Sonos Sub Gen 3 crackling/static sound

Lyricist III

@Vanx,

I could only see one audio file (size: 607kb) in the link. I listened to that ’clip’ several times over headphones here. Your bass audio recoding sounds terribly muffled at the start and then, when all goes quiet, I hear a cricket/static-like sound. So was that audio clip done in your recording studio? I had my player volume set really high to listen to it too.

Was it recorded with a mic close-up to the Sub itself, or was it placed a certain distance away, across a room? Maybe it’s me, but I find the recording quite poor, truth be told.

I definitely do not hear such a (cricket/static-like) sound from the Sonos Subs I have here. Are you sure it’s not related to the ‘conditioned’ power supply at your studio, which you mentioned earlier?

Also have you tried the Sub bonded to a different Sonos product, just in case that has any bearing on what you are hearing?

Maybe others here will listen to the posted ‘clip’ too and chime in with their thoughts.

My after-thoughts are, maybe you are hearing the Subs built-in switching power supply perhaps🤔? …but I know I don’t hear these things generally speaking from such quiet power sources, so your hearing is perhaps sensitive to these things? - My hearing just mostly hear the core music frequencies, so perhaps it’s outside my hearing range and I might only pick-up on such sounds when recording close up with a mic and then playing back the sound at a much higher volume level. I doubt I would hear such noise in a natural listening environment, but let’s see what others say/think about the audio ‘clip’.

Hello Ken, thanks for listening.

nope, I didn’t use any high end condenser microphone as it wasn’t needed.. and it would be really disturbing for your hearing.

the “muffled” sound you hear on the first track isn’t actually muffled, is the low frequency sound from the subwoofer (isolated, as it was placed in another room especially for the test). The other buzz, at high frequency, is the noise in mentioning.

in the second part of the clip it is clearly heard the fax/modem chirping type of sound it emits, unbearable. Yes, I’m sure it isn’t related to electrical/amp/power source.

it disappears if you disable the sub WiFi and use a Ethernet cable. But the magic and convenience of the SONOS system is its style and, of course, wireless operation.

I can clearly hear the buzz by playing it in on iPhone, no headphones needed. Certain types of frequencies (higher ones) are difficult to be heard the more you get old, and if you strained your hearing through the years.

Not saying in any way you’re too old or destroyed your ears :)

this WiFi modulating chirping sound is on the higher spectrum of the frequencies

Ken_Griffiths

Yes, it could be my age, I guess. I certainly don’t claim to have the hearing of a youngster now I’m in my early sixties. My Wife (aged 21yrs) has much better hearing and she doesn’t hear anything from the Sub here either.

Ok I lied about the Wife’s age - she made me do it !!… ha 😂 but she doesn’t hear the noise in question from the Sub and she hears almost everything. 🤷‍♂️

Grand Maestro

To me it sounds mostly like switch mode power supply physical noise, but there is some modulation that could be related to line power noise. Is the noise related to Volume setting or Mute? Is the noise level related to the physical location of the microphone relative to SUB? Do you have a spectrum analyzer associated with the microphone? The spectrum would be interesting, but might not tell the whole story because it or the microphone may have a limited bandwidth with respect to the noise. Is there any change in the noise if you turn OFF SUB in the SONOS controller? If you remove SUB from the surround system and have it sitting alone, not bonded to any product, is the noise the same? If you physically change SUB’s orientation does the noise change?

Grand Maestro

I lied about the Wife’s age - she made me do it !!… ha 😂 but she doesn’t hear the noise in question from the Sub and she hears almost everything. 🤷‍♂️

Wives never age.

Lyricist III

To me it sounds mostly like switch mode power supply physical noise, but there is some modulation that could be related to line power noise. Is the noise related to Volume setting or Mute? Is the noise level related to the physical location of the microphone relative to SUB? Do you have a spectrum analyzer associated with the microphone? The spectrum would be interesting, but might not tell the whole story because it or the microphone may have a limited bandwidth with respect to the noise. Is there any change in the noise if you turn OFF SUB in the SONOS controller? If you remove SUB from the surround system and have it sitting alone, not bonded to any product, is the noise the same? If you physically change SUB’s orientation does the noise change?

If you change its orientation it stays the same. No related to volume setting or mute.

If you turn the sub off from the app or remove it from the system the noise changes (but remains).

You can clearly hear it changing as more data is exchanged by the wifi board of the unit, so it is really evident when you’re associating it with the system, when you stream music etc.

If you disable its wifi and attach an ethernet cable…. the magic happens, no more noise.

as stated by @TapDatApp on the first page:

“Just had my call with the Sonos folks regarding this. It sounds like they’ve done quite a bit of work on identifying the issue based on Andrew’s case and from what I was told, it sounds like they did identify a hardware issue that is causing this and confirmed the effect can vary based on WiFi traffic.”

This was and this remains, no fix released for this issue.

PS:

Tested:

-Different power cables

-Different rooms

-Different outlet/w or wo powerstrips/conditioning

-Different house

Grand Maestro

Seems like a physical issue with the PC board. They may need to replace a board. In other contexts I’ve seen adhesives used to stabilize components become conductive over time (years) and cause issues. In either case a physical interaction with the SUB internals is required.

Ken_Griffiths

So there is actually some benefit to getting old then?

Grand Maestro

Yes, eventually The Beatles will be introducing new music --- every day!

Lyricist III

Seems like a physical issue with the PC board. They may need to replace a board. In other contexts I’ve seen adhesives used to stabilize components become conductive over time (years) and cause issues. In either case a physical interaction with the SUB internals is required.

Here we’re talking about six units (plus the other had/sent back by the other thread participants).

I agree with you, the fix will likely be that, but they first need to address the issue and make an “A203”.

The question is, why 2 years passed and the sub still suffers from the same issue? Why can’t this be solved? Even simple acoustical isolation of the board could reduce this issue (we are talking about high frequency noise)