Sonos is issuing a software program replace to its Arc and Beam (Gen 2) soundbars to repair a loud popping difficulty that has plagued the units for years. The problem led to a variety of Sonos clients having to disable Sonos Atmos on their {hardware} to keep away from a startling loud bang and sequence of audio pops that occurred for some after enjoying Dolby Atmos content material. The Verge reported on the issue earlier this yr after discovering that Sonos house owners had been complaining about the issue for almost three years.
“We’re happy to share that our crew has recognized a repair for the popping sound on Arc and it is going to be shipped to all clients as a part of a software program launch immediately,” says Sonos in an announcement posted to the corporate’s support forums. You’ll be able to hear the difficulty within the video under, however be warned, it’s very loud.
The loud pop primarily affected folks with Apple TV 4K units and Xbox Collection X consoles, and we speculated that the difficulty was probably associated to the Dolby MAT 2.0 encoder. Sonos has now confirmed sure residence theater configurations utilizing Dolby MAT have surfaced the bug. Right here’s Sonos’ full clarification:
Throughout our investigation we uncovered a uncommon bug that impacts how Sonos Arc and Beam (Gen 2) in sure residence theater configurations course of Dolby MAT, a streaming expertise which is used to ship Dolby Atmos audio over HDMI. Sometimes a Sonos product will obtain a corrupted audio section from an exterior supply and must filter out undesirable audio knowledge. The bug we recognized was permitting our Dolby decoder to play audible errors on sure residence theater setups relatively than concealing them. The answer we’ve constructed and examined improves our Dolby decoder so it higher filters out corrupt audio knowledge that may manifest as a popping sound. We’ll proceed to watch buyer suggestions intently after the repair has been launched and ship further updates if obligatory.
Sonos has additionally apologized for the way lengthy it took to establish this complicated bug. “We apologize for the disruption this bug has prompted and wish to thanks to your endurance whereas our crew developed a repair,” says Sonos. “We might additionally prefer to thank our group customers for his or her detailed setup data and steps to breed the difficulty, which had been useful to us in uncovering the reason for the bug.”