Best answer by Ryan S
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Recent update now breaking groups with Alexa
After an update to the Sonos software this weekend, the Alexa integration is "broken" in that now, starting music using voice commands breaks apart groups of speakers. Are there new commands, or is there a way to roll back the software version to one that actually worked? If this is the "new normal," then I will need to discuss returning all of the Sonos products I own and looking into a new Alexa compatible system.
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Userlevel 7
+26
Apple Music is live now on Alexa, but it's not available on Sonos through Alexa at the moment. Rest assured, our team is always interested in helping you control the music services you love with voice. Nothing to share now, but stay tuned. We'll share more as soon as there's any news.
It seems to work if you don't have any room or group active. If you still have an active device or group Alexa will play Spotify on that one only even though you have the new group configured without this particular active zone. Active doesn't mean that it hast to be playing someting.
(edit: it now only plays spotify in the living room no matter what I tell Alexa where to play... how long is this timeout period Ryan mentioned? For testing purposes this information would be seriously useful. I mean we are after all testing it now - feels totally beta.)
I could however witness (in the sonos app) that the grouping works - provided you have your favourite speakers set in the Alexa App. And yes, you need to select every speaker as favourite again even though these are already in the group. At least in my case.
(edit: it now only plays spotify in the living room no matter what I tell Alexa where to play... how long is this timeout period Ryan mentioned? For testing purposes this information would be seriously useful. I mean we are after all testing it now - feels totally beta.)
I could however witness (in the sonos app) that the grouping works - provided you have your favourite speakers set in the Alexa App. And yes, you need to select every speaker as favourite again even though these are already in the group. At least in my case.
Userlevel 7
+20
I could however witness (in the sonos app) that the grouping works - provided you have your favourite speakers set in the Alexa App. And yes, you need to select every speaker as favourite again even though these are already in the group. At least in my case.
Can you confirm that you have carried out these steps: Please open the Alexa App>Smart Home>Groups and create an Alexa Group for each Echo device, I call them the room name the Echo device is located in. Then add the Echo & Sonos devices that you want to have music on when music is initiated from each specific Echo device, and then set these Sonos devices as Preferred Speakers. Now ask Alexa for your music and it will group the Speakers in the Sonos App and output to that group.
Edit: I case you are wondering why this solution will work, Amazon have recently released an upgrade which means there is now support for 3rd party speakers via the Preferred Speaker setting. Prior to this Sonos did not support Alexa Groups. I don't think this option is available in all countries yet but if you get the issue of Alexa breaking Sonos Groups then please try the above.
Can you confirm that you have carried out these steps: Please open the Alexa App>Smart Home>Groups and create an Alexa Group for each Echo device, I call them the room name the Echo device is located in. Then add the Echo & Sonos devices that you want to have music on when music is initiated from each specific Echo device, and then set these Sonos devices as Preferred Speakers. Now ask Alexa for your music and it will group the Speakers in the Sonos App and output to that group.
The Problem with grouping in my case: I can only select the Echo devices for one group. So provided this is a necessary step to "speak" to the speakers in its group it's therefore not possible to create another group with the same echo device. In my case I'd like to have a group Dining Room as well as a larger group Living Room (which includes players from the Dining Room group). The echo device is however already assigned to Dining Room and not available for other assignements.
Now I wonder if you need to set a Multiroom-Group instead of a "normal" group, but there are no Sonos devices to select when trying to create a group.
Userlevel 7
+22
You add a regular group. You have to choose an Alexa device for that group to create the group. Once its created you can go into the group and add Sonos speakers to the group and also choose sonos speakers you want to group and play when you use that alexa to play music.
I don't seem to have the requirement of putting an Echo device in the group. I have 3 groups that contain Sonos speakers only (Upstairs, Downstairs, Everywhere). There is also overlap between the groups, meaning a Sonos speaker can be a member of more than one group. Hooray! Make sure ALL the Sonos speakers in a given group are "Preferred Speakers".
I can see groups being created in the Sonos app when I say something like "Play music on Upstairs" to any Echo device. Another Hooray!
I just started playing with this. Sometimes groups are not destroyed like you may expect. There is a previous post about active speakers/groups which may explain this behavior.
I also just said "Play music by ### Everywhere" to an Echo device and it did play music everywhere including the Sonos Beam that my wife and daughter were using to watch TV.
Not perfect yet, but this seems like a big step in the right direction.
I can see groups being created in the Sonos app when I say something like "Play music on Upstairs" to any Echo device. Another Hooray!
I just started playing with this. Sometimes groups are not destroyed like you may expect. There is a previous post about active speakers/groups which may explain this behavior.
I also just said "Play music by ### Everywhere" to an Echo device and it did play music everywhere including the Sonos Beam that my wife and daughter were using to watch TV.
Not perfect yet, but this seems like a big step in the right direction.
Interested? That’s...erm...reassuring. I think.
I'm seeing functionality similar to what @RonJ103 is seeing. I don't have to put an echo device in every group I created. However, once I do that, I'm not allowed to save without having an echo in it.
The functionality looks like it's going to work well, but there appear to be some features that either have not been rolled out to all users yet, or are not intuitive/easy to figure out. I've set up some groups and played with it a bit. Now I'm thinking I should just leave it alone and wait till everything's done, and relatively final features are officially announced.
After it got stuck on living room I removed every Sonos Device in the Alexa App and let it rediscover them again. Seems to have done the trick. So if you have "old" Sonos Devices in the Alexa App it might screw things up.
Can also confirm it's unnecessary to add an echo device to a group. Just need to set those favourites within the group.
One thing I didn't try yet: are Echo Devices working together with Sonos? That'd be the news of the day...
Edit: back at home for more tryouts. I can now reproduce the "Alexa is being stuck in one room". It now plays spotify only in the bathroom no matter which room or group I adress. This is seriously ... really annyoing as the fix includes to rediscover all Sonos devices. I got this when having an active group playing something and then ask Alexa to play something else in a different group (which didn't work). I then told Alexa to stop playing in this different group, which resulted in those speakers ungrouped from the still active zone. I stopped playback in all other rooms but the bathroom with Alexa (it unpairs them in the Sonos App). And then it got stuck.
*rant_on* this update really is below all standards known by Sonos. I get that we're really cutting edge here - but this update feels like it hasn't been tested at all. It may result in something really nice in the end - but at this moment it just outright unbearably annoying. For me alone this would be just alright as I like to test my toys anyway - but for my missus it's completely unusable at the moment. And I'm the projection of her anger for this in the same way you get my projection of anger right here. Fix this asap please and don't bug us with unfinished API-attachements.*rant_off*
Can also confirm it's unnecessary to add an echo device to a group. Just need to set those favourites within the group.
One thing I didn't try yet: are Echo Devices working together with Sonos? That'd be the news of the day...
Edit: back at home for more tryouts. I can now reproduce the "Alexa is being stuck in one room". It now plays spotify only in the bathroom no matter which room or group I adress. This is seriously ... really annyoing as the fix includes to rediscover all Sonos devices. I got this when having an active group playing something and then ask Alexa to play something else in a different group (which didn't work). I then told Alexa to stop playing in this different group, which resulted in those speakers ungrouped from the still active zone. I stopped playback in all other rooms but the bathroom with Alexa (it unpairs them in the Sonos App). And then it got stuck.
*rant_on* this update really is below all standards known by Sonos. I get that we're really cutting edge here - but this update feels like it hasn't been tested at all. It may result in something really nice in the end - but at this moment it just outright unbearably annoying. For me alone this would be just alright as I like to test my toys anyway - but for my missus it's completely unusable at the moment. And I'm the projection of her anger for this in the same way you get my projection of anger right here. Fix this asap please and don't bug us with unfinished API-attachements.*rant_off*
Caligo wrote:
"Can you confirm that you have carried out these steps: Please open the Alexa App>Smart Home>Groups and create an Alexa Group for each Echo device, I call them the room name the Echo device is located in. Then add the Echo & Sonos devices that you want to have music on when music is initiated from each specific Echo device, and then set these Sonos devices as Preferred Speakers. Now ask Alexa for your music and it will group the Speakers in the Sonos App and output to that group."
It worked like a charm. Thank you! Alexa did not break my sonos group when using these settings.
"Can you confirm that you have carried out these steps: Please open the Alexa App>Smart Home>Groups and create an Alexa Group for each Echo device, I call them the room name the Echo device is located in. Then add the Echo & Sonos devices that you want to have music on when music is initiated from each specific Echo device, and then set these Sonos devices as Preferred Speakers. Now ask Alexa for your music and it will group the Speakers in the Sonos App and output to that group."
It worked like a charm. Thank you! Alexa did not break my sonos group when using these settings.
Has nobody else encountered the "Alexa is stuck in one room" issue?
Userlevel 2
Of course resetting the bridge was a bad idea because it is no longer supported! There should be a way to rollback to the previous way of setting up Sonos.
Yes I have the same problem with Alexa getting stuck on one sonos Amp. Only way to fix it is discover devices.
Of course resetting the bridge was a bad idea because it is no longer supported! There should be a way to rollback to the previous way of setting up Sonos.
Who told you the Bridge is no longer supported? It most certainly is. Just re-add it by choosing More > Settings > Add a Boost or Bridge.
Userlevel 2
Of course resetting the bridge was a bad idea because it is no longer supported! There should be a way to rollback to the previous way of setting up Sonos.
Who told you the Bridge is no longer supported? It most certainly is. Just re-add it by choosing More > Settings > Add a Boost or Bridge.
The Sonos app just times out and I get the no devices found. Also the app says " press the button on your boost, it does not mention a bridge.
Userlevel 7
+22
Boost and bridge are interchangable
Userlevel 2
Of course resetting the bridge was a bad idea because it is no longer supported! There should be a way to rollback to the previous way of setting up Sonos.
Who told you the Bridge is no longer supported? It most certainly is. Just re-add it by choosing More > Settings > Add a Boost or Bridge.
The Sonos app just times out and I get the no devices found. Also the app says " press the button on your boost, it does not mention a bridge.
I deleted everything and started over. All is fine until you make a group and then start a single Sonos player which brakes the group. Now it gets stuck on that single Sonos amp. Until you rediscover devices Alexa will play music on that Sonos amp only. If it’s stuck on kitchen and you tell it to play in the living room it says playing in the living room but plays in the kitchen. This is frustrating.
Userlevel 7
+20
I deleted everything and started over. All is fine until you make a group and then start a single Sonos player which brakes the group. Now it gets stuck on that single Sonos amp. Until you rediscover devices Alexa will play music on that Sonos amp only. If it’s stuck on kitchen and you tell it to play in the living room it says playing in the living room but plays in the kitchen. This is frustrating.
Have you read this article about recent changes:
https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588
I deleted everything and started over. All is fine until you make a group and then start a single Sonos player which brakes the group. Now it gets stuck on that single Sonos amp. Until you rediscover devices Alexa will play music on that Sonos amp only. If it’s stuck on kitchen and you tell it to play in the living room it says playing in the living room but plays in the kitchen. This is frustrating.
Have you read this article about recent changes:
https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588
This seems to be the culprit: "Please note, microphone enabled Sonos speakers can only be in one Alexa Group at one time for now, but the non-microphone enabled ones can be in multiple groups."
I have a Sonos One which I assigned to more than one group (it let me do it in the app). I'll try to remove that one - let's see if it gets stuck again.
I deleted everything and started over. All is fine until you make a group and then start a single Sonos player which brakes the group. Now it gets stuck on that single Sonos amp. Until you rediscover devices Alexa will play music on that Sonos amp only. If it’s stuck on kitchen and you tell it to play in the living room it says playing in the living room but plays in the kitchen. This is frustrating.
Have you read this article about recent changes:
https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588
This seems to be the culprit: "Please note, microphone enabled Sonos speakers can only be in one Alexa Group at one time for now, but the non-microphone enabled ones can be in multiple groups."
I have a Sonos One which I assigned to more than one group (it let me do it in the app). I'll try to remove that one - let's see if it gets stuck again.
It appears everything works as it should if the Alexa activated group has only 2 Sonos players. If there are 3 Sonos players Things go terribly wrong. Let’s say the group has 3 players A,B and C. Alexa stop music and all 3 players stop. Alexa play The Rolling Stones on player B and player B starts. Alexa stop music. Alexa play The Rolling Stones in player A. Alexa reply’s playing the stones on A but plays the Stones on B. Until the player are rediscovered the stones will always play on B if Alexa is told to play on A,B or C. Player D which was not in the original group will work fine.
I have used Alexa with Sonos since it was available in Beta (signed up for the beta programme so that I could). I group rooms according to my listening needs and what is happening in the household. If we have multiple speakers playing and the phone rings we want to stop all of the speakers as a group. We group speakers so that in the morning we have music playing in the bedroom and it's also on downstairs.
The change to the Alexa skill that causes a room you give an instruction to be removed from the group that I have set up is a complete frickin' disaster. If the phone rings we now have to tell 2 - 3 - 4 speakers to stop. Etc Etc Etc Etc
I am now spending more time than ever in the Sonos app re-grouping speakers. It's quicker (!!!!) to go into the Sonos app to stop a group then it is to use Alexa voice control to stop the speakers in a group one by one.
This really is one of the worst changes to the integration of Alexa and Sonos. As giving a command to one speaker always takes it out of the group we are bl**dy close to disabling the Sonos skill on Alexa and going back to just using the app.
Seriously, when I set up a GROUP I want to be able to manipulate what it happening IN THAT GROUP and not have Alexa decide I suddenly don't want a group.
So please put this back the way it was.
PS Sorry for the swearing and capitals but this one change has undone all the benefits of being able to use voice control with my Sonos ysystem.
The change to the Alexa skill that causes a room you give an instruction to be removed from the group that I have set up is a complete frickin' disaster. If the phone rings we now have to tell 2 - 3 - 4 speakers to stop. Etc Etc Etc Etc
I am now spending more time than ever in the Sonos app re-grouping speakers. It's quicker (!!!!) to go into the Sonos app to stop a group then it is to use Alexa voice control to stop the speakers in a group one by one.
This really is one of the worst changes to the integration of Alexa and Sonos. As giving a command to one speaker always takes it out of the group we are bl**dy close to disabling the Sonos skill on Alexa and going back to just using the app.
Seriously, when I set up a GROUP I want to be able to manipulate what it happening IN THAT GROUP and not have Alexa decide I suddenly don't want a group.
So please put this back the way it was.
PS Sorry for the swearing and capitals but this one change has undone all the benefits of being able to use voice control with my Sonos ysystem.
Er, sorry Lyricist III I thought I was replying to the original message, didn't mean to send it to you, please ignore and I'll try to post it to the right person!
Userlevel 7
+20
Hi UKTreoFan
So I have set-up my Sonos Alexa Groups as per Scenario One in my post: https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/an-overview-and-explanation-of-the-new-support-for-alexa-grouping-6817788/index1.html#post16298346
I can initiate music via Alexa and use the command 'Alexa, Stop' and it will stop in all Rooms , without dropping any Rooms. If I use the Command 'Alexa, stop [Room Name]' then that Room is removed from the Sonos Group and the rest of the Sonos Group continues to play. Is this different behavior to your set-up?
So I have set-up my Sonos Alexa Groups as per Scenario One in my post: https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/an-overview-and-explanation-of-the-new-support-for-alexa-grouping-6817788/index1.html#post16298346
I can initiate music via Alexa and use the command 'Alexa, Stop' and it will stop in all Rooms , without dropping any Rooms. If I use the Command 'Alexa, stop [Room Name]' then that Room is removed from the Sonos Group and the rest of the Sonos Group continues to play. Is this different behavior to your set-up?
@UKMedia,
I've looked at the instructions you linked to and, frankly, too bl**dy complicated.
Old method: Go into Sonos app, click on room, click on Group, tick rooms, done.
Scenario One: I need a 'controlling device'; then I need to create an Alexa group (so if I want different groups for different listening needs I need to create a whole host of Alexa groups) and then come up with yet more 'unique' names for the Alexa group?
Sorry, but voice conrtrol was meant to make things easier.
Please can I have the old, simple, effective way of creating a Sonos group and then an Alexa command about any speaker in that group applies to the whole group. Simples.
I've looked at the instructions you linked to and, frankly, too bl**dy complicated.
Old method: Go into Sonos app, click on room, click on Group, tick rooms, done.
Scenario One: I need a 'controlling device'; then I need to create an Alexa group (so if I want different groups for different listening needs I need to create a whole host of Alexa groups) and then come up with yet more 'unique' names for the Alexa group?
Sorry, but voice conrtrol was meant to make things easier.
Please can I have the old, simple, effective way of creating a Sonos group and then an Alexa command about any speaker in that group applies to the whole group. Simples.
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