Amazon Echo / Dot and Sonos Integration

The Sonos video demonstrate how this will work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFJ7O7N5Yok

At the one minute mark, the home shows two zones: a Play1 in the kitchen (next to a Dot) and a Playbar in the living room. A guy says "Alexa play new music", and music starts to play in the kitchen. He doesn't name a zone, he just tell it to play music and the system knows to play on the Play 1. Then he says "Alexa play in the living room", and the music switches to the living room zone.

So, his kitchen Play1 must be the default zone connected to his Dot, but you can move the music to other zones via voice command.

The video gives hints as to whether Sonos replaces the Dot's speaker.
1. Whenever the Dot "talks", a Sonos speaker is also in the frame
2. The Dot's sound quality is quite good, indicating it's coming from Sonos not the tiny speaker in the Dot.
3. Music pauses when Alexa speaks the name of the song, and resumes again once Alexa stops speaking . If the Dot was merely a Sonos controller and used it's own speaker for Alexa's voice, it would talk at the same time music played from the Sonos.

Based on all this I conclude that you will be able to designate a default zone for each Echo, and that zone will always act as Echo's voice. It would not surprise me if there were also an option on the Echo app that let you choose whether to use the Echo or Sonos as Alexa's voice.

@jgatie i think youre confused. the dots are all individually assigned and always have been. if anything you cant CONNECT echos. if you ask the echo upstairs a question, only the one upstairs will reply. you have to make the harmony skill regardless of how many echos you had. i have multiple dots connected to multiple speakers in each room and theyre all independent of each other. i CANT daisy chain them like the sonos. i think what spcdust is trying to ask is if sonos will be working the software on their end so the entire system isnt connected by default and the speakers themselves can be individually assigned, as if they were bluetooth, for example, without having to go into the app manually every time. not the dots. the dots are all independent of each other. always have been.

You are completely missing the point. The OP wants to say "Alexa, play the Beatles" to his bedroom Alexa and Alexa will know it's in the bedroom and play only to the bedroom. Right now, I can't say "Turn out the lights" in the bedroom and only have the bedroom lights go out. I have to make a group called Bedroom Lights" and say "Alexa, turn off bedroom lights".

None of this has to do with linking the Echos together to play the same music.

The point I was enquiring on is how far the integration will go - Echo only having the capability to control Sonos is rather a dull proposition. If you already have Sonos speakers in rooms then so much better to have them also act as the voice of Alexa - I don't want to populate rooms with additional speakers / Echo units just so I can hear Alexa's voice. Instead link a specific Dot with a specific rooms Speakers so you get the full Echo / Alexa experience enabling the individual user to ask Alexa questions such as "tell me the traffic", "What's the weather" and then taking advantage of their already installed superior Sonos speakers in that particular room.

Like I said, surely under the hood, they could achieve this by using each devices MAC addresses.

I've pre-ordered myself an Echo Spot (2nd Gen), I don't really need the capability of the full Echo speaker as have Sonos speakers, which will be superior in audio quality, for the playback of music. The way I'd love for it to work is that when Sonos implement their integration they look beyond just using Echo as a control device and actually allow the Echo to use their speakers for the voice of Alexa - to me that would be kind of cool. If that were the case then I'd just buy Echo Spots for all the rooms that have Sonos Speakers in - however high chance that's a wish to far so will settle on using the Spot to control Sonos and just have the Spots lesser speaker act as Alexa's voice.

Would also be curious about any Beta Sonos do in testing the Echo / Sonos integration.

...or some marketing guy did the video who doesn't even know how it works

my thinking also. Just some happy family sequence filmed with some sonos and amazon gear in shot with the music and commands added over afterwards.

I can't see the bbc spending any licensce payers money on sonos, the numbers aren't there.
But they have worked with google and chromecast, so maybe they will work with amazon and get Alexa integration, iam sure amazon would like iplayer logo on the box in uk, and alexa can send it to sonos?? maybe...

Well that will be disappointing to the folks who have been claiming for years that "If Sonos would just open their architecture like Squeezebox, this would be done by now!" Of course those people will find a way to blame Sonos anyway. 😉

Note: Not only did the play:5 being hooked to the dot not do me a lot of good. The play:5 would take about a second or two to come out of standby and I would miss the first word or 2 Alexa would respond with.
You can actually fix this. I set up my original Dot feeding into a CONNECT:AMP and observed the same issue. However, in the Alexa app, go to Settings for the particular Dot. In there is an option to have Alexa play a tone when voice response is activated. You can set this to either start or end of voice response. Setting it to start (e.g., when Alexa recognizes the wake word and starts waiting for you to give it a command) means the CONNECT:AMP has always come out of sleep before any meaningful audio is generated by Alexa, even if you don't really pause between the wake word and the command. If the CONNECT:AMP is already awake, the little "bing" noise is very unobtrusive and actually nice as you know Alexa is really listening to you without having to look and see if the ring is lit up.

I noticed something troubling about the Sonos/Amazon Echo video. There is no indication, either way, that the people in the video are using the Sonos app to play music.

I have my Echo set to use Spotify as the default music server so when I ask Alexa to play Red Hot Chilli Peppers she goes to Spotify, if I ask her to play some jazz she goes to Spotify but if I just ask her to play some music she defaults to my Amazon music.

That raises the question, exactly what kind of integration will there be? Will all of the Sonos supported services be controlled via voice via the Echo, or will voice control be limited to Amazon's services? If the latter, then the Sonos integration means that Sonos simply provides a networked speaker system for the Echo. If you want to listen to non-Amazon Echo services, you'll still need to use the app. It won't truly be a voice control for Sonos.


I don't know what the integration will include but if I had to guess I would say:

1- Rooms should show up in the Echo so you can say "Alexa play abc in the xyz room. Not sure you will be able to create or change room groups though.

2- Favorites should show up in the Echo so you can say Alexa play favorite IJK in room XYZ and the Echo will do it. This lets Echo play Sonos specific content without needing to know anything about it... just trigger the favorite and let Sonos handle it from there.

3- Overlapping services like Amazon Prime and Spotify could get some additional integration goodies but I would not expect services available only through Sonos and not Echo to get much more than a basic startup via favorites. Likewise local libraries will either need to upload to Amazon or be limited to control via favorites. Not sure if Sonos Playlists will show up directly or if they will also need to be added to favorites to be seen.

If this is all it does then that will be fine with me but if folks are expecting something more elaborate than this there may be some disappointment with the product that actually gets delivered. Again, all just speculation.

Sonos never gives concrete dates. Testing phases are too unpredictable to set a release date too far in advance.

That is a good question. Currently Dot's don't do multiroom. Sonos does. But Amazon is working with Sonos direct in integration of the Dot to controlling Sonos. So we all know Dot controlling Sonos is coming ...... but ..... what if they went the other direction .... Sonos control Dot. While maybe far fetched, since they are working closely and Amazon needs the Dot to go multiroom .... just like we said why should Sonos create their own voice recognition .... why should Amazon create their own multiroom.

It doesn't seem that crazy. For Sonos it would build on the brand with all Dots being Sonos capable. The Dot even then becomes an affordable basic Connect (something Sonos needs to compete with the likes of Google Audio). With an Alexa dot you have a competitor to The Google Audio dongle. It would also give Sonos more exposure into every home with eventual upsell to full on Sonos speakers in house.

For Amazon - it gives it a stronger mutli-room then their competition like Google Home. This could be very important to them in winning the current major war brewing between who will be the home assistant of the future (we have ourselves a good old fashion Betamax vs. VHS storm brewing).

Fighting against all this - Amazon dots don't have the memory or processing power a normal Sonos speaker has (assuming). Everything playing to it will have to be coming from the cloud. How do you group a Dot room that normally could be done all via your local network when the Dot is getting all instruction via the cloud. How could you possibly sync them together (I guess its possible if Sonos would have ability to delay the other speakers if a dot joined the mix).

Probably far fetched and as I typed the technical hurdles seem pretty big. But a combo Sonos/Alexa music network would be pretty amazing.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. There is no current native integration in US or elsewhere. It is in development.

great reply. now you are a Sonos hero.
but I remember a statement about "beta at the end of 2016 , live in 2017"