Question on Echo Dot

I see, thank you for the quick response. Does anyone know if this is something that Sonos is working to change in the future? Or if the new One Speakers are any different in this regard?

Considering how the integration is designed, it's highly unlikely this will change. For the Sonos One, Alexa will speak through the Sonos One speaker. However, it will not speak through any Sonos speaker that said Sonos One speaker is currently paired, bonded, or grouped to. So for example, if you get 2 Sonos One's setup as a speaker pair, and give a command to the left speaker, only the left speaker will respond to you.

wroynon13 wrote:

I see, thank you for the quick response. Does anyone know if this is something that Sonos is working to change in the future? Or if the new One Speakers are any different in this regard?

The Sonos One will play all Alexa responses as well as music services. Whether that means all responses will play over paired/bonded/grouped speakers remains to be seen.

jgatie, Ryan (Sonos staffer) actually did answer that question already. To further expand on that, with 2 Sonos One in a pair, they act as one Sonos room, but are two separate Alexa devices as far as Amazon is concerned.

It makes sense from a technical standpoint I think. It's almost as if the hardware/firmware for Alexa and for Sonos are separate, and they both 'share' the speaker...perhaps. I would guess that the Sonos app is practically unaware of what may be going on the Alexa side of things...other then 'ducking'.

melvimbe wrote:

jgatie, Ryan (Sonos staffer) actually did answer that question already. To further expand on that, with 2 Sonos One in a pair, they act as one Sonos room, but are two separate Alexa devices as far as Amazon is concerned.

It makes sense from a technical standpoint I think. It's almost as if the hardware/firmware for Alexa and for Sonos are separate, and they both 'share' the speaker...perhaps. I would guess that the Sonos app is practically unaware of what may be going on the Alexa side of things...other then 'ducking'.

Thanks for the clarification. The info is coming fast, easy to miss a post.

This is such a disappointment. You should be able to configure the output for all Alexa echo/dot responses to a room or Sonos speaker, not just music. If Sonos doesn't jump on this, surely another integrator will.

It may be an issue with Amazon allowing it to be done. I've not seen the legal agreement between the two companies, so that's pure speculation on my part.

I guess I could get a bluetooth receiver, pair the dot via bluetooth, but then I lose my AirPlay input (via Airport Express)...unless I go purchase a mixer and output that to the input of my SONOS. Again, should be so much smoother than this funky bluetooth option, with the additional hardware. As you stated, a Legal agreement, unfortunately, seems to be the only reason a software/firmware solution/upgrade wouldn't work. Is that legal agreement public?

I wouldn't think so. Any time I've done a legal agreement regarding software between two companies, it was never made public.

gdclnfn wrote:

This is such a disappointment.

Why? : out of genuine curiosity.

Alexa’s voice and all the info she provides sounds much better coming out of my dual 8” in-ceiling Energy speakers. The Dot audio quality leaves much to be desired. And so does the Echo...and sorry Sonos One...I’ll take the audio quality of my Energy Speakers over your newest device...which would also take up more counter real estate. The Dot should essentially serve as a microphone input device.

I have a decent number of existing Sonos speakers. I'd like to see an option where I could purchase an Echo Dot for each room and integrate audio output for the Alexa voice (including standard responses) through the Sonos speakers. This would make it appear much more seamless to me and my family.

That might be relatively complex. Sonos speakers work off of "pull", i.e. the speaker goes and gets the content it will play. The Alexa (I think) is a push device, i.e. the cloud pushes the data to the speaker to play. I suspect there's something in the Sonos One that bypasses the "pull" technology in order to get the response from the cloud to play. But I expect that it doesn't insert it into the Sonos ecosystem, so you wouldn't get Alexa's voice on any other Sonos speaker than the one that interpreted it.

But that's an assumption on my part, so later evidence may cast aspersions on my thoughts.

Good Luck! I ordered an Echo Dot to use with my three Sonos 'One' speakers. I returned it within 24 hours. I went through the correct 'set-up' for Alexa app AND linking to Sonos. It would play but there is no way to play the same song/station on all three at the same time. 'Alexa' would only recognize one room at a time; very frustrating. AND you can not play your iTunes music library with the Echo/Dot/Alexa product. I was very disappointed that Sonos nor Amazon offered these shortcomings in their descriptions of the product. So, I ditched the whole thing and am happily using my Sonos App to play music MY WAY!!!

You could have "grouped" the rooms that defined the three different Sonos Ones, they would have played in sync, by just "playing" music on any one of them. I do this daily, with my pair of speakers in my bedroom, and a speaker in the bathroom. "Alexa, resume in the bathroom" and both the bathroom and bedroom start up.

As for the iTunes library, I'd started playback way back in the beginning on the controller app, so the resume, pause, volume, next, previous, all work just fine.

Is there any work around to play an iTunes library through dot and sonos? As I understand it now, the only way is to copy the music files to the Amazon music cloud. My problem is with iTunes, as it won't transfer songs from my iPhone to computer. (annoying error message) I've encountered many problems with iTunes. Sigh.

Alexa spoke through my Sonos speakers yesterday randomly and then returned to her own dot speaker. I have no explanation for this. The process has been completely unstable in my case, still getting to grips with it and have not been able to repeat this episode so far.

Will it work with Sonos BAR and Subs?

sumish wrote:

Will it work with Sonos BAR and Subs?

Yes, Alexa control works with all Sonos devices past and present.

I found the need to tell Alexa to play music through the Sonos first super annoying. I was also bothered by the fact that all audio did not go through Sonos. So I am returning the Echo Dot and the Sonos Play:1 and am getting the Sonos One with Alexa built-in. Problem solved. I have another Dot in another room. I will get a speaker with an Audio input and connect the dot directly to that one. Cheaper than buying two Sonos Ones.