I’m actually fine with Peter Pee’s review of the 14.10/14.12 changes and agree with him that putting ‘up’ the Arc’s volume a short distance and taking the treble up a notch, or so, brings things back to as they were (more or less) in the 14.10 build. That has been my experience at least, and I also accept the changes have brought about clarity to the center channel speech/dialogue.

I had wished for one other things that Peter might have checked, that’s if the Arc at full volume was the same in both builds. I think that might be the case …and all that changed volume-wise was the volume curve and not the overall volume of the Arc.

I guess it’s too much to ask Peter to go back and do all again with a sub, or two subs, or to try the Arc comparison with/without different surrounds. I don’t believe he ought to bother, as we may see another update before he could get around to that arduous task anyway.

Plus Sonos have said that if users have an issue with their attached Sub, after trueplaying their Arc room, to temporarily disable Trueplay, as they are looking into that issue for some users and will likely release an update to sort that matter.

The Arc I have here at Home, has ‘Fives’ as it’s surrounds and a Sub and I (by choice) have left Trueplay off and have no issues with the rooms Bass output.. I can/could make the walls shake as much as before if I push up the Sub volume slider. I accept though some are seeing issues in this area and it’s a case of waiting to see what the next update may bring.

I will also say that prior to this recent update, some users in the community here, had put forward a feature-request to Sonos to allow adjustment to their HT center channel volume to help increase clarity of dialogue and I see Peter Pee mentions that option too - I also like that idea, but obviously there maybe technical reasons why this has not been part of the recent solution. That’s perhaps a matter for Sonos to consider.

Also, just to add, I have put in another suggestion for consideration and that is Sonos HT products allow for the manual balancing of the left/right channel audio, as I think some (simple-only) customisation tools in the hands of a user may help to please more of the user-majority. However I don’t think complicated customisation options need be in the hands of a user, as in the wrong hands, things can sometimes sound worse, rather than better, but perhaps a ‘little more’ simple customisation options may go a long way. 

As always, such suggestions/feature requests, are probably easier said, than done… and the aim for me is that the default audio-out from a Sonos product should be as near as possible to the original recording and the way the sound engineers want us to hear their work. The customisation that follows on from that, is to fine-tune things to the listening environment and how we each like to hear some things ourselves (I see them as just minor manual adjustments to the results of Trueplay, as we each hear some things differently and may often move around in a room ourselves).

Just on that point, what source did he use to get that curve comparison? For example white noise? I'm struggling to understand why 14.12 is more 'tinny' (female vocals for example) than the  14.10 curve. The area on the graph where I expect to see an increased 'tinnyness' so to speak is not really shown and looks the same. So I'm wondering if algorithms play into it for detecting voice and amplifies those but other sound remains flat or similar to 14.10's profile. In other words Peter Pee's overlayed comparison certainly doesn't 'show' the differences I hear if that makes sense.

I have a complete setup with ARC+SUB+one sl’s as surround, I have disabled Trueplay and I don’t have issue with the sub output. The issue what I am facing is at any particular volume level the output from ARC is relatively low compared to that from the surround speakers. I got my setup last week post the 14.12 update and I am reaching out to community members with a similar setup to share their experience while listening to music or watching TV. 

Do other users with a similar setup also see this issue where volume output from ARC is not as good as one sl’s. In the announcement above SONOS have mentioned that they have changed the spectral balance of ARC and SUB, my concern is they didn’t mention if they did it for all of the devices in their eco-system. I think because of this the overall sound from the home theatre setup is messed up and SONOS is not even aware of this particular problem. In the announcement they are boasting it as an speech enhancement feature from the central channel. I am curious to know how the whole setup is performing for other users.

@rp105 If you are not using Trueplay to tune your system, you will need to go into settings and adjust the settings for both distance and volume level of your surrounds.  Trueplay does that for you based upon sound measurements from your listening position.  If you manually adjust those settings from your preferred listening spot, it should sort out your mismatched volume setting.

3 weeks since this terrible update and I can’t get used to it. I don’t even want to watch tv/movies anymore, and music couldn’t sound worse. This is giving me such bad anxiety. I can’t enjoy my sound systems anymore. I have to listen to music through my Echo Show now. No faith in the upcoming update at all, as it seems they are only going to fix the Trueplay and sub issues. Dialogue sounds worse imo. More hollow than before. What about the low volume??? I can’t turn my system up any higher then I already am. I don’t understand why you would make such drastic changes especially after the 14.10 update which was great and had my speakers finally sounding awesome. I know some of you are happy with it, and that’s great, but it seems like the majority of people are very unhappy. I hope ALL issues are addressed. 

Such a downgrade, please reverse this upgrade Sonos!

@wds0001 : Thanks for replying, I tuned my system with Trueplay again and the volume is much better compared to how it was, thanks for the advice, I could use my setup now to watch movies now. I will live with the low SUB output until SONOS fix it with an upcoming update.

Totally agree @popeofhell and concur 100%. Same anxiety here, can't return it, can't easily sell it, can't enjoy it any more, I just sit feeling trapped waiting for an update which I know will not solve everything and will not be to my satisfaction. For reference to the other readers, I use my system completely stock and default. No EQ enhancements, no increased levels and no true play because I deemed everything out of the box was perfectly fine as it was and was the sole reason for spending my hard earned cash on the award winning awesomeness it once was. Absolutely nothing wrong with how it all sounded before, anything to do with dialogue enhancement should have been put into the existing feature toggle and left everything else the same. Music is now shocking, I'm sure that's not the way artists want their music heard. Just needs rolling back, admitting fault and restoring the faith in their owners. Simple to do and would earn a lot of respect from the community.

First, it seems that during what has been overnight for me, Sonos moderation has been at work doing a lot more and well targeted clean ups compared to just their link removal from my post earlier. Completely unprompted by me, but welcome nonetheless.

Moving back to topic on the quoted, starting with the last bit - if the solution was that simple, Sonos would have done it. It isn’t, probably because this will cause a lot of protest in another set of users, not for any technical reason; technically anything Sonos changes they should be able to unchange because the hardware has not been damaged.

To the rest of the quoted - if waiting is your only option, it may feel long, but I would not discount Sonos in a hurry for its ability to fix the problem to your satisfaction. If memory serves me well, another Sonos TV product had issues with its sound, that was ultimately fixed to pretty much universal satisfaction as I remember.

Hello, me for example, i have a big issue with this update. Ok the volume could be up, but it is only for the TV or Movies. When I ask Alexa or play music, the New volume Level who is low for TV is very high when Alexa answer or play music with spotify Connect.

it is a very high problem for my family because my wife and my childrens are not happy and affraid

So, how long until there comes an update with a fix? It´s already been 3-4 weeks, and still nothing...

Patience grasshopper….patience 

nothing we can do to rush them.

ARC + SUB + 2 Ones as surround.
Same problem as almost everyone else.

Low volume on Arc, terrible Bass from the Sub!

Please fix this! NOT HAPPY AT ALL!

But it’s an improvement! How dare you?

I have a similar setup, volume from ARC was better after I ran Trueplay, however SUB output is very low. I got my setup post the 14.12 update so I am not sure how the ARC sounded before the update. I suggest you also tune with Trueplay once and later disable it.

Lets all send our complaints and demands to the CEO of Sonos! in the best of cases, he’s running at least one arc-sub-combo and noticed it too

 

patrick.spence@sonos.com

If you think your email goes directly to him..you’re kidding yourself. When would a CEO  have all those emails sent to him. They go to customer reps that will email you back. 

Generally true, but not necessarily. I have once had the CEO of an Indian auto major, Tata Motors, email me back in less than a hour with a one liner directing me to someone in his staff where I could have my issue looked at, and when that happens via a cc to said staff, things happen, pretty damn quick. Even though a major force then, in 2013, after the acquisition of Jaguar Land-rover, the company was languishing in India market share. It is today the second biggest in auto market share in India - GM and Ford have both surrendered and quit the market - and customer responsiveness over a consistent long term horizon is the secret to the Tata turnaround in India.

In the case of Sonos as well I have had email exchanges with Spence back in 2017/18 about things like a Sonos entry into the Indian market, and even things like a line in for the play 1 as a missed opportunity. He did not think so where the line in was concerned, but spent the five minutes setting out reasons in a mail. And since I have communicated extensively with different CEOs, I can recognise the voice of one and that of a fill in.

The one time he did not respond was in March 2020, when I wrote to him about the blunder Sonos was making in not pulling back their bricking policy.  He must have been swamped at that time - and Sonos did do a full about face on that specific issue soon thereafter. Now I take zero credit for that, because there must have been a storm of advice he must have been receiving on the same lines, but what I wrote may even have had an infinitesimally small effect, who can tell? For sure it cannot have hurt.

If Sonos has a generic CEO email address, he almost certainly will not actually read each mail there, but get synopses from time to time. My emails were to the address cited above in this thread.

For such addresses, common CEO practice is to have an experienced executive assistant with an access to his/her personal corporate email inbox scan every email, send rants and threats to junk/security directly, divert what look like useful/urgent ones to relevant staff, and leave the ones the man needs to himself read, untouched in the inbox. For the CEO to reply if he thinks one is needed, internally or externally.

The aforesaid may help someone that wants to reach out to him to effectively do so, even if no reply may come. But it can’t hurt.

In this case, the chances though are that there is little an email can inform him that he does not already know. 

Hi! Yes I did that but still same problem :/

Someone mentioned having the "new" profile active when Speech Enhancement is ON and the 14.10 Profile active when Speech Enhancement OFF, this to me would sound like a solution to please everyone.

Do u mean 14.12 is active when speech enhancement is off ?

On. Basically give us back 14.10 profile (incl. original higher volume) as default and then embed the 14.12 profile into the speech enhancement. This would absolutely solve it.

Watched some Breaking Bad last night, all dialogue with no music or effects.

The Arc was dreadful. It kept jumping in and out of some kind of DSP dialogue mode. So a few seconds of tinny metallic voice sounding like a tiny transistor radio from the seventies, then the mode would go and you get a warm voice with midhbass sounding very natural but just for a second or two. Then it would detect voice again, switch the DSP and go metallic, thin and tinny.

I will soon swap the Arc for the Beam that's on the secondary TV if Sonos don't reverse this.

That is certainly not my experience when listening to ‘breaking bad’ via an Arc/Surrounds/Sub here a few moments ago. It sounds like you may have something else that’s faulty - I would perhaps submit a system diagnostic and contact Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what they can discover.

Perhaps report back on what the Staff say.

I’m thinking (maybe incorrectly, time will tell) the 14.12 changed the DSP and TruePlay on Arc (why else would you have to reTruePlay?), and this is the ‘enabler’ for these types of features in the future, ie they had to change the way the DSP works, before they can add these features that are being requested.

Last night I watched a couple of episodes of S4 Stranger Things (Netflix ATMOS) and had to turn the Sub down, was on +2, now on 0.