Roku, as a whole, has handled this situation very badly. It should probably end up being a case-study in a Business school course on the fulfillment and distribution aspects of marketing, re: how to create unhappy customers.
Individually, Rey here on the forum has been very helpful. The phone people were a bit hapless on this, buth they were only following their training and scripts (a process that Roku should immediately review; rapid communication between tech and customer service is essential).
It's a shame that Roku has given itself such a nasty self-inflicted wound. I'm an old man who has enjoyed a number of decent sound systems over his life, but never really expensive stuff that middle-middle-class couldn't afford. In this case, I assembled, over two-three years of discovery, Roku components costing about 700 USD (not including TV) that deliver (to old ears) an excellent sound from many sources. I'm sure I could spend more and have Jim Morrison prowling around on top of my coffe table, but I'm happy with Roku.
I noticed the popping the day after the OS 12.5 curse arrived (Nov 1, 2023). I immediately suggested that logic dicteated the OS upgrade as the culprit. It took me one month to persuade Roku to allow me a downgrade to OS 12.0. That was like seeing a zit on Mona Lisa's forehead for a month. And it was also a month that my friends could have heard excellence from a relatively inexpensive Roku system; instead, it was a month of lost opportunities for Roku.
In jdeprey's case, when the subwooofer was first setup, about two months after it was known that the OS 12.5 upgrade was a stinker, the 'check for updates' stage should have already been changed by the tech folks to use OS 12.0, waiting until after the precise cause in OS 12.5 was determined. jdeprey could have been enjoying the new subwoofer; instead, jdeprey was almost sucked into a lot of running around in circles by returning the hardware to solve a software problem. Not to get too dramatic, but when this is multiplied by thousands, it is truly heartbreaking.
