![]() (The Arc is unlikely to be the last word in home theater sound quality. Our review unit has not yet arrived, but past experience with Sonos suggests that the Arc will, indeed, sound very good, and not impart false height or ambience that was not encoded in the original mix. Sonos speakers are tuned by famous people who actually tune the product, not just lend their name to the enterprise. Sound quality on the Arc is likely to justify some of the price premium. Pricey for a sounbar with no subwooferĮven for those buying a new television that has an HDMI eArc port, the Arc's $799 price point is undeniably high for a soundbar. ![]() One other limitation: the Arc supports Dolby Atmos, but not its less successful competitor, DTS:X, which is found on some 4K Blu-ray discs, such as entries in the Despicable Me and Harry Potter franchises. It’s a technical point that could be hard for competitors to articulate, but if they do, they could siphon some business away from Sonos. In this case, the Arc won’t work as advertised for most TVs sold just a few years ago. Sonos is prioritizing simplicity, but at the cost of adding complexity to potential customers’ purchase decision. The Arc also lacks an HDMI passthrough port, so if the TV cannot pass Atmos over ARC, the Sonos Arc won’t get an Atmos signal to play (it may still get lesser surround sound). The Arc is designed to connect directly to the TV and does not do any HDMI switching. Setting up the Arc is simple for consumers with a recent-model TV that has an HDMI eARC (Audio Return Channel) port that can pass through Atmos, and who are connecting relatively few components to the TV. The Beam has been a big seller for Sonos and a trojan horse for starting larger Sonos whole-home audio systems. The Arc replaces the old Playbar in Sonos’ line (as of this writing, still being sold at Costco for $549), and sits alongside the smaller, $399 Beam soundbar. The Arc also automatically tunes itself to its placement above or below the TV, whether it is placed on a cabinet or mounted to the wall, and to the room itself. This provides a lot of flexibility for consumers to start with the Arc on its own, and then add other Sonos speakers for bass and discrete surround sound over time. Those drivers play different channels or different portions of sound depending on the content type and how many additional speakers are in use. Sonos Arc is an attractively curvy $799 Atmos-enabled soundbar with Alexa or Google Assistant, Apple AirPlay 2, and lots of internal speaker drivers. This is not subtle, you don’t need to be an enthusiast to appreciate it, and premium soundbars are not competitive without it. Atmos allows sound designers to place and move sound all around the viewer, which makes content more immersive. (Others are likely to include high resolution music streaming, but Sonos has not confirmed this.)ĭolby Atmos is now common not just on Blu-ray discs, but on the streaming content that consumers were binging even before the world moved indoors to avoid coronavirus. What are these future capabilities? Sonos’s new Arc soundbar offers one of them: Dolby Atmos. ![]() ![]() Sonos has been on an apology tour after announcing that it will be breaking software compatibility with some of its older products, which begs the question: why do it? Sonos has said that “future capabilities” require processing power that products designed a decade ago don’t have.
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