Sonos and Alexa ducking


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Hi everyone, I know this has been covered extensively but I'm mighty confused, so please bear with me (and help if you can!).

I have a Sonos One in our kitchen, a Sonos Connect in our bedroom, and our kids have recently got Echo Dots in each of their bedrooms.

The upstairs devices are currently ducking whenever the kids use their Echo Dots. I've had a look at how to stop this happening and thought the answer was that I'm supposed to set up a group on the Alexa app to include all of those devices where I don't want ducking to occur. So I've set up a group "Upstairs" and included the kids' echo dots, and our bedroom Sonos. But it's still ducking..... I haven't set a preferred speaker because we all want to be able to play different radio stations in our own bedrooms (leaving aside the frustration of the fact we can't all use Spotify despite having a family premium account but that's a whole different issue), not have them all playing the same thing (which is what I think setting a preferred speaker would do).

Can anyone help? Is it that I should instead have the kids' echo dots in one group, and our two Sonos devices in a different group? Confused....

Thank you!

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16 replies

Hi. You include in a group the devices that you DO want to duck when the Alexa device for the group receives a command., not the ones you don't want to duck as you have stated.
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Ah, but I don't want any of them to duck out, only the device in the room I'm in when I speak to Alexa. So we have 3 Alexa devices in different rooms, so I need to set up 3 separate groups with just each device in that group?
Yep
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Thank you!
And use preferred speaker to get sound from speaker not the Dot.
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Ok thanks - the kids don't have separate speakers, their sound comes from their dots, and in the kitchen we just have the Sonos One so I'm guessing I just leave preferred speaker unset...
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Although actually I don't want the kids being annoying and changing what's playing in our Sonos devices, so I guess I should set their dots as their preferred speakers, then they'll only be able to control the music in their own rooms. Ok, I think I've got it - thanks so much.
Although actually I don't want the kids being annoying and changing what's playing in our Sonos devices, so I guess I should set their dots as their preferred speakers, then they'll only be able to control the music in their own rooms. Ok, I think I've got it - thanks so much.Hmmm. I think they can still say 'play xxxx in the kitchen'
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Ho hum, can't stop the little blighters doing everything I guess 😳
Regarding the Spotify issue you mentioned in passing.... you just need to buy the kids a Play:1 each and you can all play separste Spotify streams using the Sonos spp!
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Ha ha ha!
🙂 :)

Actually I am surprised you can't get multiple streams with a family subscription, but i don't have a family subscription and I only use Sonos speakers and app. I can play multiple Spotify streams with my individual subscription, but only using the Sonos app, not Alexa.
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Yes so I can play one stream on our kitchen Sonos and another in the bedroom Sonos but with the kids’ Alexas it doesn’t work... it’s compunded by the fact they don’t have phones / Amazon accounts so i cant get round it by setting them up as separate devices. Anyway, first world problems and all that...
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I'm also interested in how to get different Spotify family accounts on different Alexa devices. I've got a Sonos One, and have ordered a Echo Dot for my son. I've added my son to my UK household and hoped that I could link the Echo Dot/his Alexa account to his Spotify account. Is this possible? If not, any recommended work arounds. Thanks
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You can’t use multiple Spotify accounts with Alexa unless you use multiple Amazon accounts (and presumably they also need their own phones with the Alexa app on) (not sure how old your son is but my kids are too young to have phones / Amazon accounts). I don’t really understand why this isn’t possible given that my kids have Fire tablets which they can use their Spotify accounts on. Frustrating.

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Thanks fordybee. I set-up a children's Amazon account for him, but can't work out how to set-up an Alexa children's account, despite this apparently being available in the UK. Looks like I'll have to set-up another adult Alexa account, and turn off purchases etc, if I want to have different Spotify accounts on the Echo Dot and Sonos One. My son is 9 and has my old iPhone 4s, but without a sim card.