Alexa to Multiple Rooms

  • 4 October 2017
  • 37 replies
  • 14524 views

I have a number of Sonos speakers, is there anyway to address a 'group' - like "Play relaxing music everywhere". I have tried setting up a group in the Alexa app, but that doesn't work.

While I am here - do the names of the Sonos speakers have to be different to existing 'smart stuff'. I have lights called 'Living Room' and a Sonos called 'Living Room', and that seems to confuse things...

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37 replies

Been testing this out today and it's pretty cool - but SUCH a shame multi-room's not combining right now with the Alexa devices. This has to be a top priority for me - that and the ability to control my surround sound (playbar + 2 play:1's and a sub) group. I was also hoping hugely that we'd be able to utilise the mic feature on the play:5 to control Alexa too?
Sonos has said they are working on grouping, but no more information than that (as is the standard response for the close-to-the-vest Sonos reps). Unfortunately, the mics on the Play:5 Gen 2 are not a far field array, and thus are not suitable for voice control.
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You know, I take everything negative about grouping back. It is in fact easily done in the Sonos app, I was clearly doing something wrong, so who cares if you can’t do it through Alexa? Once grouped, I don’t tend to change grouping configurations anyway. Everything seems to be working great.
Being able to turn on multiple rooms at the same time with Alexa is one of my top 2 hopes for the Alexa/Sonos partnership (along with being able to play my imported playlists).
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Does anyone know if sonos and Alexa echo speakers (the new one) and perhaps other speakers will work together? Let’s say I have both an echo speaker and a sonos speaker in one room will I be able to say “alexa, play in living room” and it will play in all alexa speakers including sonos? Is this something planned?

No, Sonos and Amazon have very different syncing schemes. I would not expect them to be able to be grouped to play in sync.


I disagree, this should be something you or anyone would intuitively think / expect. If i want to buy speakers that have a particular AI integrated i expect them all to talk to each other. If sonos wants to be agnostic truly then supporting a different AI is not the only thing they need to support, but they need to allow the ability to work with every product that has alexa built in which includes all speakers (third parties or by Amazon or Google itself). I will put this on a separate ticket as i think this falls on a different umbrella from this discussion which is simple grouping of sonos with sonos speakers
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I'm currently not having any problems with Alexa confusing my Hue Light Rooms with Sonos Rooms even though they use the same names. i.e I have Living Room Lights and Living Room Sonos Speakers.
Does anyone know if sonos and Alexa echo speakers (the new one) and perhaps other speakers will work together? Let’s say I have both an echo speaker and a sonos speaker in one room will I be able to say “alexa, play in living room” and it will play in all alexa speakers including sonos? Is this something planned?

No, Sonos and Amazon have very different syncing schemes. I would not expect them to be able to be grouped to play in sync.


I disagree, this should be something you or anyone would intuitively think / expect. If i want to buy speakers that have a particular AI integrated i expect them all to talk to each other. If sonos wants to be agnostic truly then supporting a different AI is not the only thing they need to support, but they need to allow the ability to work with every product that has alexa built in which includes all speakers (third parties or by Amazon or Google itself). I will put this on a separate ticket as i think this falls on a different umbrella from this discussion which is simple grouping of sonos with sonos speakers


You disagree that Sonos and Amazon have different syncing schemes?

Uhhhh, ok. :8
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Just to play devils advocate for a moment... - but is the PlayOne a Sonos speaker with an echo dot bolted on top, or is it an echo dot with a Sonos speaker bolted underneath.

Whilst it seems ceratin this is a sonos device with Amazon functionality bolted on (and later functionality with other voice platforms), in theory it would be technically possible for this unit to be built in a way which would allow it to operate in either environment as its native habitat?

That is however very unlikely to ever be the case as it would limit the ability for the device to be used across multiple voice platforms. Customers would have to buy a hardware device specifically for their preferred voice platform, in which case people would just buy the Alexa/Home Assistant instead of Sonos.

Trying to get sonos speakers to sync with alexa speakers is simply not going to happen, certainly not with current hardware imho.
I don't think there is any technical reason the Sonos One could not operate this way. Only challenge would be some logic to arbitrate situations where it was commanded to do something in Sonos mode and Alexa mode at the same time. Commercially though this does not fit the Sonos vision and I don't see them wanting to do it.
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It works. https://en.community.sonos.com/search/activity/topics?userid=7926722
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What you are talking about is completely different than what was being discussed in this thread.

You are playing music in multiple rooms on multiple Echo devices the way Amazon designed them to work. Additionally you have connected one Sonos device to the one who finds your Echo devices via a hardwire. That Sonos device is repeating the input it receives from the wired connection or has to one Echo device and repeating it to the rest of your Sonos devices.

This is not using an Echo device along with the Alexa Skill for Sonos to relay commands from Alexa to your Sonos, without any use of Echo or Sonos wired audio jacks, which is what we were discussing here.

What you are doing has always worked, even prior to the introduction of the Sonos Skill.