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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melvimbe

The eARC point is a bit of a sting -- I literally bought a new Samsung TV last year and understand no (or almost no) Samsung TVs currently support Atmos over HDMI Arc, which is a huge % of the market. But nothing we can do about that, other than get a new TV or use DD+. When I get the Sonos Arc, I’ll test it and we will see!

Where did you hear that? Being that I have a Samsung TV, I’ll be rather disappointed. While true that you won’t be able to get TrueHD-Atmos with eARC, you should be able to get DD+-Atmos with ARC (the connection, not Arc the soundbar). Your new Samsung TV should have ARC, and therefore should work.

Danny

melvimbe

@Ryan S

Hi Ryan,

Thinking of ordering the Arc when it’s available.

I still have a pretty old Sony TV. I am going to change it out but not right now.

Will the Arc function properly with my old Sony KDL52EX700?

It has an ARC HDMI port but not an e-ARC.

How can I set the Arc up for the best possible sound until I change for an e-ARC TV?

I use a bluray player connected to the TV for movies I own, but also stream to the TV from my computer.

Any suggestions?

Regards:Kristoffer

I’ll give this a shot and try to make it generic and short. Please correct where wrong.

If your TV has ARC, can do compressed Atmos via DD+.

yes. It should anyway, if the TV followed standards correctly.

If your TV has eARC, can do* “true” Atmos.

It wouldn’t call it ‘true’ as that would imply atmos over DD+ is fake, like it was system generated noise rather than what the producer intended. Atmos over eARC, TrueHD, is uncompressed. Semantics I guess

If your TV has neither, you can still do DD5.1 via optical or HDMI.

You can vis optical, but not HDMI. The port on the Sonos Arc is not an HDMI input.

Assuming you have one of the first two above, connect the Sonos Arc to the ARC/eARC labeled HDMI port (HDMI #1 in the image above, on my tv it’s HDMI #2 on the side of the TV). Plug your other devices into any of the other HDMI ports as you normally would (in @Toffe example, connect the blue ray to HDMI #4 and computer to HDMI #2 [assuming that’s on the side] or whatever port is used for the computer).

* In order for Atmos to work, the original source will need to be sending the audio in the Atmos format. Additionally, your TV must be able to pass through the Atmos signal.

Yes.

Danny

M

Marc_51

Enthusiast II

I have a bit of a strange question. I have been thinking about all the issues associated with feeding direct audio signals into the Arc. There are currently HDMI switches on the market that can output video via one HDMI output and audio only via a second HDMI output. Obviously feeding this into the Arc will not work as the audio is not coming via an HDMI ARC / eARC port.

However, it must be possible to feed direct audio into the Arc as the optical to HDMI converter can also achieve this on the Beam. I am assuming that it delivers the audio data to the HDMI pins normally reserved for the ARK Audio ? Would it not just be a case then to have an HDMI cable that can transpose the audio to ARK audio pins and feed it from the audio only HDMI port on either a switch or a HD Blu-ray player directly into the Ark hdmi port ?

S

skraddah

Contributor I

Great discussion going on here. I think I’ve got the lost is worked out, but it isn’t clear to me what one needs to have a Blu-ray with DTS play audio? Assuming the tv has eARC and hooked up correctly to Sonos ARC, what would one do to get the best (or any?) audio from a DTS only disc? I don’t think 5.1 PCM would work, correct?

melvimbe

I have a bit of a strange question. I have been thinking about all the issues associated with feeding direct audio signals into the Arc. There are currently HDMI switches on the market that can output video via one HDMI output and audio only via a second HDMI output. Obviously feeding this into the Arc will not work as the audio is not coming via an HDMI ARC / eARC port.

However, it must be possible to feed direct audio into the Arc as the optical to HDMI converter can also achieve this on the Beam. I am assuming that it delivers the audio data to the HDMI pins normally reserved for the ARK Audio ? Would it not just be a case then to have an HDMI cable that can transpose the audio to ARK audio pins and feed it from the audio only HDMI port on either a switch or a HD Blu-ray player directly into the Ark hdmi port ?

I think the general idea is sound. I don’t know how different coverting an optical signal to ARC is, compared to converting standard signals on the audio pins over to the ARC, but no doubt a conversion is possible. Heck, this is exactly what an ARC capable TV does. The problem is while the optical to HDMI-ARC adapter exists, there doesn’t seem to be an HDMI to HDMI-ARC adapter that exists.

Danny

Ryan SAuthor

Retired Sonos Staff

@Toffe some great answers from melvimbe and pirate in the replies already, I think with those you should have your answers, but let me know if you have any other questions.

Great discussion going on here. I think I’ve got the lost is worked out, but it isn’t clear to me what one needs to have a Blu-ray with DTS play audio? Assuming the tv has eARC and hooked up correctly to Sonos ARC, what would one do to get the best (or any?) audio from a DTS only disc? I don’t think 5.1 PCM would work, correct?

@skraddah, DTS isn’t a supported format on the Sonos Arc, so if the sources are in DTS only, you’d need another device to convert that DTS audio into something like Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby TrueHD. Your Blu-ray player might be able to do this. Otherwise, you may have to set it to a Stereo PCM output and the Arc will upmix that audio to give you something that sounds better than standard Stereo PCM.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

S

skraddah

Contributor I

@Toffe some great answers from melvimbe and pirate in the replies already, I think with those you should have your answers, but let me know if you have any other questions.

Great discussion going on here. I think I’ve got the lost is worked out, but it isn’t clear to me what one needs to have a Blu-ray with DTS play audio? Assuming the tv has eARC and hooked up correctly to Sonos ARC, what would one do to get the best (or any?) audio from a DTS only disc? I don’t think 5.1 PCM would work, correct?

@skraddah, DTS isn’t a supported format on the Sonos Arc, so if the sources are in DTS only, you’d need another device to convert that DTS audio into something like Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby TrueHD. Your Blu-ray player might be able to do this. Otherwise, you may have to set it to a Stereo PCM output and the Arc will upmix that audio to give you something that sounds better than standard Stereo PCM.

got it. Thanks. So Sonos Arc can read 2 channel PCM but not 5.1. So in my case I would just have plex covert DTS to a Dolby Format for the best possible sound.

Ryan SAuthor

Retired Sonos Staff

You got it!

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

E

egrunden

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.

I can’t even describe how happy I am to have found this post as I too have been looking far and wide after a device able to embed the audio extracted back to ARC on HDMI input to be pushed back to the Sonos Arc’s HDMI output. Finally something useful!

I’m just curious on how it works for you and how you’ve hooked it all up as I’m not completely satisfied with the information found in the data sheet. The sheet states that you can achieve ARC signal on the device’s HDMI input by connecting the optical/coaxial out of your tv on the device’s output side. And then of course connecting the Arc or Beam to the device’s HDMI input would push back the audio signal to the soundbar. But, to gain higher audio quality one would ideally like to split a high quality HDMI signal and feed one to the projector for video and the other to the ARC01. So, as you have tried the device, is it really able to extract audio from a full HDMI signal, connected on the output side, and embed it as ARC on the input side, enabling dd+ for example?

If this is how you have it set up, can I also ask what kind of splitter you use for the source? Curious if it is sufficient to stack the ARC01 after a simple HDMI 1:2 splitter or if one should go for the HDfury AVR-key. Or something like that.

Thank you for obviously being a google guru!

R

Rck010

Lyricist III

@Ryan S

What is the recomended distance between the Arc and the TV, I read different statements. The website states 10cm, I've read 15cm on this forum.

Also, would 45cm of the ground (on top of cabinet and under TV be too low for the Sonos Arc?

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