Sonos Beam Sound dropping out with Virgin 360

[sharonamiller]

My Sonos Beam worked perfectly with the old V6. Since the upgrade to 360 TV the sound repeatedly drops out. This doesn't happen with Digital TV or when listening to music. This is driving us mad! Any ideas how we can solve this problem would be much appreciated.

[casbar]

Like I have posted earlier, I have upgraded to 360 and my Sonos Arc is fine, last night I watched BT Ultimate and the Arc was outputting atmos so all good. Hopefully I won't experience the same issues as above in the future

[Molly_T]

Hi Casbar! Thankyou for returning to the thread to keep us updated. 

Glad to hear it appears to be working correctly now. 

Please let us know if you do have any issues in future and we will do our best to offer support!

All the best. 

[Harrodinio]

I'm afraid I've run out of options with mine. Moved the router and TV 360 box as far away from the TV as is possible. Still the same problem. I'll await the engineer's visit before wasting any more time..

[Harrodinio]

For anyone encountering this problem, I think I have resolved it by plugging a 'CEC Less' adaptor into the HDMI out port of the 360 box. It cost under £10 and seems to have stopped the cutting out. Apparently, the adaptor stops the signal from pin 13 of the HDMI connection. Early days but all working OK now. 

[casbar]

Good result. Just wondering if this is a specific 360 box issue only, as I have a V6 converted to 360 and as I mentioned earlier I have been running a Sonos Arc with no issues with sound

[Harrodinio]

The problem seemed to cause wholesale confusion with the Virgin engineers. They didn't really have a clue. Sonos were no help either. My system never missed a beat until the day my V6 box was upgraded to 360. The engineer eventually replaced the V6 with a dedicated 360 box and the problem was still there. When the engineer left, he said he'd do some research and speak to colleagues and get back to me. But he didn't. So I just started trawling for information. A few Sonos users had encountered this problem but had not really found a way around. So hopefully, this will help some others as Virgin and Sonos were as much help as chocolate fireguards... 

[fatherdamo2]

Thanks for the post @Harrodinio, I had a new tv360 box delivered this week and had nothing but audio drops since, from every device connected, firestick, sony blueray player, so it was all pointing to an Sonos/UST/cable issue as all common to all .

Following your advice here and not having a hardware blocker, I placed a thin piece of electrical tape over pin13 on the output hdmi cable from the TV360 virgin box. (Scapel, magnifier, steady hand all required!)  My issues appear to have gone away. Might get that blocker adapter or just stick with the very thin strip of insulation as I won;t be unplugging it anytime soon.

Thanks again for info, had raised a call with Sonos and they were unable to find the issue, I'm hoping audio drops are now gone for good!

[Harrodinio]

Glad my experience was of some help as both Sonos and Virgin Media were useless. My system worked fine until I added an Apple TV box onto the mix and the interference returned so I had to add another CEC-Less plug into the back of the Apple box. I still get very occasional problems but think that changing where the plug is fitted - maybe into the TV rather than the Apple TV well solve the issue so at some point, I'll shuffle things around... 

[Robert_P]

Thanks for the update Harrodinio, let us know how this goes.

Rob

[HellsWench]

We’ve been having issues since we got our Sonos Beam and had to use the optical adaptor which was ‘ok’ but not what we wanted. Found this thread a week ago. Purchased a CEC adapter and awesomeness! Dolby atmos on everything and no dropouts. Thank you so much for coming up with a fix. Shame on Virginmedia not resolving this. It’s not a random no name sound bar and I’m sure it’s not the only one to suffer this issue.