Question

Controlling other SONOS speakers with SONOS One's (via Alexa)???

  • 28 January 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 1980 views

I have a home full of SONOS speakers and had been waiting (very patiently) for SONOS to partner with someone to allow for virtual assistant control over those speakers. I'm typically an Apple guy, but I was still thrilled when SONOS had announced plans to enable support for Alexa. I bought a pair of SONOS One's as soon as they launched, but have been struggling ever since just to get Alexa to control my other SONOS speakers. After reading dozens of articles and posts, waiting (still patiently) for various software updates, and spending hours trouble-shooting the issue, I'm no better off than I was before the launch of the SONOS One.

Where do I stand now? Despite having created a new group for "multi-room music" in the "Smart Home" section of the Alexa app, I'm still dealing with the following:

Me: Alexa, play [SONG NAME] on [NEW GROUP NAME].
Alexa: I can't play music on the group yet. To play on your speaker, use the device name or setup multi-room music in the Alexa app.

So, basically, she can't do what I'm asking her to do, unless I do what she's just asked me to do???

Don't get me wrong -- I LOVE the sound quality of all of my SONOS speakers! But I've already preordered my first Homepod. And if SONOS doesn't fix this soon, I'm going to replace all of my SONOS One's and PLAY1's with Homepods. Hopefully Apple launches some bigger speakers soon!

If they don't get they're act together, SONOS is going to learn all about the "second-mover advantage" from Apple. See Blackberry.

If anyone has had better luck in my situation, I'm all ears!

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1 reply

Userlevel 7
Badge +22
With sono speakers you don’t do any grouping inside alexa app. That is your first issue.

Your command is alexa Play “song” in “room”. You specify room is the Sonos speaker you want to play to. If playing to a Sonos One of course you can leave that let off.

You can’t do any grouping of speakers via voice control. You have to group via Sonos app as always have. Sonos has said they are working with amazon on this ability for future.