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Alexa volume issue since 12.1



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Seems to be finally fixed with latest Sonos Firmware Update installed yesterday!!! :sunglasses:

I have version 13.1 and it's certainly NOT fixed. Is there another version since then? Also, when you say fixed, how? Is there a separate volume slider now, or a minimum volume like before? Because I see none of that

Inaudible Alexa is not fixed for me by most recent firmware update.
 

Alexa, play “Dream On”. 

The same problem here. I spend a lot of money to deal with this simple software issue that can be solve and Sonos do nothing about it. Waiting for this to get fix.

Userlevel 2

Same issue here. Just purchased a Beam and part if the reason is that it had the Alexa built in. I cannkt hear the Alexa when listening to the TV at an acceptable sound level. In order to here Alexa, I’d have to have the volume EXTRMELY high which basically makes the ALEXA useless. Its insane that there is no way to have different levels of volume for Alexa AND TV. Im furious and feel like ive been taken advantage of. Get your software developers to fix this problem SONOS.

Userlevel 1
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Please please every time you find a problem please contact sonos and inundate them with problems

536032830 diagnostic report

Checking in 7 months later and I see there is still no fix for this.  Very frustrating to say the least.

Userlevel 2

Checking in 7 months later and I see there is still no fix for this.  Very frustrating to say the least.

It’s absolutely disgraceful. It’s probably a relatively easy fix and just silence from Sonis support.

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Keep complaining  and sending in diagnostic reports

Userlevel 2

Keep complaining  and sending in diagnostic reports

Do you have a link to where I can formally complain? Im not sure I did it in the proper place. I did call up and speak to somebody.

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Only on the app diagnostic report 

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Very disappointed to see that this still hasn’t been resolved - I’ve just set up the pair of Sonos One’s as rear surrounds on my Playbar and found the voice on Alexa to be very quiet when compared to the TV :(

Userlevel 2

Very disappointed to see that this still hasn’t been resolved - I’ve just set up the pair of Sonos One’s as rear surrounds on my Playbar and found the voice on Alexa to be very quiet when compared to the TV :(

100% spot on….it has to be a relatively easy software fix. Im very disappointed.

I got my sonos one today and finding that the Alexa voice volume is very high, in comparison to the sonos volume. It is an inconvenience to hear alexa sound at night.

 

Userlevel 2

Still nothing from Sonos engineers. How there is no seperate volume for Alexa and Speaker volume is mind boggling. At my current TV listening levels I cannot hear Alexa at all. Its USELESS. CREATE SEPERATE VOLUME PLEASE!

Just bought the new Sonos arc and everything works great except I can’t hear Alexa save my life when the TVs at a normal volume.
 

As a coder, I would be happy to lend my engineering services to do it for free.

 

It’s just insane how they can’t separate a menu item to set the Alexa volume separate from the TV. Granted, the eARC return channel can cause some issues as it’s relying on TV remote, but they can still extrapolate a separate volume button in the Alexa section. Come on guys it’s not that hard!
 

I’m seeing so many comments I can’t even imagine how many people are returning what is otherwise a great sounding sound bar all because of a software glitch. Let’s get it done guys! You don’t wanna lose any more sales I’m sure.

Userlevel 2

Just bought the new Sonos arc and everything works great except I can’t hear Alexa save my life when the TVs at a normal volume.
 

As a coder, I would be happy to lend my engineering services to do it for free.

 

It’s just insane how they can’t separate a menu item to set the Alexa volume separate from the TV. Granted, the eARC return channel can cause some issues as it’s relying on TV remote, but they can still extrapolate a separate volume button in the Alexa section. Come on guys it’s not that hard!
 

I’m seeing so many comments I can’t even imagine how many people are returning what is otherwise a great sounding sound bar all because of a software glitch. Let’s get it done guys! You don’t wanna lose any more sales I’m sure.

100%….all they have to do is create the seperate Alexa volume button in he app

Come on Sonos this clearly isn't an isolated problem. I have a Beam & 2 SL's...the sound is amazing actually but whilst this Alexa issue continues it does sour the experience of the system as a whole. This must be an easy fix......

Saying “Alexa set your volume to 5” works for me with my Sonos Arc…but then it puts the volume of the TV or streaming music up to 10x that.

Please, Sonos - a fix?

OK, so a few things here.

 

First of all, let me begin by saying I’m not Sonos staff… Let me get that extremely clear right from the bat get go, so please don’t put the blaim of this problem directly on me.

 

I simply would like everyone however though extremely unacceptable and terrible as this is, to just calm down for a minute, and hear me out on this. Just humor me here. I’m not gonna say you all are wrong, Sonos is right, I promise, so please just listen to what I’ve gotta say.

 

I read literally through all the responses on this thread, as I’m having just the oppisit issue. My problem with both a Beam, and also with a Roam is that Alexa’s volume is way way way too loud in perportion to the other audio volume such as Apple music etc.

 

First off, am I understanding all of you correctly that this is only happening when connected to a TV audio source either via HDMI arc or via optycal?

 

Here are some things which would be helpful rather than just saying damn it Sonos, fix it! First, what version of HDMI are you using? Like, version 2? version 3? etc. Also, are you using a cable that supports that version of HDMI? I know you’d not think the cable would matter. Neither did I at first, so fair assumption, but actually, yeah, it does, believe it or not.

 

Also, is this happening for anyone of you with things aside from TV audio output regardless the method of connectivity?

 

Also, I assume you all have power cycled the speakers. I know, that’s not going to probably solve it, as clearly, this is not isolated to just a few people. I get it, but seriously, you’d be amazed at how many times just something that simple will fix things. Sounds crazy, I know, but trust me, you’d be surprised… really you would!

 

Now as for the two voice assistants, keep in mind, if I can be so blunt to say this, with all due respect to all of you, actually, no. It’s not as easy to fix as you all make it sound. Here’s the thing, and I think one of you said you were a coder, so you should know this if that truly authenbticly is the case…

 

Amazon through their S3 AAS cloud services offers all these companies who integrate Alexa into their devices what is known as an SDK. In other words, a “software developer’s kit.” Essentially, within that kit, you have various different API’s. For the less tech savvy, all an API is is a go between, if you will, that allows a product to call back to and communicate/talk to the Amazon servers to send and receive things from Alexa. So, let’s say you was to say, What is the weather for Chicago IL? Using the API specific to weather queries, Sonos, in this case, goes out through means of that API, contacts Amazon’s servers, says, hey, Joe Blow wants to get the weather for X location. Where X is whatever, fill in the blank as you see fit.

 

So, there are other API’s as well, like for instance volume. So, when you say, set the volume to 4, we’ll just say, an API call request is made, the Server is contacted, then an API string, or key, rather, is then incrypted and sent back to be decoded/descrambled by Sonos. Sonos then says, ok, command received, command initiated. Then an API response is made. This could be in the form of Alexa verbally responding, or maybe just her/him reacting to your command. I say him, as you may have it set to Ziggy instead of Alexa. The point is, a response in one form or another is made.

 

Now, take Amazon, and let’s take Sonos completely out of the picture entirely. They also have their own API’s that they internally use, which aren’t released to the public. They’re most likely if I had to guess things that allow the A.I part of the assistant to work.

 

So here’s the problem with this whole volume issue that Sonos probably is up against. It’s a bit difficult to totally trouble shoot this, as we don’t really totally know where the problem is breaking exactly. I mean we know the end result, true. But what we don’t know is is it breaking before it hits the Amazon server, is it happening between receiving the command, then sending back the response to Amazon, or to Sonos, is it coding in the action itself response result that’s botched up, or is it indeed within the Sonos firmware.

 

I truly agree with all of you all. It’s probably in the Sonos firmware, but, let’s be really fair. Even for Sonos engineers, this would be like tracking down a needle in a haystack. I didn’t by any means say it’s impossible… let me be very clear… and further, almost a year out still having no sollution is, I agree, totally unacceptable in most cases.

 

Realize though the tree you’re barking up against. If we could pinpoint down exactly where down the chain of things the problem starts to break, then you’re right… it would be super super easy then to fix.

 

The issue isn’t that it’s not easy to fix. The issue is more finding exactly where things start to break, and then once we know that, then figuring out exactly why. I mean, it coudl be a number of things. It might even be something as easy as a setting which you’d never in your rightest mind think would effect this nor be even remotely rellavent, but it wind up being the nail dead on the head that fixes it.

 

It’s really just tricky to say.

 

I hope this is taken the way it’s meant. Again, I’m no staff member, though I’d love to be, LOL! But I just want you all to maybe look at this a bit from another angle. K?

 

Chris.

 I would have to agree  with Chris, here I would like to also know weather or not  you all are having this problem with or with out your sonos products connected to a tv, also; if you could tell us what if anything you might have done to the settings that  might shine a light on to what is happening, with the arc you deffinitly need to have an HDMI 2.1 cable, also the HDMI arc port needs to be an E arc port.

 

Ron

 

OK, so a few things here.

 

First of all, let me begin by saying I’m not Sonos staff… Let me get that extremely clear right from the bat get go, so please don’t put the blaim of this problem directly on me.

 

I simply would like everyone however though extremely unacceptable and terrible as this is, to just calm down for a minute, and hear me out on this. Just humor me here. I’m not gonna say you all are wrong, Sonos is right, I promise, so please just listen to what I’ve gotta say.

 

I read literally through all the responses on this thread, as I’m having just the oppisit issue. My problem with both a Beam, and also with a Roam is that Alexa’s volume is way way way too loud in perportion to the other audio volume such as Apple music etc.

 

First off, am I understanding all of you correctly that this is only happening when connected to a TV audio source either via HDMI arc or via optycal?

 

Here are some things which would be helpful rather than just saying damn it Sonos, fix it! First, what version of HDMI are you using? Like, version 2? version 3? etc. Also, are you using a cable that supports that version of HDMI? I know you’d not think the cable would matter. Neither did I at first, so fair assumption, but actually, yeah, it does, believe it or not.

 

Also, is this happening for anyone of you with things aside from TV audio output regardless the method of connectivity?

 

Also, I assume you all have power cycled the speakers. I know, that’s not going to probably solve it, as clearly, this is not isolated to just a few people. I get it, but seriously, you’d be amazed at how many times just something that simple will fix things. Sounds crazy, I know, but trust me, you’d be surprised… really you would!

 

Now as for the two voice assistants, keep in mind, if I can be so blunt to say this, with all due respect to all of you, actually, no. It’s not as easy to fix as you all make it sound. Here’s the thing, and I think one of you said you were a coder, so you should know this if that truly authenbticly is the case…

 

Amazon through their S3 AAS cloud services offers all these companies who integrate Alexa into their devices what is known as an SDK. In other words, a “software developer’s kit.” Essentially, within that kit, you have various different API’s. For the less tech savvy, all an API is is a go between, if you will, that allows a product to call back to and communicate/talk to the Amazon servers to send and receive things from Alexa. So, let’s say you was to say, What is the weather for Chicago IL? Using the API specific to weather queries, Sonos, in this case, goes out through means of that API, contacts Amazon’s servers, says, hey, Joe Blow wants to get the weather for X location. Where X is whatever, fill in the blank as you see fit.

 

So, there are other API’s as well, like for instance volume. So, when you say, set the volume to 4, we’ll just say, an API call request is made, the Server is contacted, then an API string, or key, rather, is then incrypted and sent back to be decoded/descrambled by Sonos. Sonos then says, ok, command received, command initiated. Then an API response is made. This could be in the form of Alexa verbally responding, or maybe just her/him reacting to your command. I say him, as you may have it set to Ziggy instead of Alexa. The point is, a response in one form or another is made.

 

Now, take Amazon, and let’s take Sonos completely out of the picture entirely. They also have their own API’s that they internally use, which aren’t released to the public. They’re most likely if I had to guess things that allow the A.I part of the assistant to work.

 

So here’s the problem with this whole volume issue that Sonos probably is up against. It’s a bit difficult to totally trouble shoot this, as we don’t really totally know where the problem is breaking exactly. I mean we know the end result, true. But what we don’t know is is it breaking before it hits the Amazon server, is it happening between receiving the command, then sending back the response to Amazon, or to Sonos, is it coding in the action itself response result that’s botched up, or is it indeed within the Sonos firmware.

 

I truly agree with all of you all. It’s probably in the Sonos firmware, but, let’s be really fair. Even for Sonos engineers, this would be like tracking down a needle in a haystack. I didn’t by any means say it’s impossible… let me be very clear… and further, almost a year out still having no sollution is, I agree, totally unacceptable in most cases.

 

Realize though the tree you’re barking up against. If we could pinpoint down exactly where down the chain of things the problem starts to break, then you’re right… it would be super super easy then to fix.

 

The issue isn’t that it’s not easy to fix. The issue is more finding exactly where things start to break, and then once we know that, then figuring out exactly why. I mean, it coudl be a number of things. It might even be something as easy as a setting which you’d never in your rightest mind think would effect this nor be even remotely rellavent, but it wind up being the nail dead on the head that fixes it.

 

It’s really just tricky to say.

 

I hope this is taken the way it’s meant. Again, I’m no staff member, though I’d love to be, LOL! But I just want you all to maybe look at this a bit from another angle. K?

 

Chris.

 

One more, Alexa volume is too low in relation to the TV volume

Same problem here.  Beam is going back to the store.

Same problem here. We have a One in every downstairs room of the house, but Alexa is barely usable because you cannot make out the response. You literally have to stop doing whatever you are doing, and stand right next to the One in silence and concentrate to make out any responses.

Same problem as well… I think originally (like over a year ago) Alexa’s voice was louder, and not directly relatively to the streaming volume, as it seems to be nowadays. Especially having some silent background music in the morning Alexa’s responses are inaudible over the normal noises of the family.

Could we, please please, have a setting for ”Voice assistant volume”, which would be independent from music/streaming/tv volume?

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