Good news for Sonos Arc soundbar owners: the years-long popping issue that caused users to disable Dolby Atmos content as a workaround appears to finally be fixed. The issue plagued certain Arc users for years with a sound so loud and startling that many compared it to sounding like a gunshot.
“Good news! We are pleased to share that our team has identified a fix for the popping sound on Arc and it will be shipped to all customers as part of a software release today,” Sonos posted on their support site.
“During our investigation we uncovered a rare bug that impacts how Sonos Arc and Beam (Gen 2) in certain home theater configurations process Dolby MAT, a streaming technology which is used to deliver Dolby Atmos audio over HDMI,” continues Sonos. “Occasionally a Sonos product will receive a corrupted audio segment from an external source and needs to filter out unwanted audio data. The bug we identified was allowing our Dolby decoder to play audible errors on certain home theater setups rather than concealing them.”
This lines up with the data provided previously, that the issue was rooted in the combination of using the Sonos Arc along with certain streaming devices to play Dolby Atmos content. Previously, Sonos suggested disabling Dolby Atmos or HDMI CEC, which unsurprisingly frustrated owners of the $900 soundbar.
“The solution we’ve built and tested improves our Dolby decoder so it better filters out corrupt audio data that can manifest as a popping sound. We’ll continue to monitor customer feedback closely after the fix has been released and ship additional updates if necessary.”
Sonos finished their statement by thanking users for their (multi-year) patience, as well as thanking those who provided the company with detailed information on how to reproduce the issues, which helped expedite the fix.
The following was originally published August 15, 2023:
Dating all the way back to 2020, Sonos Arc soundbar owners have complained about experiencing a loud popping sound, alternatively described as a loud, startling bang, followed by no audio. While a resolution to the issue is being researched, Sonos have told users of the $900 soundbar that a current workaround involves disabling HDMI CEC or disabling Dolby Atmos. Not surprisingly, owners experiencing the issue are not pleased with these suggestions.
See also: Sonos Move 2 portable speaker revealed
Now, Sonos has finally acknowledged the severity of the issue, and that the company has been researching a fix for the issue for the last couple of years. In a statement to The Verge, Sonos explains that the issue seems to arise from streaming Dolby Atmos sound from specific TVs or streaming devices. The statement reads:
“We are aware that a small percentage of customers have experienced an interoperability issue which is causing a popping sound on Arc. What we know now is that this issue occurs on some Dolby Atmos enabled audio products, including Arc, when connected to certain combinations of streaming devices and TVs while playing Dolby Atmos content.
We are committed to finding the root cause and we’re continuing to test for a reliable reproduction of what customers are describing online and in conversations with our support team. We are also engaging our contacts at third party manufacturers to further explore possible solutions. As this is an issue stemming from the way various devices are working together, there are a range of tests our team needs to conduct to understand the scope and develop a targeted solution for each setup. We’ll let you know as soon as we have an update to share.”
See also: Sonos awarded $32 million in patent infringement case with Google
