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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Chris

Lead Maestro

donkuok - yes your S2 ready now and you will still be S2 ready.

You can drop the Arc in as a replacement for the Beam and leave all the same (you’ll be adding more speakers in the Arc as well as its upward firing speakers, Dolby Digital Plus capability and Atmos along with that).

Respect the Queue (2)Move (3)Beam (1) Era100 (2)ARC (1)SonosOne (1)Playbar (4)Play5 (4)Play1 (3)Play3 (1)Port (2)Connect (1) Roam (2) Ace (1)Connect:Amp (4)Sonos Amp (1)Sub + (9) Echo + Smartthings; (2)Play)

D

donkuok

Contributor I

donkuok - yes your S2 ready now and you will still be S2 ready.

You can drop the Arc in as a replacement for the Beam and leave all the same (you’ll be adding more speakers in the Arc as well as its upward firing speakers, Dolby Digital Plus capability and Atmos along with that).

Cool banana. Thanks to Chris for your explanation. Looks like this is going to be a worthy upgrade for me in the next 3 months.

E

ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

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 think what you really need for Atmos is a TV with HDMI Arc that can do Dolby Digital Plus. TrueHD (the format you need eArc for) is a Blu-ray only lossless format. Most people are going to want to listen to Atmos content off Netflix/Apple TV/Roku and none of those support TrueHD. The difference between True HD and a lossy format (Dolby Digital Plus) that does Atmos is probably going to be negligible on a Sonos soundbar. I can’t imagine that will be detectable with the naked ear. If you told me you had a 7.1+ system with speakers in your ceiling and spent 10K+ on it, then I’d believe True HD begins to make a difference, but I won’t believe it makes a difference on a soundbar until I hear it. So, I really don’t think the eArc piece is significant at all. Now if you don’t have HDMI Arc and the ability to pass Dolby Digital Plus, that will be a problem for Atmos.

I can’t say I’ve listen to TrueHD and DD+ and be know if I can hear the diference. I am glad though that the Arc has eARC though, because even though streaming srouces are DD+, they may adopt TrueHD later on.

I’ve heard both. I don't want to knock Sonos, but I think if you really cared about listening to TrueHD lossless audio, you’d be looking at a far more expensive Atmos plan that involved separately placed very expensive wired speakers in your ceiling. For instance, I heard the comparison on a system where each speaker cost more than this entire soundbar and I could barely, if at all, tell the difference. I just don’t see how a soundbar reflecting audio off your ceiling is going to really benefit from TrueHD vs. DD+. It’s an incremental benefit even with a very expensive system (think about lossless audio vs. audio with high bit rates -- it’s very hard to hear the difference unless you are a true audiophile and have the right equipment). And sure the streaming services may offer it someday, but it massively expands the size of a movie file. Everyone is going to need 2 gig internet before we are going to be seeing 66-100 gig movies streaming over the internet. Right now a Netflix 4K movie is 7GB per hour (or 14-21 GB for a 2-3 hour movie) max.

Here’s an explanation:

“Dolby offers two different 7.1 surround versions. Dolby Digital Plus is the “lossy” version. Instead of using matrixing, it applies lossy compression to all of the discrete audio channels, which helps to take up less space on a Blu-ray disc. Dolby TrueHD, on the other hand, is lossless. Since no compression is involved, Dolby TrueHD is intended to be identical to the studio master.”

Anyway this is a long way of saying, I think you will really enjoy this soundbar and get 99% of its benefit from DD+/HDMI Arc, even if you don’t have eARC. I don’t think we need to be sweating that issue too much.

D

dcb17

Trending Lyricist I

I did a little research as the TV I bought last year still didn’t have eARC.

Looks like for full uncompressed Dolby Digital TruHD Atmos you need eArc.

But with regular ARC you get Dolby Digital Plus (compressed version) Atmos. This makes it compatible with most TVs after about 2016.

I just played Disney+ on my TV and say it is coming in as DD+ as I would want (but TV transcoding to DD for the Beam).

I think this statement is generally true, unless your source is an Apple TV 4K. From my understanding, the ATV will NOT pass the Atmos stream with DD+, but rather within a MAT container which requires eARC (specifies on Apple website that you need higher bandwidth). Apple encourages a direct connection to the soundbar, which obviously requires multiple HDMI ports vs. the Arc’s one.

Sadly for me, this makes it a non-starter at the moment, as my 2018 QLED does not have eARC and my wife and kids are well entrenched in using Apple TV for nearly everything, so replacing that is really not an option (and my TV is otherwise perfectly fine).

Not trying to rain on parades, but hadn’t seen the ATV thing quoted here and since a lot of people use this, would be something you need to know up front before purchasing.

E

ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

I did a little research as the TV I bought last year still didn’t have eARC.

Looks like for full uncompressed Dolby Digital TruHD Atmos you need eArc.

But with regular ARC you get Dolby Digital Plus (compressed version) Atmos. This makes it compatible with most TVs after about 2016.

I just played Disney+ on my TV and say it is coming in as DD+ as I would want (but TV transcoding to DD for the Beam).

I think this statement is generally true, unless your source is an Apple TV 4K. From my understanding, the ATV will NOT pass the Atmos stream with DD+, but rather within a MAT container which requires eARC (specifies on Apple website that you need higher bandwidth). Apple encourages a direct connection to the soundbar, which obviously requires multiple HDMI ports vs. the Arc’s one.

Sadly for me, this makes it a non-starter at the moment, as my 2018 QLED does not have eARC and my wife and kids are well entrenched in using Apple TV for nearly everything, so replacing that is really not an option (and my TV is otherwise perfectly fine).

Not trying to rain on parades, but hadn’t seen the ATV thing quoted here and since a lot of people use this, would be something you need to know up front before purchasing.

Did not know that about the Apple TV… that is a huge bummer. I see that now on ATV’s support page: “Apple TV 4K uses a high bandwidth form of Dolby Atmos that doesn’t work over ARC connections.”

P

piano_grand

Lyricist III

So far, there are no Sonos products that accept HDMI. Only HDMI-ARC, and now eARC, and of course the older optical.

This.

I have an Nvidia Shield connected to my brand new TV through the wall via HDMI. Why in the world would I want to run two cables to my TV just to get ARC to work into what was going to be an easy upgrade from my Playbar to the new Arc with an HDMI splitter. I’m baffled at this decision. I so wanted to get Atmos and a regular HDMI connection rather than my HDMI to optical splitter. A passthrough could have solved this. Honestly - leave my TV out of this equation. Just play whatever audio is being sent to you via HDMI instead of requiring ARC. #sad

Happy to buy now if there’s a different solution available. Based on this thread - there are a lot of folks with this same confusion.

AjTrek1

Great news about the ARC. Ordered mine today! :hugging: Selling one of my Playbars.

Can’t justify upgrading my Play 5’s or Subs at this time.

IMO the audio “enhancements” for the Five don’t appear to be a game changer as they were for the Play 5 (Gen2) vs Play 5 (Gen1). Besides my Play 5’s are bonded to a sub for low-end.

I’m not a bass-head with music and current subs do well with movies. I suspect the ARC coupled with the current Sub (gen1 or 2) and Sonos One’s or SL’s will be a great improvement overall. At least that’s what I’ve told myself. :slight_smile:

Cheers!

Together Everyone Achieves More = T.E.A.M.

M

MSterling

Prodigy I

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?

Michael

E

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.

M

MSterling

Prodigy I

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.

Michael

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Extraordinary sound meets elegant design

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