Sonos Early Black Friday Sale Has 20% Off Home Theater Audio Bundles This Weekend Only

Overpriced products with mediocre quality and a closed ecosystem. Hard pass.

Sums up HomePod perfectly!

Overpriced products with mediocre quality and a closed ecosystem. Hard pass.

The irony.

Y'all better be careful if you want to use with your Apple TV or gaming console. Sonos still hasn't fixed the bug that occurs when you play Dolby Atmos content from external devices, which causes loud pop and you have to restart the device for it to work properly again...
sonos-arc-dolby-atmos-problems-loud-audio-pop ('https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/10/23824258/sonos-arc-dolby-atmos-problems-loud-audio-pop')

I have an Arc and I play Atmos content and I’ve never encountered this. I don’t doubt that some people have problems but, then again, there are plenty of Apple bugs that haven’t been fixed that I’ve never encountered either. Welcome to the world of tech.

I might have to pick up a Sonos. I like my HomePods, but Sonos looks like a good alternative.

Marco Arment has a great review of Sonos systems in this week's edition of the ATP Podcast ('https://atp.fm/558') . The discussion starts at 1:10:58. Marco was a HomePod enthusiast, but that has faded/disappeared over the years; he strongly prefers Sonos.

Love my Sonos set up. Arc soundbar with 2 Sonos ones gen 2s as rears and its amazing for sound. Have my Apple TV running through it all and Dolby Atmos is fine and not experienced and pops.

I have an Arc and I play Atmos content and I’ve never encountered this. I don’t doubt that some people have problems but, then again, there are plenty of Apple bugs that haven’t been fixed that I’ve never encountered either. Welcome to the world of tech.

Me too. I've had Arc for towards 4 years now and never had one pop. So I believe this is one of those Apple-like "affecting a small number of (total) users" as even the comments to that story include people saying they've never had the problem.

However, in fairness, I helped a friend set up an Arc and two 300s about 5 weeks ago. Due to some third party noise in the area, we couldn't use the Sonos "Trueplay" for auto-tuning the setup immediately, delaying that for about 3 hours. Everything sounded great for those 3 hours. When the third party noise ceased, ran Trueplay and this problem immediately manifested. It sounded like the speaker was loudly popping regardless of what was played including non-ATMOS stereo music or even the sound effects made by using the buttons on top of Arc.

What changed? We ran one bit of software. So, I factory reset their Arc and set it up again without running Trueplay. Fantastic Sonos sound from the SAME sources since (CEC and ATMOS settings on, same sources, same cable, etc. In other words, no other variable changes). Since that day, it has sounded exactly as Sonos users expect. No pops.

My assumption is very Apple-like: a bit of software has some bug(s) and they may be "one software update away" from fixing whatever it is. Obviously, my guess is that it is in the optional Trueplay run... which I've run myself on my own Arc several times and never had a problem. That makes me think maybe it's in using Trueplay with select combinations of speakers. For them, it was Arc + twin 300's. For me it's Arc + Move.

If it was a hardware thing and/or affected ALL Arcs, you & I would be experiencing it with our Arcs too. And if it was a hardware flaw affecting my friend's Arc, it would have repeated after the factory reset because all other variables remained the same. It did not. To me, that simply screams software bug, affecting only some units.

If someone wants to buy, buy. If you get one that pops, replace it... exactly what you would do if you buy something from Apple and it isn't working right. While I am no burning fan of SoundBars myself (believing the traditional Receiver + true (at least) 5.1 setups maximize home theater sound, Arc is generally rated best or near best in most objective head-to-head comparisons. And my objective ears certainly agree that it sounds great.

Especially for Apple people since Sonos so readily works with Apple Music ('https://support.sonos.com/en-us/services/apple-music') and Airplay ('https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/stream-airplay-audio-to-sonos') and HomeKit ('https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/use-siri-to-control-sonos-speakers') (so Siri commands work), it's a great option instead of HPs, minus the heavy lock-down, with much more flexibility for all of the many wishes HP owners have that Apple may never act upon like:

* big subwoofer ('https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/sub') or smaller one ('https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/sub-mini'),
* surround sound support ('https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/home-theater'),
* AUX inputs,
* natively works with ALL streaming sources ('https://support.sonos.com/en-us/services') instead of only 2 or so,
* easily connects with non-Apple audio sources too,
* etc.