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Alexa 'Scratch' Sound

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
May 15, 2026
52 replies
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spalmisano
Contributor II

I have a new (~3 weeks) Sonos Era 100 that has developed a digital ‘scratch’ sound when waking up the voice assistant. Whenever I say “Alexa…” I’ll get the chime and what sounds like a short scratch/static sound. The rest of audio playback is fine, music is unaffected, and I’ve not heard this same sound aside from using the wake word.

Restarting the speaker didn’t do anything and I’m not sure if this is something I should initiate a return for, or if its a known issue with a fix.

Ideas are welcome.

Best answer by loki980

I went to the Sonos Arc in the Alexa app. Under “Sound”, I disabled the “Start of Request” sound. The “scratch sound” is gone, but the Wake Chime is still there.

So, it’s still not working quite right, but I like the Wake Chime, so this is good enough for me!

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Matthew1471!
Lyricist III
Forum|Forum|5 days ago
August 29, 2026

I went to the Sonos Arc in the Alexa app. Under “Sound”, I disabled the “Start of Request” sound. The “scratch sound” is gone, but the Wake Chime is still there.

So, it’s still not working quite right, but I like the Wake Chime, so this is good enough for me!

If you still wish to disable the Wake Chime you can do that in the Sonos app under the device’s Alexa settings (still within the Sonos app). The “Start of Request sound” is a setting only in the Alexa app and it’s the latter which causes the glitch sound.

The quickest path to fix the glitch/scratch sound is just say to an Alexa enabled Sonos speaker exhibiting the issue “Alexa, turn off Start of Request Sound”.. that will save you having to mess around with any apps 🙂.