Retired Sonos Staff

Meet Arc, Brilliant sound for your TV

Extraordinary sound meets elegant design

Eleven high-performance drivers, including custom elliptical woofers and precisely angled side tweeters, produce vivid detail and impressive bass for home cinema and music streaming. Arc's upward-firing drivers create a multi-dimensional soundstage that moves around you, rendering every whisper and explosion with dramatic clarity, detail, and depth.

With its elongated shape, soft profile, and seamless façade, Arc discreetly mounts to the wall or sits beneath the TV without pulling focus. When mounted, a magnetic sensor detects the orientation and smartly adjusts the EQ to temper bass resonance.

Arc’s sound was specially tuned with the help of Oscar-winning sound engineers to emphasize the human voice so you can always follow the story. The advanced processing creates five phased-array channels that masterfully deliver sound to your ears from all directions at the exact right moment. Use enhanced Trueplay tuning technology to optimize the sound for the unique acoustics of your room, even calibrating the height channels for precise localization.

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You can also make a surround sound setup with a pair of our surround capable Sonos speakers, such as a pair of Sonos Ones, or amplify it all with a Sub for an extraordinary surround experience.

Some more details on Sonos Arc:

Simple to set-up. Plug Arc into power and then connect it to your TV using the HDMI-ARC cord. Bring your phone up to Arc to automatically pair and securely transfer WiFi credentials using near-field communication (NFC).
HDMI eARC. Increased bandwidth supports high-quality audio and has lip-sync compensation built in.
Dolby Atmos. Play Atmos and Atmos-encoded audio to play from your collection and favorite services through your TV’s HDMI ARC or eARC connection.
Ambient light sensor. Arc detects how bright the room is and automatically adjusts the brightness of the LEDs to be visible but not distracting.
Automatic remote sync. Arc connects to your TV's HDMI eARC port with a single cable and automatically syncs with your remote.
Control your way. Control Sonos Arc with your voice, the Sonos app, your existing TV remote, your favorite music service’s app, or AirPlay 2. Capacitive touch controls for play, pause, skip tracks, adjust the volume, and group rooms just by tapping or swiping the top of the soundbar. LED indicates status, mute status and voice feedback.
Smart voice recognition. A four far-field microphone array used for advanced beamforming and multichannel echo cancellation makes sure you’re heard, even when the music is blasting, even when playing in immersive surround sound. For privacy, turn the microphone off with a tap. The LED light is hardwired and will always indicate if the microphones are enabled or if your voice assistant of choice isn't listening.
Optimized for your listening. From within the Sonos App, tap Speech Enhancement so you never miss a word, or Night Sound to amplify quiet noises and reduce loud ones so you can enjoy late night TV without waking the entire house.
Tune with Trueplay. Trueplay puts the speaker-tuning capability of the pros in the palm of your hands, adapting and optimising the sound of the speaker to the unique acoustics of the room. iOS device required.
Low profile and compact size. The dimensions are 3.4 x 45 x 4.5 inches (87 x 1141.7 x 115.7 mm) H x W x D and Arc weighs 13.78 lbs (6.25 kg).

Pre-order today on Sonos.com in stunning black with matte finish or white with matte finish for $799 US (€899 EUR, €799).

We’ve announced details for the Sonos Five and new Sonos Sub. You can also check out our blog for some great stories.

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ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

The Arc indicates voice control capability. It also indicates support for Amazon Prime Music. But can not find if it supports Alexa like my Beam. I have a Beam Surround +L/R Ones (not SL). I know the Ones have Alexa but it’s disabled in Surround configuration. Anyone see information on this?

The Ones’ Alexa is not disabled in a surround configuration (I have 3 setups with Ones in surround and use Alexa all the time with them). I also think the Arc does have Alexa.

Thank you. I finally found a single section that also confirmed support for Alexa built-in.

Have you ever tried saying the wake-word closely to the One’s without letting the Beam ‘hear’ you. I couldn’t get that to activate and the only response when talking louder is always the Beam.

It may be that when you pair the Ones with a Beam, the Beam replies to the Alexa commands. But with a Playbar (which obviously has no Alexa), the Ones do all of the Alexa work/do function as the Alexa device in surround mode.

frenzy382

Trending Lyricist I

I can’t believe there’s no HDMI passthrough. I have an expensive OLED TV from just a few years ago that doesn’t support Atmos or eArc. So, I’d have to buy a new TV to get the best sound with Arc.

yep..same. I bought a 65 inch Samsung Q9FN in early 2019...and it is not able to passthrough anything except DD.

I’ve tired these splitters before and this leads to sync issues…

Not looking good for me...I’d rather keep my existing tv and beam rather than fork up for a new soundbar and tv.

dssss

Lyricist III

@Ryan - Someone earlier in this thread mentioned you could use the existing PlayBar mount, which I found surprising. Can you confirm if you can repurpose the playbar mount or need to purchase the new one for sale?

mark@scan

Trending Lyricist I

Ryan S. - Any issues with pairing the Sub gen 2 to the Arc? Any decreased functionality now? Just ordered 2 Arcs and want to make sure I don’t need to upgrade my subs yet.

Hope you love them! No issues to worry about at all. Arc will need products to be running Sonos S2, which the Sub gen2 is fully compatible with.

Hi Ryan, interested in upgrading to Arc, I have a sub but no idea if it’s a gen1 or gen2 how can I tell?

tinpoo

Contributor I

I wonder if one day we could listen to the real Atmos sound, with additional Sonos speakers acting as a surround. 7.1?

JeffDs

Lyricist III

Well the other question is coming up is will the Sonos Arc really receive the HDMI direct like those soundbars …. there seems to be inconsistent answers. It would take someone plugging and HDMI direct into a Beam to see if really will or not.

But assuming then it doesn’t work - a lot of switches already will extract HDMI ARC so just a matter of time before you can get a switch to do the eARC to the Sonos Arc (mouthful there).

The example Switch had 4 inputs and 2 ouputs (of which one currently can be ARC …. just need updated version that will also do eARC)…. at about $50 a lot cheaper then replacing TV.

A lot of hypotheticals right now - I’m sure a lot of creative solutions coming to get eARC ability for people on many things not just Sonos. So a TV not having eARC shouldn’t be the biggest concern.

I spent a lot of time looking a few months ago and could not find any HDMI switches that would *generate* ARC output (use-case is a projector that doesn’t support ARC). Many HDMI switches will *accept* ARC input from one off their output ports (since ARC goes backward compared to normal input/output designations) and send that audio as the audio channel of normal HDMI and/or send the ARC channel back to active inputs (say a receiver). But none of the normal ones I found would create ARC from a normal HDMI audio input which is what the Beam requires when you don’t have a TV that will generate the ARC signal. The Beam won’t play audio from a normal HDMI signal - as others have noted it acts as a source device that outputs video and consumes audio over ARC only from what I tested.

I did find exactly one device that would generate an ARC signal either from a normal HDMI signal or from an optical input: https://www.sct.com.tw/ARC01.html The key is the embed functionality (as extract is common). There is no US distributor so I had to order direct from the manufacturer. The device works as advertised with my Beam. My original goal was to get HDMI-CEC working; I have not succeeded at that yet - but it may have to do with other issues in the HDMI switches I have connected. I haven’t diagnosed those yet to see if HDMI-CEC + ARC is viable for the beam with a non-ARC projector.

The ARC01 doesn’t support eHDMI; but I assume a similar device with eARC support would be required to use the Sonos Arc with a non-ARC TV/projector. It also doesn’t look like this functionality is common or widely-sought after given the lack of support in normal HDMI switches. It is too bad Sonos is sticking with a pure-eARC/ARC strategy unless they are willing to also produce useful converters. Love the speakers but dancing around limitations like ARC, lack of DTS support, etc is unfortunate when comparing to other options at this price point.

Sjoop1985

I was wondering about the position thing if below better or now - thanks Ryan.

So sounds like no direct HDMI ability only ARC. Hopefully eARC extractors aren’t far off for those without eARC TVs (majority)

I already posted earlier that those extractors don't work like that.

Currently, audio extractors either strip the audio signal off and deliver it over optical/RCA, or when you activate ARC, they behave like an ARC capable switch. Meaning they take the ARC coming back from the video device and distribute it over the inputs. They don't create an ARC from the stripped audio on one input and distribute it to the others. And yes, I have tested that.

So for me, owning a device that does neither ARC or eARC, I am s.o.l. as they say.

So we are not "just" waiting for an audio extractor that supports eARC. As @Airgetlam mentioned, we are waiting for a device that can do what the TV does, take multiple HDMI inputs and pretend it is a TV, generating an (e)ARC to send back to an audio device and forwarding the video to a non-(e)ARC capable video device. Given that ARC has been around for some years now and there is no extractor that does this, I'm assuming there is no market for such a thing, or it is too much of a technical challenge to execute and be profitable.

I wonder if that will change going forward, since there are fairly many new TVs that still don't support eARC.

edit: I just saw above that apparently there is such a device, but not for eARC yet. But r@JeffDs post, not easy to come by.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans (John Lennon) --- Living room: Arc, Sub, 2x One - Kitchen: One - Bedroom: Play 3 - Office: Beam - Bathroom: Play 1

Beagle

Enthusiast I

Looks like Sonos have designed a great product. It’s a little longer than I was expecting (hoping) for my room but everything looks well thought out. The inclusion of eARC is going to finally make lip sync issues history if everything plays together properly. Currently own a Playbase, will be looking to move this to our bedroom if the sound quality is an improvement, which I’m sure it will be.

lucasSWE

Avid Contributor I

I have a Apple TV 4K with support for Dolby Atmos. My TV does not support Dolby Atmos, neither eARC. It has support for ARC.

Will I get Dolby Atmos anyways, or does the lack of the support on my TV disable this? And if i understand everything correctly, I cannot connect several HDMI-devices directly to the Arc, everything needs to go through my TV?

Sjoop1985

Unfortunately, yes. Although I touched on a different aspect of it, that is more or less my gripe, too. Although Sonos has finally closed the "gap" they had by including support for the latest codecs and the latest connectivity, they still very much rely on the TV to do a part of the work.

While it is an understandable decision if you are standing in Sonos' shoes, it will also lead for some use cases to not be supported out of the box, like my non-ARC projector or older TVs that don't support Atmos or eARC. Undoubtedly, like with the previous Playbar/base and Beam, some people will be surprised to see that it doesn't "just work" as many would expect at this price point. Hence my disappointment with not having HDMI In/Out, which would increase the number of potential use cases and solve at least some issues regarding TVs that do not support eARC or any of the audioformats.

Still I have to point out I'm excited about the Arc. I was even tentatively looking at projectors that do ARC, so I could at least benefit from Atmos over DD+, but I don't think everyone in my household would agree with a double investment like that...

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans (John Lennon) --- Living room: Arc, Sub, 2x One - Kitchen: One - Bedroom: Play 3 - Office: Beam - Bathroom: Play 1

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Extraordinary sound meets elegant design

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