Alexa MRM has been a thing for around a year now, and I'm aware that as things stand at present you're unable to group Sonos + Alexa devices together but I'm also aware that the API's now exist to make this happen.
I'm wondering if there is any update now that Amazon are freely posting things like this to the public domain - https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/a9acaabd-d5a0-4fdf-b74a-c20cfe4d4ef9/deliver-whole-home-audio-with-alexa-multi-room-music-and-device-targeting.
You would have to presume that Sonos are either:
A: Working on this and it's in their roadmap
B: Purposefully not working on this
As a customer of both businesses, and with rooms in my home where I just can't justify buying a Sonos One for small spaces (like spare bedrooms for example) I'm very keen to know if this is ever likely to be possible in the coming months. I already have 2 x Sonos One and a Sonos Beam and they work together beautifully. It would be brilliant if we could just get this extra feature and I think my home automation project would be damn near complete 🙂
Thanks and much respect for making amazing products
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Bump. Would love to see this as well. I have a combination of Sonos speakers and echo speakers in my house, and would be amazing if I could use Alexa to play music across those types of devices.
Me three. My Media's implementation of this leaves much to be desired.
Can Sonos provide any ETA on this?
Can Sonos provide any ETA on this?
A couple points here. Assuming I'm reading this properly, it seems like it could be possible, but there would be some hurdles to deal with.
First, looking at the first diagram, you can see the way Sonos pretty much works with Alexa today. Sonos is essentially a "Cloud Controlled Target", using the "Connected Speaker Skill". This is why/how you can send a targeted audio command from Alexa to Sonos speakers today. The other two scenarios don't really apply as far as I understand it (I could be wrong on the 'Single Device' scenario if we are talking about the Sonos One or Beam...not sure). The feature you're asking for essentially is the MRM Target scenario.
Looking at the second diagram, you can get a fairly good idea of how MR works. One AVS Client is set as the sender, meaning it gets the audio from MSP and then has the job of streaming to the receiver AVS Clients using what they are calling 'unicast'. Seems pretty straight forward, though it seems like the recievers must be AVS clients...meaning it would not work with Sonos devices other than the Beam and Sonos One.
Let's break this down into sub-scenarios. The first being when the AVS Cleint-sender is not a Sonos One or Beam, but an Echo. So this echo has the job of receiving and sending audio to Sonos speakers. This seems doable as it's pretty similar to what happens with Apple airplay. It's a different protocol of course, but the Sonos speaker has a pretty similar job, with the difference being instead of receiving a stream from an iPhone, it's getting a stream from an echo. So I would guess that this can be done.
Sub scenario 2 though, is not as straight forward. That is if the Sonos One or Beam has to playing the role of sender with echos being the receiver. The Sonos speakers can receive the audio from the MSP, as they currently do, but they also have new responsibility of sending out the audio to echo devices using the unicast protocol. That doesn't seem too easy o me, considering the Sonos speakers also have the job of using Sonos own protocols for MRM, perhaps at the same time they are running this unicast protocol.
Maybe this can be implemented in such a way that sub scenario 2 never happens, but that's probably not possible. For one thing, you can have networks that don't have anything but Sonos Ones and Beams, and thus Sonos has to be a sender.
All that aside, I would guess that Sonos has looked at this rather hard to figure out how best to approach it. Does it make sense to implement this in full or only in part? Does it cause too much complexity if it only works for the Sonos One or Beam, but generally targeting works for all Sonos speakers? Can Sonos do something else on their side? How should this be prioritized along with Google integration, other enhancement projects and whatever product development is going on?
To the general question regarding ETA, Sonos rarely gives out ETAs and haven't given one on this. They have said repeated though they are constantly working on improving the Alexa integration and are aware of the features customers are looking for. Sonos staff does read these threads.
First, looking at the first diagram, you can see the way Sonos pretty much works with Alexa today. Sonos is essentially a "Cloud Controlled Target", using the "Connected Speaker Skill". This is why/how you can send a targeted audio command from Alexa to Sonos speakers today. The other two scenarios don't really apply as far as I understand it (I could be wrong on the 'Single Device' scenario if we are talking about the Sonos One or Beam...not sure). The feature you're asking for essentially is the MRM Target scenario.
Looking at the second diagram, you can get a fairly good idea of how MR works. One AVS Client is set as the sender, meaning it gets the audio from MSP and then has the job of streaming to the receiver AVS Clients using what they are calling 'unicast'. Seems pretty straight forward, though it seems like the recievers must be AVS clients...meaning it would not work with Sonos devices other than the Beam and Sonos One.
Let's break this down into sub-scenarios. The first being when the AVS Cleint-sender is not a Sonos One or Beam, but an Echo. So this echo has the job of receiving and sending audio to Sonos speakers. This seems doable as it's pretty similar to what happens with Apple airplay. It's a different protocol of course, but the Sonos speaker has a pretty similar job, with the difference being instead of receiving a stream from an iPhone, it's getting a stream from an echo. So I would guess that this can be done.
Sub scenario 2 though, is not as straight forward. That is if the Sonos One or Beam has to playing the role of sender with echos being the receiver. The Sonos speakers can receive the audio from the MSP, as they currently do, but they also have new responsibility of sending out the audio to echo devices using the unicast protocol. That doesn't seem too easy o me, considering the Sonos speakers also have the job of using Sonos own protocols for MRM, perhaps at the same time they are running this unicast protocol.
Maybe this can be implemented in such a way that sub scenario 2 never happens, but that's probably not possible. For one thing, you can have networks that don't have anything but Sonos Ones and Beams, and thus Sonos has to be a sender.
All that aside, I would guess that Sonos has looked at this rather hard to figure out how best to approach it. Does it make sense to implement this in full or only in part? Does it cause too much complexity if it only works for the Sonos One or Beam, but generally targeting works for all Sonos speakers? Can Sonos do something else on their side? How should this be prioritized along with Google integration, other enhancement projects and whatever product development is going on?
To the general question regarding ETA, Sonos rarely gives out ETAs and haven't given one on this. They have said repeated though they are constantly working on improving the Alexa integration and are aware of the features customers are looking for. Sonos staff does read these threads.
Reading through the diagrams and text I don't see anything that suggests MRM can be synced to the Connected Speaker Skill. It talks about how commands flow and syncing happens in each scenario but I don't see where a mixture of the two options is discussed. Did I just miss that?
No, you aren't wrong. Sonos developers would need to find a way for Sonos speakers to play multiple roles. I'd assume that's possible on some of the newer speakers, since they are playing many roles (Sonos, Alexa, airplay, and soon to be Google) already.
Looking at the second diagram, you can get a fairly good idea of how MR works. One AVS Client is set as the sender, meaning it gets the audio from MSP and then has the job of streaming to the receiver AVS Clients using what they are calling 'unicast'. Seems pretty straight forward, though it seems like the recievers must be AVS clients...meaning it would not work with Sonos devices other than the Beam and Sonos One.
Somewhat selfishly, I admit, these are the Sonos Products I'm invested in and I am most interested in. I can understand why this would be problematic for the Standalone Sonos Skill, but for the devices with Alexa embedded (One, Beam) this seems like an inevitable step. Or at least I would hope it's an inevitable step 🙂
bump - can Sonos comment on this thread?
To say what exactly? As I stated earlier, Sonos doesn't normally give ETAs or confirmation that a feature will or will not be added. For a feature as large as this one, any information is likely to come in the Announcements forum. What Sonos can say at this point is that they have no information they can share at this time, and your feature request will be communicated back the decision makers.
Good enough. I have seen further transparency around other "roadmap" items, so was giving Sonos a chance to share any of that transparency if they like. I understand that in the absence of that, the default answer is that there's no public information to share around this, and we'll hear more later if/when this is something Sonos does.
Sonos replying that they recognize this request and are forwarding it to their product managers/developers would already be a huge improvement over dead silence.
Hi everyone, I'm happy to make sure your voices are added to the request. We can't speak to this request at the moment, but I'll make sure the team knows you're asking for it.
For those following this thread:
https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588
Works brilliantly 🙂
https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588
Works brilliantly 🙂
https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588
Works brilliantly :)
Interesting - thanks for the heads up! Not quite MRM yet, but seems to be getting closer....
https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588
Works brilliantly :)
Interesting - thanks for the heads up! Not quite MRM yet, but seems to be getting closer....
I don't think MRM is any closer today than a year ago. The update Ryan gave in https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/alexa-multiroom-music-simultaneously-on-sonos-and-echo-devices-6817442/index1.html#post16295080 sounds like Sonos hasn't decided if they are going to do Alexa MRM.
Well, while I'm waiting around for Sonos to get closer to MRM, I'm going to watch a movie on my Playbar.
Perhaps I'll choose Logan.
Perhaps I'll choose Logan.
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