Question

Sonos One - bass distortion

  • 12 September 2019
  • 5 replies
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Today I noticed that one of our Sonos Ones' bass response has changed. It distorts and pops, and when that happens, it seems to back off the bass for a second or two. I did a quick search and see that this isn't a new issue for the One and Play:1. It appears to be the speaker's built-in protection kicking in during certain bass tones. This actually makes some sense.

However, I've had this particular One for over a year, maybe close to two years, and just noticed this happening for the first time today. It's very noticeable so if it was happening before, I'm sure I would have heard it. I would have checked my other Ones, but I had to put my kids to bed and didn't want to crank those speakers up to 40-50% volume to see what happens.

Was there something in the last update that would have changed the protection level or the frequency response of the speaker? Has anyone else had this issue appear recently?

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5 replies

This is a community forum. If you’re looking for a direct response from Sonos, you should contact Sonos Support directly to discuss it, especially if there might be a physical defect with your speaker. 

I have the same problem.

just purchased two SONOS ONE for our living room.

Horrible distortion in bass even at low volume.

 

good song to test is Snowman from Sia.

 

i had high hopes for that system. Anyone any news?

Sonos???

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I've recently purchased some Sonos Ones and am experiencing the same issue. I did a search here and found numerous threads about this with no resolution.

It sounds like the software / DSP is boosting the bass so much that the little woofer is bottoming out, even at low volume. That is, the excursion of the cone exceeds its design limitation producing a pop or flapping sound when it can't go any further. I was able to reduce the effect by turning off the loudness and reducing the bass level in the EQ settings but that also degrades the richness of the sound.

I'm pretty disappointed with this and am leaning toward returning the speakers and going with a different ecosystem instead of Sonos. To see threads about this going back at least 3 years tells me that the issue has been well documented and that Sonos has been unable or unwilling to fix it. The designers are clearly boosting the EQ curve way too much for these little speakers to handle in their effort to get more bass out of them than they can realistically produce.
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The speaker in question has already been Trueplayed. Turning it off did seem to reduce the issue but then the overall sound quality took a hit.

I haven't had a chance to check our other Ones at those volumes. At lower volumes there is no issue with any of them.
Userlevel 7
Hi jnak

If you have an iOS device (or can borrow one) try running TruePlay to tune the speaker to your room. If you already done so and have not noticed the same anomaly on your other Sonos One's then there is something afoot with the speaker in question.

My suggestion is to submit a diagnostic within 10 minutes of the next occurrence and post the reference ID in this forum. Call Sonos tech support or contact them via Twitter or Facebook. The latter two are 24/7 versus 8hrs a day Monday thru Friday for phone support. Good luck.

Cheers!