Sonos Arc Ultra center channel too loud

Thank you ​@Corry P. Really appreciate you fighting our case.

I hope the feature comes soon as it’s well overdue.

So I completed the latest update. Did trueplay again. And to me the sound profile has changed markedly for the better. I hear sounds from L-R in the Ultra now that I absolutely 100% did not hear before. And these are ambient sounds being heard with extreme clarity. I don’t know if this was an intended effect but something has unquestionably changed for the better. The sound has come alive in all facets with a crystal clear center channel. Don’t know what or why but I’m very happy. Honestly I’m amazed. Every sports source I’m listening to either live or on DVR with a good mix has gone from ok/good/very good to flat out amazing. Every. Single. One. This can’t be an accident. The US Open audio that I referenced the other day. Could barely hear any ambient sound. Now hearing every small bit of crowd noise clearly. 
 

I use a slight variation of Peter Pee’s trueplay. I can explain if anyone wants to try it but it has worked for the best results for me in general. 
 

Finally, please keep this sound profile!!! This is 3,000 dollars worth. Blows away anything I’ve heard before in terms of a soundbar system. 

​@Corry P thank you for all your effort and patience. Really appreciated. 

This is great news!

I did trueplay again an hour or so ago and the centre is very loud, with left and right much quieter.

I note that wide left and wide right are much louder than left and right. 
 

The rear sounds are still coming out of the era 300 Atmos tweeter (mainly). Hopefully this will rectify soon.

Here’s what I think is happening without any knowledge or proof. Sonos has said that there is not a direct 1:1 mapping of source channel to soundbar channel. What I hear now as opposed to before is audio mixed by the source in the left and right front channels is being processed by the arc ultra much louder in terms of volume but not exclusively present in the specific left front and right front channels in the bar. Instead you may also be hearing it in the other speaker arrays as well. I don’t think there’s specific channel assignments in the arc ultra by design. Instead audio from the mix at the source is played through a variety of speakers. I’d hazard a guess that what’s different now is the audio mix from the source is being presented much more authentically. I’ve done numerous true plays so this isn’t a matter of me just doing it last night. After the update the sound on the bar was clearly different. So I did a trueplay and boom. Game changer. I expect the center array will still play louder by design but what is being mixed into the different arrays from the source sounds far more accurate. At least in my opinion. 

PS 5 playing Madden surround was kind of a muddled mess prior to this update. I’d switch to the Sonos Ace and hear things I couldn’t hear on the Arc Ultra. 
 

Not anymore. It’s fantastic now. 

The bolded is not just by design, it is the very definition of a positional codec like Atmos.  Any Atmos capable sound system isn’t going to map a single channel to a single speaker/driver.  It is going to map it to a position in the room, and room analysis will tell it what speakers/drivers to play out of. 

Appreciate that information. Personally I feel that the audio mix is now authentic or at least much closer to it. I’m pleased. 

Yeah, I’ve noticed something similar. The center channel on the Sonos Arc can be really dominant, especially with dialogue-heavy content. The left and right channels often feel too quiet or pushed into the background, especially for music or ambient effects.

I did notice a bit of improvement after re-running Trueplay, but this time I held the iPhone mic a bit higher and moved around more slowly. Also, keeping both Night Mode and Speech Enhancement turned off actually helped in some cases — depends on the content.

Have you checked your source device’s audio output settings (like Apple TV, Xbox, etc.)? Sometimes if it's set to PCM or stereo, it can mess with how the Arc handles surround sound and make the sides quieter.

Let me know if you’ve found a good fix — I’m still testing different setups myself.

Can others confirm that Front RCL balance has finally been fixed ?
 

i was one of the original documenters of the issue and was DEEPLY unhappy to be told it was working as designed after 20-30 hours of documenting and trying to resolve

I have been planning to sell everything  on Marketplace at Thanksgiving , I gave up…. I don’t want to waste anymore time unless a few are confident. 

I’ve not heard anything about it recently.

Last I read was a response on website, saying something along lines of, our world class engineers say the soundbar is working as intended.

Do agree would be nice to have better separation. An additional slider be very welcomed.