The Sonos Arc’s audio capabilities are seriously great. Eight elliptical woofers combine to deliver a solid overall bass response and the tuning balances a nice amount of warmth through the mids with an impressive level of clarity. Full DTS. DTS is primarily only used in disc based movies. Discs are obsolete or soon will be. The original Arc was very forward thinking by eliminating it like Apple was when they eliminated disc drives in their computers. It also kept the cost down.

That said, the speaker’s audio positioning was good enough that in a boxier media room we’d expect you’d be able to get surprisingly close to multi-speaker surround sound using just the Arc soundbar. One of the most commonly requested upgrades from users is support for Dolby Atmos rival DTS:X, which, while not as commonly used, is still widely available on soundbars from other manufacturers.A recent firmware update gave Sonos soundbars DTS capacity but only in its basic compressed form, not the full lossless DTS:X or DTS HD MA. Dynamics, detail and clarity are all outstanding in the current Arc, though there is a lot to be said for how much weight and bass a home cinema product can produce too. A weightier presentation that's capable of a greater volume of bass– perhaps due to those reflex bass port improvements – would be most welcome in a sequel. Use your voice to control your Sonos system with any voice-enabled Sonos product—play and control content, turn the volume up or down, and more.

Overview

There’s a Night Sound mode too, which reduces the difference between quiet and loud sounds – useful for hearing what’s going on when listening at lower volumes. Getting sound We've now tested the Arc with many of the best TVs, and it's clear that mileage varies based on brand and age. The Now Playing screen in the Sonos app flags up that Dolby Atmos is being received, while the About My System part of the settings menus confirms the format in which it’s being transmitted. With a bit of fiddling in the TV menus, all of the LG OLED and Samsung QLED TVs that we've used have been able to transmit Dolby Atmos to the Arc from their integrated apps and pass through True HD Atmos from our Oppo UDP-203 Blu-ray player without issue. With HDMI eARC and full-fat Dolby Atmos onboard, the Arc already supports a combination of features that no other Sonos product offers. So what might we expect the company to add to this already class-leading soundbar? According to Fink, Sonos put much work into iterating the curvature of the internal waveguides, revamping Trueplay to account for ceiling distance, angles and acoustics, and tuning Arc with Atmos content producers in music, movies and TV.

Stream music, radio, podcasts, and more from your favourite services with the Sonos app or Apple AirPlay 2 when the TV is off. For yet another year, the Sonos multi-room system remains the best all-rounder.” ’What Hi-Fi?’ 2023 Product of the Year.Most soundbars do a good job of reproducing TV and movie audio, but fall down on music. The Arc is simply fantastic as a music speaker, sounding far better than any other soundbar I have tested, including the Beam, and many dedicated music systems.

The Arc has top-notch vocal clarity and excellent separation of tones, instruments and vocals. Play The Who’s Baba O’Riley and you’ll be able to make out every overlapping note or hear fingers on drum skins and guitar strings in the live version Hotel California by the Eagles. Playing the bombing run scene from Unbroken and we’re immediately transported to within the fuselage of the B-24 Liberator. Our listening room is filled with wind noise and the whirr of the plane’s engines, and the incidental creaks and rattles are placed in specific spots, including right in the top corners of the wall we’re sitting against. The Sonos Arc is generally repairable, but for devices that need significant maintenance the firm typically replaces speakers with new or refurbished products to speed up the return. Four of the woofers face you directly through the front of the Arc. There’s one in each end and two more that fire upwards to generate the height elements required for Dolby Atmos. One tweeter fires straight out from the centre of the Arc, while the other two fire out at a left and right angle.Sonos gets better when you add more speakers. Play a movie in your living room, a podcast in the kitchen or the same music across all your Sonos speakers – flexibility is key. The latest Sonos components link via your home Wi-Fi but for very best results, linking one component to an Ethernet connection gives the most stable solution. For personalised sound, use the Sonos app to adjust bass, treble and loudness. Speech Enhancement mode optimises vocal clarity – ideal for documentaries and sports commentary. Night Sound reduces the intensity of sound, making it less intrusive for others around your home.