Preferred speaker function in Alexa no longer working after latest Sonos update

In the Alexa app, I have groups set up so I can use the preferred speaker feature which allows you to say, "Alex, play _____" and it plays through the preferred speaker I set up - my Sonos speakers. Now I have to say, "Alexa, play ____ in the living room" to make it play through the living room Sonos unit. It's supposed to automatically play through the preferred speaker without having to call it by name at the end of the command. Since this functionality was added a few months back, it has always worked perfectly. After the latest Sonos update, it does not. Now, it plays music through the Alexa device unless you tell it to play through a different speaker (Sonos). This was a nice addition when they added it, and I can't figure out why it's not working now.

Working fine for me. Anything changed in your network? Alexa may need to refresh the connections.

This functionality stopped working since the 10.1 update a month ago. It's fine if you don't change anything in an existing group however if for any reason you re-discover devices you can no longer set a Sonos device as the Alexa enabled device in a group and therefore have to specify room name + lights, more information here

https://en.community.sonos.com/smart-home-integrations-229108/10-1-broken-alexa-groups-6822701

Preferred speaker has broken for me also - much more than 3 months ago. I can’t say is was due to an update or not. I have delete the Group and recreated. I removed the Sonos app and restored. I have rebooted the Echo Dot and the Sonos. I did not delete / reinstall Alexa app on my phone. Suggestions?
-A2

Attached pics show the “Bedroom” is a Sonos device and “Bedroom” is a group with Bedroom as the preferred speaker. OK not real creative, but it had worked wonderfully in the past. Thanks

for any suggestions you might have.
-A2

Ken,
Bingo! So much for not reading the instructions beforehand. Thank you for straightening me out.
-A2

I've had this problem numerous times (every time there is a SONOS/Alexa update) and it either sorts itself out or I have to disable/delete/reinstall etc... to get it working. I've spent nearly an hour today trying to get Alexa groups and SONOS to play nicely and managed to get 5 out of 6 SONOS speakers working as preferred speakers but one speaker refuses to become a preferred speaker and I can't be bothered to spend more time on it.

But I'm really getting fed up of having to do this and my days of buying SONOS are over (just deleted the SONOS Move from my xmas list). I will either replace everything with Amazon speakers (I'm not an audiophile so the quality is more than good enough for me) or Bose as I already have some of their stuff.

mvosloo,

I think your matter could likely be easily resolved by adding your Sonos devices IP addresses to your routers DHCP Reservation table.

Hope that works for you.

Thanks. I had that suggestion from someone else so I have just set that up - but I think I have tried that before with no success. I'll let you know if it works this time.

But for a lot of people IP address and DCHP Reservation tables might as well be a foreign language and it shouldn't need this level of knowledge to work. Prior to Alexa groups, this was never an issue which sort of points to Alexa as the cause of the problem, but its the SONOS updates that always break groups.

Yes, I guess you can say the same about a lot of technology, but a little bit of reading, or maybe watching a YouTube video these days, can soon solve a lot of things.

Reserving an IP address for a local network device is not exactly rocket science and most router manuals can often explain it quite easily, in one, or two pages. A bit like reserving the same table at a restaurant, the device is simply given the same network address so that it stays put and is easy to find.

I think you over estimate most people's ability or patience..... My wife wouldn't have a clue how to do any of this and would have no interest or inclination to find out how to - as she said, she would just use the Bose even though she knows how to use the SONOS app.

And I'm reasonably tech savvy but have never had to fix IP addresses before. My understanding is that you have to set the static IP address on the device outside of the IP range on your router - but the SONOS app and desktop software don't allow you to set an IP address. So I have assigned a fixed IP address on my BT Smart Hub and rebooted.

But having done this I realised that I should have probably assigned a fixed IP address outside of my hub's normal range eg 192.168.1.63 and powered off the SONOS devices first before rebooting the router? But I can't do that now because I can't access my router after rebooting it...

So you see even for someone who started using computers when the x86 was state-of-the-art, built my own computers and is an early adopter, I'm struggling a little bit...

EDIT - from what I have found, The BT Smart Hub is fairly 'sticky' in allocating IP addresses and tends to match the same address to the same MAC every time. Not sure how true this is.

It's taken 2 days but.....

Unfortunately BT Smart Hub 2 is very tempermental about setting 'reserved' IP addresses. I managed to move 5 out of 7 devices out of the server address range but 2 remained stubbornly within and 1 still wants to stay with DHCP.

To do even this I had to make the SONOS network wireless (previously the SONOS Beam was wired so the whole network was wired).

I set up everything again in Alexa (deleted relevant groups, set up groups again with no SONOS devices, deleted all SONOS devices (except SONOS Beam which won't let you delete it), deleted SONOS skill, enabled SONOS skill, added speakers, set preferred speakers etc etc numerous times

I also renamed all the speakers again just in case.

Along the way, speakers got lost, reappeared and generally misbehaved

However, this didn't seem to solve the problem....

I did once manage to get things working but it all fell apart again, but what I did notice is that it fell apart after I said 'Alexa, play BBC Radio 2 in the living room' - and you have to say 'in the living room' as otherwise Alexa uses the BBC skill and plays BBC Radio 2 on the Amazon device instead of the preferred speakers (stupid but you can't change it apparently).

This made me wonder... So I renamed the Alexa group 'Living Room' to 'Sitting Room' and suddenly it all started working as it should. I wonder if there is a legacy issue when I had lots of smart devices named or categorised as 'Living Room' from pre-Alexa groups...

Anyway it works for now although no doubt it will probably fall apart again tomorrow. I will let you know.

I’m having a preferred speaker glitch which I think is the fault of the Echo/Alexa not Sonos.

 

Saying, ‘Alexa, play [music]’ works fine, the Echo device [Dot or Show] plays on the preferred speaker [sonos] in that room [Kitchen or Lounge].

 

But if you say ‘Alexa, play [music] everywhere’, the preferred speaker is not chosen and music plays directly from the Echo Dot in the Lounge (not the Sonos system setup as preferred). But still plays from the Sonos system in the Kitchen (not from the Echo Show).

 

So it would seem to be setup correctly but the preferred speaker is bypassed by using the Alexa Multi-Room speaker group.