Home › Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting

When the HDMI chain misbehaves

Four problems account for most of what people run into with an Arcana. Each one has a different cause, and each one has a different fix.

Start here

Almost every HDMI complaint is really a question about which link in the chain is the weak one. Source, cable, Arcana, display, audio system — five links, and the symptom rarely points at the culprit. These pages work through them in order.

No Dolby Atmos on a Sonos Arc or Beam Gen 2

The soundbar reports stereo or Dolby Digital where you expect Atmos. Usually the TV, not the soundbar, is the one throwing the format away.

eARC not working or falling back to ARC

No sound at all, or the connection quietly drops to ARC and takes the lossless formats with it.

Audio runs ahead of the picture

Lips move after the sound. This is the normal side effect of taking audio out of the chain early, and the Arcana has a control for exactly this.

Black screen at 4K120 or with VRR

The image drops out, flickers, or the source refuses to offer 120 Hz at all. Nearly always bandwidth or a port setting.

Before you change anything

  1. Write down the chain. Source model, cable length and rating, Arcana or Arcana 2, firmware version from the OLED display, display model and HDMI port, audio system and whether it is on ARC or eARC. Half of all problems become obvious once this is written out.
  2. Change one thing at a time. HDMI failures cascade: a wrong EDID setting produces symptoms that look like a cable fault. Changing three settings at once tells you nothing.
  3. Check the firmware first. Several known issues are already fixed. The downloads page has every version.
  4. Power-cycle properly. HDMI negotiates once, at handshake. After a settings change, fully power off the source, the Arcana and the display, then bring them up display first, Arcana second, source last.

Which model do you have?

It matters more than people expect. The original Arcana is HDMI 2.0b at 18 Gbps: excellent up to 4K60, and it will not carry a 4K120 FRL signal no matter how the rest of the chain is set. The Arcana 2 is HDMI 2.1 FRL5 at 40 Gbps and handles 4K120, VRR and 8K. If your problem is a missing high-bandwidth video mode, the comparison page settles it in one table.