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ggmogollon
Enthusiast II
June 10, 2020
Answered

Sonos Arc Muddy/Bottoming out Bass

  • June 10, 2020
  • 1406 replies
  • 193186 views

Beyond thrilled to receive the new Sonos Arc. True played my room and I have loudness on as well connected to LG B8 using Tidal and Spotify. Most of the sound range is phenomenal, aside from the bass. At even half volume the woofers are extremely muddy and sound terrible. Not sure if this is because I have under two hours of use but I wasn’t expecting to have to break-in the speaker. I own set of speakers next to it in the same room (KEF LS50W) and the difference is night and day. There have also been posts on Reddit regarding this issue. It is interesting given no reviewers have mentioned this issue but more than a few recipients have. Has anyone else experienced similar issues? Turning loudness off helps but it is disappointing for such a highly anticipated product. 

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    Best answer by Scott - Sonos

    Hello everyone. I’m a product manager at Sonos. Thank you for sharing your experiences with Arc. The development team is monitoring this community and listening to your feedback. 

    As we do with all Sonos products, we’ll continue to improve the experience for Arc through numerous software updates into the future. Last week we issued our first update (12.0.1) to fix a bug some customers were experiencing with low-frequency distortion at higher volumes. 

    If you have specific music tracks or timestamps for TV shows and movies that you want to bring to our attention, please use this form. It is helpful if you can submit a diagnostic when you’re listening to the content. Instructions for doing so can be found here.

    1406 replies

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    arpatil1
    Enthusiast II
    June 11, 2020

    I’ll just throw this out there for consideration.  If this problem does turn out to be hardware and not fixable view software, returning the Arc is certainly one option.  However, I might be willing to accept buying a Sub to address the issue as long as a very steep discount is provided.  I realize that this will not be acceptable to folks who don’t want a Sub for various reasons.

    Very steep would be 50% for me. I will take it.

      pyro225
      Enthusiast II
      June 11, 2020

      I’d like to chime in that after trying out many songs people mentioned in this thread at ~50% volume, I don’t experience any issues with the bass. Not here to gloat or anything, but I just wanted to voice that not all Arc soundbars have this issue. And if you are on the fence about purchasing one because you are reading about this problem, you can still choose to roll the dice, see if you are affected and need to return. In fact my brand new CX TV’s built-in speaker has the exact issue with the bass which was what prompted me to buy the Arc in the first place. I am glad that my Arc doesn’t do this. 


       

      I thought this to but then I did the toy story 3  test at 60-70% volume At 2:58 and it’s there clear as day can you try that ?

       

      cheers!

        arpatil1
        Enthusiast II
        June 11, 2020

        https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yVm7Pc7fqjpm8sGegQKgPvQPyzByZxVH/view?usp=sharing

        Penetrator at 50% volume. True play on and bass at zero. Recorded from 1m away


        Thats terrible. My airpods are far better.

        bdkraem
        Lyricist I
        June 11, 2020

        Dang those sound terrible. Like the tweeters are trying to push the bass instead of the woofers.

          craigski
          Local Superstar
          June 11, 2020

          The rtings review should be interesting, I notice it has now been purchased:

          https://www.rtings.com/soundbar/suggestions

           

           

            bjl
            Trending Lyricist I
            June 11, 2020

            I’ll just throw this out there for consideration.  If this problem does turn out to be hardware and not fixable view software, returning the Arc is certainly one option.  However, I might be willing to accept buying a Sub to address the issue as long as a very steep discount is provided.  I realize that this will not be acceptable to folks who don’t want a Sub for various reasons.

            Very steep would be 50% for me. I will take it.

            50% at least… ;-)

              arpatil1
              Enthusiast II
              June 11, 2020

              Is there any way that anyone can share a recording of what this sounds like, somehow?

              Here, have a listen, its the same song on Arc and Play5

              Bass Drops by Bass Boosted Beats on Amazon Music

              https://www.dropbox.com/s/c12advxtdhsj25f/Arc2.m4a?dl=0

              https://www.dropbox.com/s/19ghgov1pnxxkr5/Play5.2.m4a?dl=0

               

              This is exactly what is happening for me.


              This song plays much better on my Stereo Sonos Ones. Arc really sounds garbage.

              bbalz
              Renowned Enthusiast I
              June 11, 2020

              I took apart my 5.1 setup in our media room and just played the Arc on that TV (the tv is actually older so no atmos) but I noticed less bass bottoming out.

              I added the sub and of course it sounded much better so I'm wondering if there's something on the TV that needs to be adjusted that is passing through some settings to the soundbar it shouldn't... like 'optimized' sound or 'amplify' (samsung has these) but those options are disabled when I connect the Arc to my normal nice Samsung TV in our living room. Maybe it's a bug where those sound effects are still carrying through... I dont know for certain.

              There were still some times where it sounded like it bottomed out though, specifically when I watch or test things like movie trailers that have heavy bass or sound during the clips. (These clips are pulled from Dolby Digital trailer sites so they are reporting DD+ Atmos or TrueHD (which I know I wont get TrueHD to work but it still does DD+5.1)

              I feel like I have to test more and more with different setups to see, which in all honesty kind of stinks because the Playbar sound was just so great out of the box without any additional tinkering.

              Bumper
              Bumper
              June 11, 2020

              My previous recording has a bit low volume, so it’s not too easy to hear. I’ve remembered the perfect song to find out if your unit is affected:

              Fort Minor - Remember the Name (feat. Styles of Beyond)

               

              https://www.dropbox.com/s/de1v8v8heunhxqi/RememberTheName-PLAY5.m4a?dl=0

               

              Arc 50% Volume.

              https://www.dropbox.com/s/il1m9kt134k9rsq/RememberTheName-ARC.m4a?dl=0

               

              Wow brutal. Hopefully they are able to push a software fix ASAP.

                Ryan S
                Ryan S
                Retired Sonos Staff
                June 11, 2020

                Thanks for all the great details everyone! We really appreciate what you’ve shared so far. The engineering team is looking into this right now and they’ve been able to reproduce it using your feedback. They’re working on a software fix for it now.

                I’ll let you know when there’s more to share. I don’t have a timeline right now as they’re just getting started, but hopefully it won’t be long.

                As of now, we don’t need more details on this one, but I’ll let you know if the team determines they need some more data.

                Thanks again!

                 

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