Ducking

Please do whatever you can about the ducking issue, Ryan.

The Alexa integration seemed great to begin with – the wife understandably never liked Sonos because she just wants "to walk into the kitchen and turn the radio on". I can understand that. It's not exactly convenient to have to find a phone, start an app, hit Rooms > Kitchen, then My Sonos > BBC Radio 2 or some similar sequence just to hear Steve Wright (and none of the sequences are intuitive, sorry). She actually brought an old portable radio into the kitchen and put it next to the Sonos speaker "because it's so much easier".

After a few days of persevering with the Echo Dot, she's agreed that saying: "Alexa, Play Radio 2 in the Kitchen" is a reasonable compromise, even if it does take about 10 seconds for the music to actually start (will it happen? Won't it? Such a thrill).

But there's a problem. I'm in the office with Tangerine Dream playing through Sonos off the Mac library. My son is in his bedroom, practising guitar with Led Zep on Spotify. And every time the wife turns the radio on, or changes the volume, using Alexa, our music ducks out for 5–10 seconds. Aaargh! At least we know Mum's home, I suppose. But now she gets unwarranted stick for doing what we moaned at her to do. It's all a bit irritating and unfair.

(#firstworldproblems of course)

Hopefully we see something soon. Sonos has publically stated they wish to resolve this correctly

It is very disappointing that no progress has been made on this issue yet. It is a complete show stopper for houses with existing multi-room systems and echo devices. It's also disappointing that Sonos don't keep a sticky here while the skill is (still) in Beta so we know what issues are being worked on and when we might see resolution.

Add me to the list, Ducking is great when you only have one Sonos and Alexa in one room, but when you have it all around the house and Alex all around the house it is most annoying when someone in another room asks Alexa to do something and the whole house Sonos Ducks, is there a way to configure it so that Sonos only ducks in the room that Alexa is in??? SONOS support, please look at this and respond. Thanks

We have 4 Sonos speakers and 3 echo dots throughout our house... the "ducking" of the volume of music on our speakers has been a huge issue in our house. Unfortunately, like others have said here, we have had to disable our sonos skill. We would LOVE to have an option to turn the Ducking feature on or off.

Here's hoping for some update or change that addresses this.

Except that Alexa automatically rediscovers those speakers on a schedule — they don't stay gone. It's even mentioned by Sonos employees higher up in this very thread.

https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/ducking-6792257/index1.html#post16161897

Frankly I would like the option, at Sonos Speaker level to enable or disable Ducking completely. this could either be through the Sonos or Alexa App. the value of Ducking is significantly reduced given that she does not reply via the Sonos system anyway. so if i ask about the weather only the Echo devise can answer, so likely i need to be in that room. Please address ASAP

I really would like to use voice commands with Sonos; but I guess I will have to wait even longer for Sonos to correct this problem.

I doubt this is Sonos problem to fix. Obviously Alexa is telling Sonos to drop the volume when 'ducking'. Sonos can't ignore that command, because the command is probably identiical to 'lower volume'. If you turn off volume, you probably turn off volume control.


I have three Echo dots connected to Sonos either through line-in jacks or Connects. This was originally done to work around the Audible issue. The bonus of doing this was that all output from the Dots sounded great going through the Sonos speakers. Even, simple things like: "Alexa, what is the weather?" sound very good. Well, they don't with ducking, because you can't hear them at all now.


I agree that the 'echo line-in' solution and the Alexa integration solution are not compatable. I'd argue that even if the ducking issue is fixed, you're probably going to run into issues with not hearing Alexa, or audible, because you're not set to line in, and so on.


Perhaps the long-term fix is to assign Alexa devices to specific Sonos products. A short-term fix would be to add the option of turning ducking off. I would be willing to accept that Alexa might not be able to hear me with this option.

Agreed that configuring a sonos zone to a specific echo or Alexa enabled device is the only real solution, which has several other benefits. As I said before, I doubt Sonos can turn off ducking without turning off all volume control.

@SONOS - Just for your records: We also have six SONOS and some Alexas in use. Ducking is just plain useless when its not just happening to a specific device. Please disable ducking in general or give us a disable function.

Btw: I guess there is nearly no time at all when a SONOS is that loud that Alexa won't understand me. So what's ducking good for anyway?

Please, PLEASE turn it off. At the moment the whole Skill is disabled - what a pity 😠

My son and daughter begged to have alexa in their rooms when they learned they could control their sonos. They love their sonos.

But ducking led them to fall seriously out when either one tries to use it.

So, to restore family unity, I beg please sort it out! (and provide some context between echo dots and associated sonos)

If you would like a certain speaker to be Alexa controlled. You can enable the skill but delete all the other speakers from the Smart Home section. Then only the one speaker will have alexa control but only that speaker will duck.

Is that true?! That helps a lot as a temporary solution for me. I'm looking forward to trying that when I get home today!

Oh 😞. Thanks for the additional info. I missed that earlier discussion. I assume that both disabling and deleting have been tried and have the same issue?