Please fix that ducking feature

So I was in the kitchen last night, I turn on the Play:5 using the Android controller. Now when in the living room when I tell my Echo Dot to turn on the lights the Play:5 goes quiet whilst Alexa is listening!

Why does it do that?

I believe it is a limitation of the Amazon API which does not yet have a way to associate a particular Echo with a speaker or light in the same room. In other words it does not know which Sonos speakers are in the same room as you so it ducks them all to make sure you can hear the response from the Echo. I also think Amazon wants to address the association issue not just for Sonos but also to make it easier to turn on lights in the same room as a particular Echo without having to name the room in the command. We will likely see this fixed but Sonos can't do anything until Amazon provides the API calls required to do it.

How would you fix it? Would you make it "duck" just the speaker you're controlling, or the speaker that's closest to the device that you're speaking in to. How do you tell which one is closest? Do you define in the app the speaker(s) that are closest to each Echo device?

Not disagreeing with you, I'd like this feature, too, but if I were writing up a requirements doc, I'm not sure I would know how to define the behavior for the coder to implement. Interested in suggestions on how it could be fixed.

I believe the expectation, and Amazon's intention, is to create associations in the Alexa app of all devices within a given room. This would allow ducking in the room you are speaking from without affecting other locations. There would be little value in ducking the speaker you are controlling unless it is in the same room you are.

Once Amazon implements this and adds it to the API Sonos will still need to do some coding to take advantage of it and push it out in a firmware update. Hopefully competition with Google will drive Amazon to implement this soon. Likewise Sonos will hopefully make this a priority to address it as soon as the Amazon piece is done.

My two cents: When Amazon/Sonos implemented ducking, they apparently didn't consider people who feed their echo dots into Sonos through the line input on the Play5, connect, or connectAMP. When I talk to Alexa, I expect to hear the answer on my Sonos system. With the new Alexis/Sonos functionality, the answer is almost inaudible because of ducking. That means that in addition to ducking Sonos music audio, which might make sense, they are ducking their own response, which doesn't .

Fortunately, I am using grouped Sonos devices, so I can pull the Play:5 that is connected to the echo out of Alexis by telling it to "forget" the device and since the Play:5 is grouped with other devices, it and the other devices all play the Alexis output at the normal volume. Unfortunately, the Alexis software will automatically rediscover the forgotten device and I'm back to not hearing the Sonos response.

I think there are really three very significant deficiencies in this long-awaited functionality: 1) Alexis should have the ability to avoid ducking its own responses, since it obviously doesn't listen while it is talking, 2) one should be able to turn off ducking altogether, and 3) the system shouldn't rediscover forgotten devices unless the user requests it.

This could be fixed with a configuration option to tell Alexis that it is connected to a Sonos line input. In that case, when the Echo is talking, it could temporarily switch Sonos to the line input and then switch back to the selected source. That would obviate the need to play all sources through the Echo into the Sonos. In the meantime, I would settle for being able to permanently forget the Play:5 or to be able to turn off ducking.

All in all, very disappointing. I can't be the only Echo dot user who connects it to Sonos, so why didn't they think about that use case?

I imagine they thought (as did I) that the Sonos skill would make the line-in connection to Sonos redundant. Honest mistake.

I guess they also imagined that all Sonos owners only have 1 unit too, if not they would have realised that this ducking feature wouldn't work.

There is also the possibility that stats show that households rarely have different sources playing in different homes. They may switch groups and such, but rarely do you play one source in zone A and another in zone B. That's how it seems to operate in my house anyway.

I also wonder what it would be like if they didn't implement ducking at all. People would complain that they can't hear/talk to Alexa when Sonos is playing.

It's also quite possible that Sonos doesn't really have the ability to turn off ducking...that's it's entirely in Amazon's code. If the command from Alexa to duck is actually just a command to lower the volume, no different then if you specifically asked Alexa to lower the volume. Sonos may not know if it's ducking or manually lowering the volume.

Well, I was going to add to this topic some observations I had on ducking. But, jgatie has again ruined another thread with vicious attacks on someone who doesn't completely worship Sonos as he does.

There is nothing here preventing you from posting about the ducking feature, except of course the fact that you would seemingly much rather hurl stones at me. Instead of hypocritically adding to that which you just complained about, if you have a problem with my posts and feel they are against the TOS, feel free to report me to a mod.

And by the way, "vicious"? I scolded a person for childish use of profanity and told him to act like an adult. Hardly "vicious". :8

I can't say I'm curious; because I already know. But, I'll ask anyway. Have you ever been banned from any other audio-related forums?

When you are ready to discuss the Amazon Connected Speakers API and the impact it may have had on the length and features of the Sonos/Alexa integration including ducking, the topic of this thread, I'll be happy to engage you. Until then, take care!

That feature is there now. When you create an "Alexa-Enabled" group in the Alexa app it lists "Alexa-enabled devices" to add to the group. The Sonos One should be listed there.

I've not tried it but I presume since nobody has announced it that it doesn't fix the ducking

OK thanks for that Dave, but that wasn't quite what I was asking about. I was simply asking if, when Amazon have made it possible for their Echo devices to activate a connected device in the same room where no room name is specified in a command such as "Alexa play Jazz" (as opposed to "Alexa play Jazz in {roomname}"), whether this functionality will be extended to the Sonos One and other Alexa-enabled devices. If, however as you say, it is possible to add non-Echo devices to an Alexa group this would make it more likely they will be treated the same I guess. We may just have to wait and see.

I still can't see anything in the Alexa app that would allow for example you to choose your default speaker device... This might not matter for a Sonos One where it would be the Alexa device, but would prevent you from using an Echo with Sonos currently in the same room. The Alexa app does recognise that Sonos speakers are wireless speakers so maybe it's something coming.

In "Alexa App > Settings > My Echo Dot" I have what I think is a new setting called "Pair Alexa Gadget". It looks like it is just for bluetooth devices though unfortunately.

Have you tried routines yet? I can't seem to get any to work at all!

Cross-posting here just to add my voice to the crowd to get this fixed, but this needs to work for me based on physical location of the respective devices, not on Sonos rooms, as rooms are too flexible (and need to be that way).

https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/ducking-6792257/index2.html#post16223408

Has anything been done to fix ducking recently?

Sonos has a long standing pattern of announcing features/fixes in the threads that mention them. If the ducking functionality had changed, you would see it posted here.