Sonos Arc
Sonos might be late to the party, but its first Dolby Atmos soundbar turns out to be an absolute belter
There’s a lot riding on the Sonos Arc soundbar. This is the company’s first foray into Dolby Atmos, long after most other companies have released products that support the format.
It follows criticism of the company for announcing that its new software won’t support some older Sonos products. And it also has to justify costing almost twice as much as the brilliant Beam soundbar and prove to be a worthy successor to the hugely popular Playbar – that’s a lot of pressure, even for Sonos.
But while Sonos might be late to the Atmos party, now it has arrived, will this soundbar be the heart and soul of it?
Well-proportioned partner
The Sonos Arc is specifically designed to partner bigger TVS. At 114cm, it is a bit wider than a typical modern 49in TV and proportionally best partnered with a 55in model. It’s also significantly wider than the outgoing Playbar (90cm).
The Playbar was designed to work in two orientations, depending on whether it was wall-mounted or placed on a piece of furniture, but we found it sounded better wall-mounted. The Arc is oriented the same way regardless of positioning (Sonos has an optional wall-mount for £79), and even automatically adjusts its frequency response accordingly.
Once it’s in position, most of what you can see of the Arc is a 273-degree grille that hides the array of front-mounted and up-firing speakers. Each end also features a grille-covered driver.
The curvy design helps mask the Arc’s dimensions and makes it look svelte, but its height of 8.5cm is not inconsiderable. That’s unlikely to be so high as to encroach on your TV’S picture, but it could conceivably block the signals being sent to it by your remote control, were it not for the integrated IR repeater, which is enabled by default and works flawlessly during testing.
The Arc’s own status light consists of LEDS that shine through four holes above the subtle Sonos logo (there are a total 76,000 holes in all the grilles). By default, these LEDS remain off most of the time and even when they are lit (for example, when adjusting the volume), their brightness is tailored to the ambient light in the room, so as not to appear too bright and distracting.
The touch-sensitive play/pause ‘button’ is integrated into the frame and flanked by two context-sensitive touch panels that you can use to control volume. To the right are the microphone button and a single LED that indicates whether the Arc is listening for Alexa or Google Assistant voice commands.
At the back of the Arc are the power socket, an ethernet connection for wired networking, and a single HDMI port. An optical adapter is included for those with older TVS, but the intention is that you use HDMI and use the ARC (Audio Return Channel) functionality to get the sound from your TV to the Arc.
In fact, unlike the Beam, the Arc supports EARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel), so it can handle Dolby Atmos signals from TVS that can output it. Sonos notes that there are now more than 25 streaming apps that carry content in Dolby Atmos (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV, to name just a few of them), so it’s becoming increasingly widespread.
Out with the ARC
It’s important to note that EARC isn’t essential for Dolby Atmos transmission. Atmos can be carried using either the Dolby Digital+ format or the higher quality Dolby True HD. A standard ARC connection can handle the former but not the latter. Currently, all streaming services use Dolby Digital+ for their Atmos soundtracks, so EARC holds no advantage here, but it does enable higher bitrate Atmos sound to be passed from an external source such as a 4K Blu-ray player, through the TV and on to the Arc.
TV is, the better its Atmos support is likely to be. Of course, this wouldn’t be an issue if the Arc had more HDMI inputs that allowed it to take audio directly from an external source and not rely on your TV as a go-between, but the downside to that would be a much less simple, less neat set-up.
Evolved from the Beam
The Arc’s Dolby Atmos soundfield is generated by 11 Class D digital amplifiers that power 11 custom drivers. Eight of those drivers are elliptical woofers evolved from those in the Beam (four along the front, two on top, one in each end), while the other three are silkdomed tweeters built into the front, but with two firing diagonally into the room.
Sonos refers to the Arc’s arrangement as 5.0.2, which makes more sense if you think of it attempting to replicate the soundfield of a five-channel surround sound system with no subwoofer and two height speakers. That ‘0’ can be turned into a ‘1’ through the addition of a
Sub (Sonos has just announced a third-generation version), and other Sonos speakers can be used as dedicated surrounds, just as with the Beam, Playbar and Playbase.
The Arc uses its array of speakers to bounce sound off your walls and ceiling to create a 3D audio effect, and the soundfield is once again tailored to your room using Sonos’s Trueplay technology. Despite the extra audio plane, the process is identical to that of the Beam: the soundbar outputs a series of test sounds that are measured by your IOS device (Android devices still aren’t supported), first from the listening position and then from around the room.
Bass and treble can also be adjusted in the Sonos app, and the Loudness function can be disabled here, too. There’s also a Night Sound feature that flattens dynamics and reduces bass, which is ideal for when you don’t want to wake the rest of the household, while Speech Enhancement aims to project dialogue more clearly.
The Arc will run exclusively on the new Sonos S2 platform. All your other devices will need to be updated to S2 in order to work with the Arc, and it’s worth remembering that some older Sonos devices are entirely incompatible with the new software.
It’s easy to play music through the Arc without touching the Sonos app at all. Just like its siblings, it will appear as a playback device in the Spotify and Tidal smartphone apps, and Airplay 2 allows for almost any audio to be sent to it from an IOS device. It can also be controlled via Alexa and Google Assistant, with the four far-field microphones spaced along the chassis able to pick up your commands, even when a music or movie is blasting out.
Raising your voice
Like the Beam, the Arc can also talk to your TV using HDMI-CEC. That means the Arc will turn on and switch to TV audio when you turn on your television, you can change the Arc’s volume using your TV’S remote, and also turn your TV on using voice commands aimed at the Arc. Add an Amazon Fire TV device or Google Chromecast to your system (plugged into another one of your TV’S HDMI sockets) and you can even use the Arc to access specific content using only your voice commands.
Our only complaint about the musical performance is that sound isn’t projected forward and towards the listening position as much as you’d expect, given that movie soundtracks are delivered with such three-dimensionality.
Needs more upfront, perhaps
Sonos uses all of the Arc’s drivers during stereo playback, and it might be that the upward- and side-firing speakers are doing too much. Switching the bias to the front-firing drivers might result in a more direct and engaging delivery.
That slight lack of directness to music is our only criticism of the Arc, but is perhaps something that Sonos could address in a future software update.
Otherwise, it really is a stunning performer, delivering one of the most immersive Dolby Atmos experiences we’ve heard from a soundbar. Only the Sennheiser Ambeo can better the Arc in this regard, and that costs almost three times as much.
The Sonos Arc is more than a soundbar, too. It’s also an app- or voice-controlled wireless speaker with access to practically every streaming service, and it can be combined with other Sonos speakers to create a more complete surround sound arrangement or a multi-room system. Rarely have we come across a device that does so much and does it all so well. Be in no doubt, the Sonos Arc is a superb piece of kit.