Sonos Beam sound cuts out intermittently

Do you have other devices connected to the HDMI ports on your TV that have CEC enabled? - If so, maybe try removing those devices (temporarily) or switching off CEC control to see if the issue goes away.

Hi, I have exactly the same problem. I have a brand new Beam Gen 2 connected to a One and a One SL in my TV room and Play 1s in two other rooms. My beam is connected to my TV (a Samsung 49Q80T) via the Sonos supplied HDMI cable. I only have one other device connected to my TV, a Panasonic DVD player but 98% of the time this is left turned off.

What I find is that the audio cuts, normally very briefly but worst case for 1-2 seconds, every few minutes or so. However this is very irregular… sometimes it does not seem to happen at all, sometimes every ten minutes, sometimes every minute. It seems to be independent of what I am watching - normally either Live TV or the Samsung IPlayer or Prime Video apps.  I’d appreciate some help with this as it is ruining what is otherwise a very impressive device.

@Nick60,

Have you tried the suggestion of either switching off CEC (called VIERA Link or HDAVI Control or EZ-Sync on Panasonic devices) or removing the device from the TV’s other HDMI port temporarily to see if the issue goes away?

Thanks.  Not yet - so I have literally just now unplugged the DVD recorder.  That said, I struggle to see why it will make any difference because 98% of the time the DVD recorder is turned off?

Is it powered off completely or just in standby? Also checkout in a Google search the issues around Samsung TV’s and the various complaints about their TV’s auto-switching HDMI ports.. it affects a number of their products apparently and that ‘may’ have some relevance, but switching off CEC on connected products may help.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/5/18/15658876/samsung-tv-2016-automatic-hdmi-switching-complaints

For devices/peripherals where CEC cannot be disabled, many users seem to suggest using these CEC-Less adapters between the device and the TV: 

https://www.amazon.com/Lindy-HDMI-Adapter-Female-41232/dp/B00DL48KVI

Anyhow I hope the information/suggestions assist you to resolve the issue with your TV. 

Thanks for your continued support!

By “unplugged” I meant that I disconnected the HDMI cable between the TV and the DVD recorder.  With this set up I then watched a 90 minute programme using the TV’s Prime app, during which the sound glitch occurred about 8-10 times.  Will disabling CEC make any difference if there is no other device connected?

No it’s only the CEC protocol on any connected devices - if you have none connected then the issues is likely going to be something else here - try these things instead:

• Check the T`V manufacturers website for any TV firmware/software updates.
• Power off (not standby) the TV and connected HT product for 3 minutes to clear the power in their circuits and bring back online and try it again. If the problem persists then change the HDMI cable.

If problems persist even after trying those things, then submit a diagnostic report after the T`V audio drops out and note it’s reference and then contact/chat to Sonos Support via this LINK

Well I tried all that and unfortunately it made no difference. During 2 hours of viewing this evening it was fine for the first hour, got progressively worse during the next 30 minutes (up to 4 second pauses) but then recovered for the final stretch 

Did you then submit the diagnostic, as suggested, with the intent to contact support in the morning?

Not yet. Having read that Samsung’s eARC implementation is not without issue, I’ve tried a different approach, i.e. turning off eARC on my TV (so dropping back to standard ARC). Because 99.9% of the time I stream from Prime, Netflix or iPlayer this will make zero difference to the sound reproduction on my system (I read that none of these services use the “full fat” high data rate audio that eARC is designed to handle).  I know it’s a bit of a cop out but I’m hopeful that this will fix the issue (I will let you know).