Oh relax Karen was some humour after how they’ve handled this. Hope they’re paying you for simping. P.S. not nice to call people low level ;)

I always thought a Karen was someone who abused employees and asked to hear from their managers.  And I'm not simping for anything, except maybe human decency.

PS - I said "lower level", meaning one who isnt at the decision making level you should be directing your ire towards.  Nothing demeaning about that.  I myself started out at a lower level position.

Hi,

I’m experiencing a similar issue to that described by othered here. Sonos Arc setup (with Sub Mini and 2 Era 300s). Very loud popping sound (startlingly loud), sometimes a series of additional sporadic pops, then complete loss of volume. Occurs frequently when watching Dolby Atmos content on Apple TV. I’ve tried power cycling the TV and the sound bar. The issues repeats regardless. Each time I wonder if my system will ever produce sound again. Is this the speakers themselves? The power amps? 
 

I’m reading that the issue has existed for many users for a couple years now and that the recommended fix is to disable Atmos. The whole point of this soundbar is to play hi-res spatial audio. Still no DTS:X support which is disappointing but that’s a different story. 
 

Sonos, there’s enough of us with this issue for long enough now that it deserves significant attention. We need a real fix please. 
 

Neil

Weird experience today. (LG C3, Sonos arc + mini sub + surrounds) Was on Xbox Series X just sitting in settings, forget what I was doing but looked down at my phone for a bit, LOUD pop, followed by 3 or 4 smaller pops. Hadn't experienced ‘echo’ pops before.

It's just so weird because native apps have Atmos and they're fine. I don't think I’ve experienced it on the PS5 once, but using my Xbox Series X is like russian roulette. And only since getting the LG set. Used for years on Samsung (no earc) with no problems.

Your Xbox setting probably were 120hz and VRR on ?

Those were my settings when I had my Xbox connected to my Sony OLED and I consistently had the popping. 

I created a separate question in an attempt to help Sonos diagnose this issue, but have a feeling I will end up in this thread anyway. So let me jump in here.

I experience the same issue as OP.

There is a sudden very loud pop that sounds like a huge short circuit in the Arc, then some small pops crackling followed by a complete loss of audio. The led turns orange on the front.

Power cycling the Arc gets it out of the bricked state, but only until the issue happens again. Can confirm that it happened with Dolby Atmos audio content from media player on the TV itself.

Setup

• Sonos Arc
• 2x Sonos ONE surround setup.
• Philips OLED 65OLED806/12 on eArc port (port 1) with HDMI 2.1 certified cable.

System diagnostics collected while the Arc was not in zombie state did not reveil anything weird according to Sonos support.

These posts are going back 3 years that report this same or a similar issue, and I have found no clear solution other than maybe “disable Atmos”.

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.

@Corry P : First of all, that’s excellent news! Let’s get to testing everyone!
 

And then how about a Black Friday only 40% coupon for those of us who have had an open case number with this problem for years? :)

Great news Corry. Thanks to the team for investigating this and getting a fix out. I know it wasn’t an easy problem to identify and work on.

Yay, great news.  Hopefully after almost 3 years of this we can finally put this issue to bed.  Kudos to this great community which helped to get some temporary relief of the issue while the true fix was being worked on.

Thank you to everyone at Sonos who worked to get this fix out. Can’t wait to re-enable Atmos on my Xbox and PS5!

Folks over on Reddit are already reporting getting the new 15.10 update, which includes the fix.  I’m cautiously optimistic but would love to hear from anyone else who had the issue consistently if they’ve gotten the new update and what their experience with it has been. 

Fantastic news! Just in time for Black Friday too. Excited to update and test it out. Hoping to complete my setup with a sub gen 3 tomorrow too. Huge thank you to @tomwarren for raising awareness and helping push this issue 

Great to hear this has finally been resolved. Too bad it required media coverage to even get Sonos to acknowledge and work on the issue for what is ostensibly a premium product. 

Since I last posted in this thread (and got the bizarre runaround from everyone’s favorite Sonos fan/customer support volunteer) I’ve sold all of my Sonos equipment. I hope everyone has a positive experience going forward worthy of their $$$, but the company isn’t the same No-BS Audio Appliance manufacturer that it used to be. 

The update hasn’t fixed anything for me

my sound still drops for half a second every 20 seconds or so, sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse, and same with the popping sound

I also factory reset the whole thing after the update to make sure it’s all fresh

this is my setup:

I'm using a Chromecast with Google TV 4K, and a BenQ TK700 projector

---------------------------------
Sonos Arc: Living Room
Sonos OS: S2
Version: 15.10 (build 76247142)
Hardware Version: 1.27.1.11-2.2
Series ID: A102
IP Address: 192.168.1.227
Audio In: Silence
WM: 1
---------------------------------
Play:1: Living Room (LS)
Sonos OS: S2
Version: 15.10 (build 76247142)
Hardware Version: 1.8.3.7-2.0
Series ID: A101
IP Address: 192.168.1.225
WM: 2
OTP:
---------------------------------
Play:1: Living Room (RS)
Sonos OS: S2
Version: 15.10 (build 76247142)
Hardware Version: 1.8.3.7-2.0
Series ID: A101
IP Address: 192.168.1.97
WM: 2
OTP:
---------------------------------
Sub: Sub
Sonos OS: S2
Version: 15.10 (build 76247142)
Hardware Version: 1.32.1.7-2.1
Series ID: A202
IP Address: 192.168.1.226
WM: 2

Does the Chromecast 4K support TrueHD?  Because if not, I don’t think this fix applies to the issue you’re describing.

I’m not understanding this post (sorry) …as I read that the current fix is to address a Dolby MAT issue with components like Apple TV 4K, Xbox and PlayStation-5 - whereas your issue sounds like a different problem altogether here.

It almost sounds like a cable or port hardware problem, but I assume you’ve investigated those things already.

I would certainly go onto reproduce the issue and submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and then contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to resolve the matter.

(edit: @blunderdome beat me to it, but I agree, it sounds like a different issue).

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, this is the first time I seek support from Sonos, I didn’t know the Chromecast didn’t support MAT as the behaviour is identical to the issue that everyone else was experiencing. I’m now in contact with someone from Sonos and I hope that I can get this sorted!

Maybe see this link too:

https://hometheateracademy.com/google-chromecast-work-with-a-projector/

Particularly note the section that mentions HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection) as that could be a potential cause of your issue (perhaps?), which is solvable with an audio extractor/splitter, like the Arcana and similar products, for example. However, I would see what the Sonos Staff can discover first from your report/contact.

I’m very happy to hear this. My gaming consoles have since been moved to a non-speaker setup (all headphones) but I do still use my Apple TV and was always concerned about a popping noise. 
 

I wish it didn’t take media coverage to get here but thank you nonetheless!

So after 2 years this is finally supposedly fixed.  I’m getting ready to update and then play some Atmos music off iTunes. If this thing pops and explodes like it always does I’m going to explode also. This atmos problem with some players is seriously embarrassing that it’s been a 2 years problem reported thousands of time. I will post the results good or bad.  
 

I CAN REPORT I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY BEEN ABLE TO LISTEN TO 3 SONGS IN ATMOS WITHOUT THE USUAL EXPLOSION WITHIN 15 SECONDS. 

I’ve been gaming and playing music for hours straight with Atmos enabled and no pops. Looks good so far! 3080 w/Sony TV. 

Promising info!

I can now watch movies for the first time with my full setup enabled. Arc + Sub + Era 300

I still have the same issues with Atmos, which involve audio loss every 15 minutes (for 1 second). The update didn’t yield results in my case.