I have an Echo Dot and a Sonos Play 1. They are essentially next to each other, and I never want to play music out of the Dot's speaker. Ideally I would like to say "Alexa, play [music]" and have it start playing through the Sonos speaker. But, as far as I know, I have to include the location, e.g., "Alexa, play [music] in the kitchen." Having to add the location every time is tedious. Plus, when people are over who aren't familiar with the syntax, we end up with different things playing simultaneously out of the Sonos and the Echo.
It would be so much easier, and it would avoid confusing situations, if I could just set Alexa to always treat the Sonos as the output speaker. Is this possible?
I'd be happy with either of these solution: if I could make the Sonos just the default for all music, or if I could make the Sonos the default for everything (the Dot solely as the microphone, with all Alexa content coming out of the Sonos).
Question
Can I make my Sonos Play 1 the default and sole output for an Echo Dot?
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Can't do it with a Play1 but I replaced all my Play1s with S5s (Play5 Gen1s) and then wired the Dots to the Aux input. They behave in exactly the way you are looking for. Just be sure to disable the beta Sonos skill in the Alexa app to avoid ducking issues.
This is what I did, where I could. Too bad the ducking works the way it does. Wonder if/ when that will get addressed. They'll probably have to make Alexa more room-aware and enable assigning Echo devices to rooms.
What combination of volume setting are you using on the Dot, the line level on the 5 and the 5 unit to get the sweet spot that can then be adjusted around that via voice commands? And when you say the wake word, does the 5 go quiet? Is there a way for it to do either - ducking or no ducking?
What combination of volume setting are you using on the Dot, the line level on the 5 and the 5 unit to get the sweet spot that can then be adjusted around that via voice commands? And when you say the wake word, does the 5 go quiet? Is there a way for it to do either - ducking or no ducking?
I set line-in configuration on the Play5s to 10 as this seemed to give me the best volume range. Volume on the Play5s are set to where I usually listen when I play from my local library and the volume on the Dot is set so Alexa music matches the local library volume. I then tweak the volume using Alexa commands if needed while listening.
I set the Dot to play a sound when I say "Alexa" so the Play5 will have a chance to wake up from standby and not cut off the beginning of an Alexa response. (This is normally off for stand-alone Echos).
When playing music from the Dot, a request to Alexa will duck the music during the response. If the Play 5 is grouped via Sonos to other Sonos players then they also duck since they are all sharing the signal from that one Dot. If I have the Dot grouped with other Echos using the Alexa app then ducking only occurs on the Dot I am talking to even if those other grouped Echos are Dots feeding other Sonos components.
Much obliged Mike, for those inputs. Very useful till Sonos gets their act together with Amazon, the latter having launched Echo in India on October 31, with Sonos Skills still missing in the Alexa India app as of today.
After trying this out, a question: I notice that when using line in, the ducking happens some time after uttering the wake word; it does not seem to take that long on a stand alone Dot. That delay in ducking means that one has to wait till uttering the command for it to register and this sometimes does not work too well if one does not wait long enough for the music to duck. Any reason for this? Any fix?
I haven't been able to replicate this problem. Using Dots into both Connect Amps and S5s the ducking seems to operate the same for me as it does on stand-alone Echos. Does this happen consistently or only when the Sonos player is coming out of standby? How do you have your Request Sounds setting configured? Is it set to "start of request" in the Alexa app?
This question is the one that I am searching for the answer to but the answers confuse me. Is the only solution to this problem a fixed aux cable from the echo dot to the Sonos One? But that the Sonos one has no aux-input? This is a huge pain and a bit of a failing. Presumably this is why Sonos produced the version of Sonos One with Alexa built in. I was too cheap to go for this version and assumed that the echo dot would work with the Sonos one without me having to say “Alexa, play Dolly Dagger by Jimi Hendrix from Spotify on Living Room”. I bought this speaker for better sounding drunk-jukebox! After 3 drinks we’re doomed. Any solutions welcome.
Sonos has only ever promised for Alexa control of music on Sonos. Nowhere have they said that you will be able to default all audio from an Echo device to a Sonos device. I would not plan in this coming anytime soon. But you never know.
I’m going to get the one with Alexa built in I think. Assuming that the speaker will then be its default option?
@cdelahunt - nope, you can default to Spotify. Unfortunately this doesn't reduce the command line by too much. I, too, get tripped up by adding the location in order to play music on SONOS.
I do find the app and laptop control app pretty good for playing what you want...
Yes it will, if you buy the One, not the play 1.
A point in favour of the play 1 + Dot on the other hand is that you can place the Dot closer to where the voice commands will come from; this can't be done with the One and its built in mics, so if it is playing loudly, you may have to shout the commands some. But that should not be a problem after three rounds:-)) and may even be desirable.
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