If it’s ATMOS or CEC or TV or cable, it would consistently repeat by using that same tech and the same settings. But it seems that it is not replicable for many, which implies it is probably NOT much of the stuff getting the (redirection) blame. 

I have to think it is some bugs in software or a bad batch of hardware production. Else, if it is any one thing, someone could:

  • set up an Arc, hook it to the catalyst thing, generate pops.
  • Factory reset, bypass the catalyst thing, no pops.
  • Insert the catalyst thing again, generate pops. 

Pinning it down like this would allow others to run the same test, generate the same result and then the blame game would have more credibility… and SONOS themselves could execute the same test to replicate it themselves. Instead, we have 45 pages of “my setup is generating pops” with others saying “my <different> setup is generating pops” and other people sharing their same setup does NOT generate pops or that their Arc- like my own- has NEVER popped. 

Collectively find an absolute, repeatable cause & effect catalyst, repeated/repeatable on more than one Arc and it would give SONOS an absolute point of focus. As is, we’re all over the place with possible causes and possible remedies with others countering each guess. 

I think it’s absolutely within their capability to fix this, but they’re far more driven by money and new products. 
 

i would push back on just blaming the arc though as there’s other sound bars which have the issue 

Which soundbars and how often it occurs ?

LG SK9Y and a few others. 
 

won’t know the frequency but perhaps you can ask on the Reddit posts of other brands that are complaining about it.

Userlevel 2
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Hi, I have used Sonos ARC for 2 years with Apple TV 4K without any issues connected via old Samsung UE65HU7505  from 2014 which downsampled everything to Stereo PCM.

I have changed TV (finally) to Samsung OLED S90C a couple of weeks ago with the same Apple TV 4K from 2017 and have experienced this Bang-pop-knock couple of times which was a horrifying experience.

I really hope that Sonos will fix this issue soon...

Userlevel 6
Badge +5

Welcome to our not-so-small club @uahero . I’m sorry to hear you are affected. I encourage you to get a case ID from Sonos tech support just to be put on the radar. If the tech makes you do big time trouble shooting, e.g. “factory reset” or “buy new cables”, I would probably not play along. 
 

The following solutions each work for some posters. None of them seem to be a universal fix:

  1. Turn off Dolby Vision.
  2. Turn off CEC.
  3. Turn off Trueplay. 

Bought my ARC when it first came out (so Im out of warranty), have been having this issue for a while now, across two different TV set ups. Shame on Sonos for not having a proper fix for this yet.

Number of class action suits threatened by Sonos users over the years - Hundreds.

Number of class action suits actually filed - One (and the “class” consisted of exactly one complainant)

Number of class action suits won - Zero

Save your lawyers the time and wait for it to be fixed. 

I know at least one class action that was settled by Sonos. It was very recent. 

Details, please?

Userlevel 1
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So interesting situation tonight. 
 

Was using my ps5. Pop happened, arc cut out but the surrounds kept playing. 
 

Power cycled the arc and then was fine again. 
 

Odd. 

Userlevel 7
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Details, please?

$700 or so for a privacy issue with the microphones in Sonos devices. Despite being done by a large class-action legal company, it a confidential settlement, though a few posted it on reddit ths last week.

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Are posts being removed? It would be nice to know why. Is it because of a NDA-issue regarding a beta (and possible fix for this issue) or is it because the post about a beta that fixed the issue was not true?

 

Userlevel 2
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Hi all,

We've seen the need to remove some posts from this topic as they're breaking the Beta NDA, which we take very seriously. With that said, yes, there is progress on a fix for the Arc popping that some users have experienced, so we kindly ask you to continue to be patient while we’re working to give you a better experience.
We will of course let you know if there is any news around this topic that can be shared.
Thank you for respecting our terms and conditions for participating in both this forum and our Sonos Beta program.

Userlevel 4
Badge +2

Hi all,

We've seen the need to remove some posts from this topic as they're breaking the Beta NDA, which we take very seriously. With that said, yes, there is progress on a fix for the Arc popping that some users have experienced, so we kindly ask you to continue to be patient while we’re working to give you a better experience.
We will of course let you know if there is any news around this topic that can be shared.
Thank you for respecting our terms and conditions for participating in both this forum and our Sonos Beta program.

I appreciate the posts might technically break the beta NDA that Sonos enforces on people, but this is an ideal time to be a little more transparent here after years of silence. Folks have been waiting 3 years for a fix on this issue, for hardware they’ve spent thousands of dollars on. The fix isn’t to provide a “better experience” it’s to provide the Dolby Atmos experience that Sonos customers thought they were getting when they purchased a Dolby Atmos soundbar.

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Hi all,

We've seen the need to remove some posts from this topic as they're breaking the Beta NDA, which we take very seriously. With that said, yes, there is progress on a fix for the Arc popping that some users have experienced, so we kindly ask you to continue to be patient while we’re working to give you a better experience.
We will of course let you know if there is any news around this topic that can be shared.
Thank you for respecting our terms and conditions for participating in both this forum and our Sonos Beta program.

I appreciate the posts might technically break the beta NDA that Sonos enforces on people, but this is an ideal time to be a little more transparent here after years of silence. Folks have been waiting 3 years for a fix on this issue, for hardware they’ve spent thousands of dollars on. The fix isn’t to provide a “better experience” it’s to provide the Dolby Atmos experience that Sonos customers thought they were getting when they purchased a Dolby Atmos soundbar.

Well put.  The call for patience while they “work to give us a better experience” is extremely grating language.  You guys sat on this for three years and then magically started making progress after a bunch of articles dropped calling attention to the fact that many of your customers aren’t getting the base experience that they paid for.

I don’t understand the point of NDA’ing a bug fix test, especially as the public know it exists and is happening. What’s the worst case, it doesn’t work and you’ll get bad press? That’s going to happen anyway if the fix doesn’t work… Maybe there’s some kind of proprietary info protection rolled into the same NDA, fine, but you can separate those topics in your restrictions.

I’d strongly recommend for increasing transparency and communication in a crisis than shutting it down, deleting info, and gagging people trying to help you. There are no upsides, only downsides.

Sincerely, 20-year CM/PR vet.

Userlevel 3
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I don’t understand the point of NDA’ing a bug fix test, especially as the public know it exists and is happening. What’s the worst case, it doesn’t work and you’ll get bad press? That’s going to happen anyway if the fix doesn’t work… Maybe there’s some kind of proprietary info protection rolled into the same NDA, fine, but you can separate those topics in your restrictions.

I’d strongly recommend for increasing transparency and communication in a crisis than shutting it down, deleting info, and gagging people trying to help you. There are no upsides, only downsides.

Sincerely, 20-year CM/PR vet.

The best part about this is that if they had just left it alone it would have been an unverified claim by one user with not supporting evidence to back it up.  But because they felt compelled to enforce the NDA we now have an official statement and confirmation that the user was under NDA, which would seem to validate those claims. 

Userlevel 3
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Can anyone affected by this issue join the beta?

 

Given the huge amount of users with these issues it seems like it would be a good idea to have as many people testing in as many different setups as possible.

Userlevel 5
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😂😂..you guys wanting more transparency?? They aren’t even transparent on the every month updates “ bug fixes and performance enhancements” we get. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

You can always ask to join the Beta team, it is not a small commitment and may have consequences not related to the bug you are interested in.

I was in the beta program for several years but it got to be more effort and inconvenience than enjoyment so I dropped out.

Doing it again I’d likely split my Sonos into two households and only put one in the beta program to minimize spousal aggravation and always have some Sonos working as expected.

When I ran beta programs for software, there were several cohorts, each testing a specific ‘fix’. There was no way to guaranty that you were going to be in a specific cohort, testing the fix you wanted. I don’t know if Sonos does this, but I’d be willing to bet that just offering yourself to join the beta program is no guaranty that you’ll get that particular fix. 

We also never promised a roadmap, or dates for when things would roll out. Especially for bug fixes, since they may or may not work once they got in the hands of the beta testers. I can’t tell you how often I heard ‘but it fixed things on my computer’ from engineers, once we got feedback from a statistical representation of the beta testers. Plus, there’s the fact that a ‘bug’ that expresses itself in one fashion may indeed be more than one, so the engineer may be correct, in X% of cases, it fixed ‘that’ problem. It was just that X was not 100%. We learned in the 90s that promising a fix to be out by a certain date was a lie, since it hadn’t been fully tested internally, and then sent to the testers for approval. And if we missed a date, boy, were the complaints twice as much. We ended up announcing the fix, much like Sonos does, when it had gone through all of those rigors, and was released to all the users. 

If Sonos has a ‘fix’ for this issue, rest assured they’ll release at the earliest date possible.

Continuing on the beta NDA discussion: If there are multiple potential causes of the issue and tester ‘A’ is sent a beta that fixed issue ‘1’, but tester ‘A’ had issue ‘2’ not ‘1’, when tester ‘A’ squabbles publicly “they said it was fixed, but it’s still an issue!” an unnecessary public relations issue is created.

Also, there may be slightly different hardware builds involved. The fix must be verified on all builds and early releases might not be ready for this. Further, a beta release might not be intended to fix anything because it only has enhanced data logging — attempting to help better understand the issue.

With respect to these “pops” I can imagine that a module licensed by SONOS is causing the issue by corrupting memory outside of its own boundary. This greatly complicates identifying and resolving the issue. Multiple 3rd parties could be involved. A temporary fix might be to rearrange modules such that a seldom used memory area is at risk. Another temporary workaround could be to reboot the system every few hours or days.

There is no need to discuss these details publicly. This reminds me of the child who needs to proudly prove to everyone that it knows a secret, but the only way to do this is to divulge the secret.

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

With respect to these “pops” I can imagine that a module licensed by SONOS is causing the issue by corrupting memory outside of its own boundary. This greatly complicates identifying and resolving the issue. Multiple 3rd parties could be involved. A temporary fix might be to rearrange modules such that a seldom used memory area is at risk. Another temporary workaround could be to reboot the system every few hours or days.

Whatever the root cause ends up being, I hope (but doubt) we get some kind of postmortem once a patch goes live.  Genuinely curious as to what this was and why it took so long to nail down.

Userlevel 2
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At least we now know progress is being made and I will just be happy if ARC and Beam Gen 2 users can finally enjoy the Dolby Atmos system that they paid for.

Userlevel 3
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Hi all,

We've seen the need to remove some posts from this topic as they're breaking the Beta NDA, which we take very seriously. With that said, yes, there is progress on a fix for the Arc popping that some users have experienced, so we kindly ask you to continue to be patient while we’re working to give you a better experience.
We will of course let you know if there is any news around this topic that can be shared.
Thank you for respecting our terms and conditions for participating in both this forum and our Sonos Beta program.

We’ve seen your need to remain largely silent on a 3 year old issue. With that said you’ve been making “progress” on a fix that many of us have experienced, we kindly ask that you give priority to your customers as opposed to an NDA so we can have a better experience. We will of course continue watching in 5.1 without the atmos that you advertised our product as. Thank you for selling us products that have made us feel like we’re in a conflict area when they pop and for the lack of transparency in both this forum and after sales support 

I know when I want to feel like a tough guy, I always find a lower level support person who is only following the rules.  I then proceed to mock and ridicule them for something over which they have no control.   That really pumps my anonymous internet muscles.  Then I go out into the real world and kick a kitten, cause that's how I roll.

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