Alexa Sonos ducking has stopped working consistently

  • 14 March 2020
  • 9 replies
  • 524 views
C
Userlevel 1

I’ve had Sonos and Alexa for a long time and had everything setup well and working for a long time. In the past few weeks I’ve noticed that my Echo Dots (I have one in each room) no longer duck the Sonos speaker in the the same room group.

I’ve double checked all the groups in the Alexa app to ensure the correct speaker is grouped with the correct Echo Dot, and that there are no speakers not in groups, but unfortunately, ducking is only working in one room out of four.

 

Has anyone else had this issue resurface recently?

 

I’ve removed the Sonos skill and re-added it with no success.

 

If anyone has the same setup (Sonos without Alexa built in and using standalone Echo Dots for example), please can they let me know if ducking works?

 

Thanks guys!

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

9 replies

Ken_Griffiths

CodeMunkey,

If necessary, can you perhaps post a screenshot of one of your Alexa Enabled Groups, just so we can see that you have the Sonos and Alexa devices in the correct section of the Alexa group, but first, maybe see the below...

  • For the Sonos player audio to duck, a Sonos device with the assistant built-in (eg. Sonos One/Beam etc.), needs to be in both the first ‘controlling/enabling’ section of the Alexa group, aswell as being “preferred” in the 'third' section area.
  • A Sonos device without the voice assistant built-in (eg. Play:1/Play:5 etc.), needs to be in the second section of the Alexa group, aswell as being “preferred” in the 'third' section area.

Hope that information assists.

J

I’ve had Sonos and Alexa for a long time and had everything setup well and working for a long time. In the past few weeks I’ve noticed that my Echo Dots (I have one in each room) no longer duck the Sonos speaker in the the same room group.

I’ve double checked all the groups in the Alexa app to ensure the correct speaker is grouped with the correct Echo Dot, and that there are no speakers not in groups, but unfortunately, ducking is only working in one room out of four.

 

Has anyone else had this issue resurface recently?

 

I’ve removed the Sonos skill and re-added it with no success.

 

If anyone has the same setup (Sonos without Alexa built in and using standalone Echo Dots for example), please can they let me know if ducking works?

 

Thanks guys!

I’m having a similar issue:  Echo Dot and Playbar in same room.  I set the playbar/amp to be the preferred speaker.  Alexa even says she is streaming on SONOS, but no sound.  Further, I can ask Alexa to specifically play music on this playbar/connect group and she confirms she is playing it on that set of speakers, but then no sound.

 

I’d love to solve this so I can yell at Alexa to do my bidding!  Thanks in advance!

J

I’m having the same problem. I’ve done the same with the skill. I’ve logged in and out of Sonos, too.  I’m not sure how to fix it. 

J

One problem I have:  you can only have a preferred speaker at one location, so I can’t have a preferred speaker at our lake house and our home under the same amazon email.  I had to use my wife’s email at the lake house.  Still doesn’t really work and SONOS can’t explain.  At least it now works to ask Alexa to play a specific speaker.  Though, even that seems to only work for a song or two before the sound cuts out on Sonos and have to go to the Sonos app to get it all working again. Alexa does always work for ‘stop music’, so that’s something I guess.  Still pretty disappointed.

J

I’m having that same problem too with the sound cutting out and having to go the app. Even my stop music is intermittent. Everything was working just fine until a few weeks ago. Clearly, Sonos updated something and things broke and they haven’t fixed it yet. I wish something would happen. 

A

Hi everyone!

There are currently no outages or active issues with Alexa.

Audio cut outs can have a multitude of sources. 

The best course of action I would recommend is to submit a diagnostic report of your Sonos system after a cutout has occurred, so I would be able to investigate the audio issue further.

C
Userlevel 1

Dang I replied, but it didn’t post it would seem.  Here goes again...

Ken - thanks for suggestion, but they way you describe it is how I’ve had the groups setup from the start and it was working just fine for a very long time.  I even tried deleting and rebuilding one of the groups with no luck.  I’ll try and post the screenshots from the Alexa App again now which should show 3 rooms.  Bedroom is the only one which is still ducking correctly anymore.

None of my Sonos speakers have Alexa built in.  I have an echo spot in the Bedroom and echo Dots in the Kitchen and Bathroom which don’t duck anymore.  In my Lounge (not shown) I have an original Amazon Echo (tall black V1) and that no longer ducks Sonos either.

 

C
Userlevel 1

I think I’ve fixed it.  Need to do more testing but will post back later.

C
Userlevel 1

Right, I finally figured out what was causing Alexa ducking on Sonos not to work in 3 of my 4 rooms.

Once upon a time (well over a year ago I think), I wanted to test the multi-room capability of just the Amazon Echo devices using the Spotify app.  This would allow me to play the same music directly onto the Amazon echo devices in all rooms using the Spotify app (nothing to do with Sonos).  Do get this to work, you had to create whats called (in the Alexa app) a Speaker Group (which is different to just a “Group” - which can also contain lights, sockets etc. as well).  So I had setup a Speaker Group at the time which had all of my Amazon Echo devices included and played around with this for a while.  I should point out also, that when I did this, ducking still worked just fine for a very long time after.  Fast forward 6 months, and I upgraded my Bedroom Echo Dot to an Echo Spot and decommissioned the Echo Dot which meant the original Bedroom Echo Dot which was included in the Speaker Group was now “offline”.  This is why, when I recently noticed ducking had stopped working in most rooms, that it still worked in the Bedroom (as there was no Amazon Echo device in that room anymore).

So the long story short is that it looks like an update went out to Alexa which causes Sonos Ducking to no longer work if you have the Amazon Echo Device in a Speaker Group AND a normal Group (which is then paired with your Preferred Sonos Speaker in the same room).  So the way to make ducking work again is to remove the Amazon Echo Device from the separate Speaker Group if you have one setup or delete the Speaker Group enitrely if you don’t really need it.

Yesterday, I removed the Amazon Echo devices one at a time, and sure enough, ducking started working immediately in each room as I went through them all.  In the end I just deleted the Speaker Group as I was only using it to play around and don’t need it anyway.

Hope this helps someone out there!

 

Terms & ConditionsCookie settings