Hi,

Thanks everyone for posting all this stuff.  I was on the brink of ditching my old-school Denon amp, monstrous Mission M74s, surrounds, centre speaker and sub for the Arc Ultra, Era 300s and Sub 4 to tidy up the lounge and be submersed in the Sonos soundfield.  However, sounds like that would sonically be a backwards step.

Glad to have found this thread before buying the kit.  So often it’s not until after parting with the cash and realising that you’re disappointed with the results that you start digging into threads like this.

For all of you that have invested in this kit, I truly hope Sonos do something to sort it out.  Unfortunately, given the snails-pace at which the disastrous app was worked on, we’ll all be older and the only thing we will need to hear is that really clear centre dialogue channel!  😉

Curious if anyone can explain. Certain sports ambient crowd noise can mainly be heard when engaging night mode. Even during non-action sequences. Today’s US Open is a perfect example. When night mode is on low ambient crowd noise can be heard consistently. With night mode off, you can hear the ambient crowd noise disappear from the soundbar. I’m glad I can create a workaround with night mode but this wasn’t as much an issue with identical mixes on my previous 5.1 soundbar system (I listened to the same source on both to compare).  Yes, it’s undoubtedly partially a source issue but I do think something in the arc ultra mix is off for certain sources. Wondering if anyone knows why night mode engages this ambient sound. I’m getting 5.1 sound. TV set to pass through. Sony A95L. 

I wonder if it’s not so much just a L-R issue as it is certain surround mixes being mapped incorrectly regardless of specific channel. It’s noticeable in movies too but much more so in sports.  

I edited this. I’m watching a match in a different stadium and sound is much better. So that particular mix is bad I guess. But I’d maintain when I had my other soundbar system I heard crowd noise more in the mix. 
 

It depends on the mix being sent by the originator. They have control over what gets sent.

No argument from me. However, the mixes coming from sources sometimes have ambient sound coming through the center. Those are the sports mixes that sound better on the Arc Ultra. I changed from a competitor’s soundbar system to the Arc Ultra because the other bar didn’t work after several months. You can probably guess which one but my goal isn’t to advertise. 
 

I watched last year’s National Championship football game on both systems. The competitor’s filled my room with sound. On the Arc Ultra immersive tonight’s Appalachian State football game sounds almost as good as the CFP championship game. The Arc Ultra otherwise blows the competitor  away. But something is wrong. I’ve heard the same source material on both systems. Certain audio that was mapped to the competitor is not as ambient on the Arc Ultra. Whether that has to do with the L-R channel volume, I don’t know. But a fix would really be appreciated. I hate having buyer’s remorse over a $3,000 expenditure. Especially on something so close to being great. 

Heh. Reminds me of pre-season games on my local channels when I lived in Austin. The local station carried it in Dolby Digital, but the feed they were getting was in stereo from the broadcast affiliate (probably some station in Dallas, it was the Cowboys). Made the game almost unlistenable on my surround system, which at the time was a PLAYBAR, a pair of Sonos PLAY:1s, and a Gen 2 sub. But the muddiness between the center channel, combined with the front right / left, and the surround info was terrible, although as I recall, it was Tony Romo, not my favorite announcer anyway….

It took me weeks of phone calls to finally connect with an engineer at the TV station who actually understood what I was talking about, as near as I can tell, I was the only person calling in. Didn’t run in to the issue the next year, I think there was some learning that occurred. But the simple fact is that the Sonos was playing what it was sent by the source, much to my chagrin. Sonos offers some ability to modify data, but nowhere near enough to change/fix everything. 

I don’t think I made my point clearly. On the Arc Ultra, the center array is several decibels louder than the L-R arrays. So if the source is 2.0, in my opinion if it is output into either 2.0 or 5.1 on the Arc Ultra system , the sound from the source is accurately depicted. My reasoning is in that scenario, both dialogue and L-R effects are played in the L-C-R arrays. In a true 5.1 mix I believe the dialogue only plays through the center array. Since the center array is several decibels louder than the L-R arrays, dialogue in a 5.1 mix is played disproportionately higher on the Arc Ultra. Thus the Arc Ultra is not outputting a true 5.1 mix authentically from the source….in my opinion. Based on listening to identical source material on a similarly high end system, I’m confident I’m correct. Whatever the case certain material contains dialogue in all 3 arrays. That content tends to sound excellent. Content where the dialogue is isolated to the center array is at least at times lacking the proper L-R channel sound.  I’m assuming this content is true 5.1, when it happens. 
 

I hope this makes sense. I’m hoping that a fix for 5.1 content in which audio designed for the L-R channels is better mixed into the center array so as to reproduce the actual mix from the source. In my opinion this isn’t happening in 5.1 sources consistently. It could be more complicated than this, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s only certain 5.1 sources. Maybe I’m just neurotic, lol. 

But in my opinion there’s no question that louder center array is causing certain mixes to not be presented in the manner that they are originally presented from the source. 

I’m no expert and totally open to input from Sonos technical people in the know. Or would love to know if a fix is being worked on. Even if it takes awhile. Or maybe the last update did something that I’m missing. I just want to know. 
 

It shouldn’t be just Corry who provides feedback. It’s not fair to us. Or him.

If you want official feedback calling supportis really the only good option. You need to get past the initial call responders and may need to schedule a call-back.

Hi ​@Corry P, sorry to keep asking. Has there been any development on this please?

i find it so difficult to watch something with the arc ultra. The centre channel being 7/8db louder than the left and right is really too much.

The arc ultra has been out for almost a year and still no progress on this, despite many people being frustrated by it?

I was hopeful with Tom being at the top now, that customers would be listened to more?

Thank you again.

Point taken. I’ll just leave it for now with this comment. A 2 channel mix…even one up mixed to 5.1…appears to engage more of the speakers from L-R. In a true 5.1 mix when dialogue is exclusively coming from the center, it appears to me that more of rhe L-R speakers closest to the center are noticeably quiet. I’d wonder if that is an unintended correctable error. Or if those are purely for L-R channels. L-R channel audio seems noticeably more prevalent in a two-channel mix. 
 

To your point, I’ll try support when I get a chance but I can only wonder if I’m trying to make points about technical questions how far I’ll have to go to get there. 
 

I know I’ve been somewhat repetitive and I hope that hasn’t annoyed anyone. I’m putting what I think are technical points with limited knowledge hoping they’ll provide helpful insight. 
 

I’m going to leave it here as I think I’ve said all I can say. And just either hope for a fix or take it to customer service and see how far I get. Thanks for listening everyone. 

Hi ​@Gavalar 

I have not heard anything as of yet (neither anything I can share nor that I can't), but I do keep pushing all this feedback - you are being heard.

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.

Hi ​@Corry P 

It’s now been a year since this issue was reported to Sonos. Lots of software updates have come and gone and still no resolution. The center channel is still double the volume of the left and right channel of the Ultra. 

Is there really no update or resolution to this bug? 

My two cents. The system has improved tremendously since the 9/2 update IMO. You’re not going to get a 1:1 match of “L-C-R” audio with Dolby test tones because the soundbar isn’t mapped to have specific channel audio play out of a specific “channel” on the bar. I’m unquestionably hearing ambient sounds way better than prior to the 9/2 update. 
 

There are still certain mixes I’m wondering about though they might just be bad mixes. Or some PS5 Dolby atmos issues (my games on the Arc ultra sound better in DTS). I don’t remember this being the case on my prior soundbar system. 
 

But that aside, there’s an improvement and this is not a placebo effect. 
 

I used Peter Pee’s method of Trueplay. It worked for me very well. Watched Penguins-Rangers last night. Sounded unreal with sub 4 and two 300s. All kinds of ambient sound, players, refs, crowd, music. Sounds like a really good mix of audio being output as L-C-R…in my opinion. 

Yeah, I was the guy who met with L3 and uploaded the test tones, trace files way back when. At time I was miffed when I was told “working as designed” then later I got really miffed when I saw SONOS support dismissing problems as “tweakers overly concerned with test files that don’t apply to our unique [muxed] environment”.

To be crystal clear to any passersby and support, our sound was NOT GOOD. We noticed it immediately with:

1. Castle Episodes 5.1
   1. Incorrect volume for End of scene music elements, sound effects and people talking off-screen but in the scene...terrible
2. Captain America: Winter Soldier - 
   1. Main fight scene under overpass where CA is deflecting the gaitling gun bullets. In theater and on other system, there’s a huge left to right pan of bullets ringing off the shield. On the Ultra almost zero.
   2. That whole 10 minute segment sounded like it was happening in a telephone booth directly in front of the screen, very low ambient and left/right. Terrible
3. Black Panther
   1. Scene where one of the ships first shows entering the main mine cavern, then floating through the center to dock at topside: the sound effects sound like your listening inside a helmet, again no ambient/L/R
   2. Once topside, the on screen character’s dialog leaps out like a loud commercial, again, no ambient

I logged all that but then thought I’d do Sonos a favor and provide objective measurements using the test files. Somehow those test files became the topic and were discredited as “not applicable”.

I ended up buying Fives and using SS to add L/R channels and all the ambient/music/conversation was fixed! But then had problems with L/R being too loud (hence all the requests for channel loudness control).

So, Sound B, would you mind checking a few of those scenarios above and comparing to another TV? Especially the Captain America. I’ve got everything boxed up, ready to go on Marketplace. If Sonos finally fixed it, then I’ll probably keep everything, use the Fives in an office.

its been a big hassle and I felt like Sonos was ignoring legitimate concerns with the Ultra, which soured me on the brand. If that’s been addressed, I’ll definitely give another chance.

Thanks

I can do that if you can give me until the weekend? Also can you give me the time frames in the two movies to find those scenes? I’ll do my best to inform you properly. I would hate to tell you it sounds great to me and then you unbox and are disappointed. But I’m willing to help as best as I can. I can measure decibel levels with an app. 

That’s great, thank you. tell you what, just do the Captain America scene, that will come up in the chapter scan, can’t miss it. You should hear the bullets ring off his shield left to right, as he aims/redirects the bullets back at the gunman, it’s very effective sound effect. If that sounds right to you, that enough to unbox and fiddle. It was most egregious example. The pitch should change from low to high as he redirects

Thanks!