Sonos and Alexa Smart Groups Integration

This is not about 3rd party speaker grouping!!

This is about Sonos using Alexa smart groups to determine what group it is in so that for example, only Sonos speakers in the same room get ducked, or if you want Sonos as your preferred music speaker in a room, Alexa will use a Sonos speaker for music in preference to the built in speaker of an Echo device.

What I am talking about does exist today. Amazon have introduced it this week.

Before this week, you could not add an Echo (or Alexa enabled device) to a smart home group. Which in turn meant Alexa had no idea what other devices were closely located. So, even if you are sat in the lounge with an Echo (OR Sonos One) next to you, to turn the lights on you still had to say something like "Alexa, turn on lounge lights" else Alexa would not know what light you wanted on.

Alexa-enabled Smart groups specifically address that. Now, you can group Echo's (and perhaps a Sonos One Alexa instance) with other devices, and this includes Sonos speakers. As Alexa knows it's in a group with some lights, if you say "Alexa, turn lights on" all the lights in that group turn on. This is a far more natural way for us to interact with Alexa. It works really well.

What I am asking Sonos to do, is look to use this new function to make Sonos commands work in a similar fashion, and because Alexa can now tell what else is in the same group, it could also be used to limit ducking to only the same group, if defined...

So, I'm sorry, but you are not shedding any light on this, you are just confusing it with other things because you haven't read what was explained in the first post and have assumed you know better.

Yes... I'm not talking about Echo multi-room music groups. So please stop going on about it.

You've completely ruined this thread.

Woah harsh and rude. I know what the original poster is referring to it's called Alexa enabled grouping and is a new feature they just released. I wish Sonos could add this support as well. It has nothing to do with music grouping it has to do with smart home groups. Maybe you should research before chewing people out.

That being said it is likely Amazon with have to allow third part Alexa devices into smart home groups. Hopefully it comes soon

Saying Alexa lights on is so convient without saying a room or light name and it being aware of what room you are in.

Woah harsh and rude. I know what the original poster is referring to it's called Alexa enabled grouping and is a new feature they just released. I wish Sonos could add this support as well. It has nothing to do with music grouping it has to do with smart home groups. Maybe you should research before chewing people out.

That being said it is likely Amazon with have to allow third part Alexa devices into smart home groups. Hopefully it comes soon

Saying Alexa lights on is so convient without saying a room or light name and it being aware of what room you are in.

Or maybe someone should realize this is not enabled for third party speakers before chewing me out, because if you look at the above exchange the "chewing out" began with his post, not mine.

Like I said, this thread is now completely derailed.

This has absolutely nothing to do with 3rd party audio speakers or grouping speakers in audio groups of any kind. I do not want to group audio speakers together.

Let me try and make it simple. Let's assume for this scenario that I have two rooms, called a kitchen and a lounge. In each room I have two smart lights, a Sonos Play:3 speaker and an Amazon Echo Dot. Therefore from a smart device perspective it might look like...

My lounge has the following devices:

Lounge Echo
Lounge Light 1
Lounge Light 2
Lounge Sonos

My kitchen has the following devices:

Kitchen Echo
Kitchen Light 1
Kitchen Light 2
Kitchen Sonos.

Before Amazon gave us the new Alexa enabled smart home groups, If I wanted to turn on all of the lights in the lounge I could

1) Say "Alexa turn on Lounge Light 1" followed by "Alexa turn on Lounge light 2"
2) Create a smart home group called lounge, with Lounge Light 1 & 2 in it, and then say "Alexa, turn on lounge lights"

Either way would work, and you could do something similar for the kitchen.

For Sonos, to get Alexa to play music I have to tell Alexa which Sonos to play on. If I don't, and I just said "Alexa play music" then music will play from the Echo dot device that was closest to me and responded. Sonos remains silent. (Remember, this is a Play:3 and an Echo Dot.)

With the new Alexa enabled smart groups, things change. And what they change for is *NOT* for grouping audio, I am not using that feature and do not want to create any kind of audio group, either in Alexa or by grouping my two Play:3's together in Sonos.

Now, I can create an Alexa enabled smart group by adding the Echo Dot into that group, which was not possible before. So, taking the lounge as the example again, I now have a new smart group called lounge (not audio group) that has the following devices in it:

Lounge Echo
Lounge Light 1
Lounge Light 2
Lounge Sonos

To turn on the lights in the lounge I now only have to say "Alexa, turn on lights" and because Alexa now knows it is in a group with other smart devices, some of which are lights, it turns on Lounge Light 1 and 2, which is a much more natural way to interact with Alexa for most people. You walk into a room, and if it has an Echo, and other devices, Alexa defaults to using the devices in the SAME room.... because I configured them in an Alexa-enabled smart group. (Still no sign of any audio grouping...)

My questions were around...

1) It would be really nice if Sonos could use this new functionality so that instead of me having to say in the Lounge, Alexa play music on Lounge Sonos, all I had to say was "Alexa, play music" and just as it does with the lights, Alexa defaults to using the Sonos (just the one... still no audio grouping of any kind) and my configured/supported music service starts to play from my Lounge Play:3. That is it. Audio coming from just one speaker, but I didn't have to name it because I was in the same room, and now Alexa knows this... and if Alexa knows this, then presumably it can instruct the appropriate Sonos speaker to play music just as it was able to tell my Hue Bridge to turn on the lounge lights.Likewise if I now moved to the kitchen, all I have to say is "Alexa turn on lights" and "Alexa play music", and because I'm now talking to the Kitchen Echo Dot, and it knows about the smart group it is in, by default I don't have to name everything when I ask Alexa to do something.

2) If using the above, Alexa knows what Sonos speakers are in the same room as it, or conversely it knows that it is not grouped with a Sonos speaker, could that not be a solution to the current multi-room ducking problem where regardless of what Echo device you might use, *ALL* Sonos speakers duck. This still does *NOT* involve any audio speaker grouping of any kind...

Now, I can think of two complications. The first is that my scenario is using a Play:3 and an Echo Dot... not a Sonos One. In my scenario, "Alexa play music" will cause audio to play on the Echo Dot. I do NOT want the Echo Dot and the Play:3 in the same room to be grouped at all for audio playback in any way shape or form. Therefore in this scenario, Amazon and Sonos need to figure out a way of specifying a preferred device in a smart group for music playback to default to. IF that is a Sonos speaker, then all the restrictions around what a Sonos speaker can or can't support apply. It is not a way to sync music from an Echo to a Sonos using new API's. Just a way to initiate music playback on Sonos via Alexa in the same room without having to actually say the Sonos device name.

The second complication is in fact the Sonos One. Here, obviously, as the Sonos speaker itself is the Alexa device it defaults to that Sonos speaker and only ducks that Sonos Speaker. Fair enough. But that's not really a reason to buy a Sonos One for most of us existing Sonos users. Also, the one comment above by UKMedia comes into play for now, which is the new Alexa enabled smart groups only support actual Echo devices. So as one person accurately summed it up in another thread, you can either turn the lights on without using a name with an Echo+Sonos, or you can play music on a Sonos One without saying a room name, but have to say the name for all your lights and other smart devices. With the new groups, hopefully both setups can work the same way, which is good for all Sonos+Alexa users.

I am sure that the Sonos One will be able to participate in the new Alexa Enabled Smart Groups soon, but either way my requests were for Sonos to basically make use of these new groups. It benefits existing Sonos users with Echo devices, and also will benefit Sonos One users who add smart devices.

So, absolutely nothing to do with multi-room audio of any kind, despite a certain person trying their best to tell me what I needed were a whole load of multi-room music API's that aren't out yet, and going to great lengths to list their restrictions.

This is why I still say it was derailing this thread and completely off topic for what I am trying to talk about. This has nothing to do with multi-room music. It is 100% about the new capability for an Echo, and hopefully at some point a Sonos One to know more about what devices are close by, so that you can use more natural commands to initiate playback, and perhaps also as a result have more intelligent ducking. And that is it...

Thanks for the detail and I also would very much like to configure Alexa the same. However, as the Sonos 1 is an 'Alexa Enabled' device and not an 'Alexa' device it is not possible to create a group with the Sonos 1 as the room voice controlling device. Also, as it is a 3rd party speaker, from an Amazon view point, it is not possible to group the Sonos 1 to your Echo dot with the Echo Dot as the voiced controlling device..You have to break the line of thought that says if I group a speaker and an echo together it equals speaker grouping. :)

This is about grouping smart devices together that just happen to be speakers. That is all an Alexa enabled smart group is. Forget audio.

Once you do that, you realise that there is now a way for Alexa to know what other smart devices it is grouped with. This could not be done until last week. And I have my Echo Dot in an Alexa enabled smart group with a Sonos speaker (not a Sonos One admittedly) in that group too.

Now that Alexa knows what smart devices we want it associated with, it can potentially make better decisions about how to control those devices.

Now for Sonos speakers, that means it could default to using a particular Sonos speaker for music (not Alexa voice playback) or perhaps more importantly the Sonos Alexa skill could make a much more intelligent decision on speaker ducking in more complex homes. This is still nothing to do with audio grouping between Echo's and Sonos. I do think however responsibility will be shared between Amazon and Sonos to make it work smoothly. Amazon may need to make changes to accommodate what Sonos need to do to make it work seamlessly.

As I said, I think the Sonos One confuses things slightly because it seems to lag behind Echo devices functionally on the Alexa front. I'm hoping for everyone's sake that in general the Sonos Alexa implementation catches up with Amazon's Echo devices. If it doesn't then it's just going to frustrate and annoy people IMO.

Thanks for the detail and I also would very much like to configure Alexa the same. However, as the Sonos 1 is an 'Alexa Enabled' device and not an 'Alexa' device it is not possible to create a group with the Sonos 1 as the room voice controlling device. Also, as it is a 3rd party speaker, from an Amazon view point, it is not possible to group the Sonos 1 to your Echo dot with the Echo Dot as the voiced controlling device.

Not to derail this thread too much, but what was the business case for the Sonos ONE, especially given the horrible Sonos Alexa skill integration, which I don't assume is any better when using the Sonos ONE? I really wish Sonos had spent their engineering resources on better integration, not sticking an Echo Dot into a Play:1.

If I had to guess at why Sonos have launched the One and Alexa integration in it's current state it would be because Amazon are taking a run at what has probably become their core market adding the ability to link Echo's for audio between rooms. (Which is still nothing to do with these smart groups 😃 ) Amazon are selling a lot of Echo's and able to put substantial advertising behind it, and are also less than half the price per speaker (if you take the new Echo, not Echo Plus) than a Play:1 or Sonos One.

The problem with that approach is that the functionality of Alexa outside of an Echo device is far more limited, and the control capabilities are a rapidly moving target as seen. Maybe Sonos are gambling that by the time people unbox Sonos One's on Christmas Day, they will have gotten the integration working a lot better (Spotify added, and most annoying bugs sorted) so that by then the experience won't be quite so bad. The risk is that in the meantime they alienate early adopters or existing customers. This is where I think they need to drop the normal we can't tell you what's coming policy and be a lot more open until it's improved.

As for using something like "Alexa, tell Sonos...." I suspect the problem is that much of the function that tells Sonos speakers to do stuff is actually in the software controller app, which is not running permanently. The Sonos devices themselves are quite dumb and just play what they're told to. So there's nothing to hand off to, unlike say a Harmony hub, where there is a dedicated device sat there all the time.

It could be that the ultimate best answer for Sonos to integrate with lots of voice assistants is to have a Sonos Hub device that sits on the network. This could be combined with boost/bridge functionality as well perhaps.

Like I say though, things seem to be changing rapidly with Alexa (and I'm sure the other voice assistants) as these new smart groups show, and it's going to make Sonos job quite difficult over the coming year or two just trying to keep up with what are three very big companies fighting for marketshare here, Amazon, Google and Apple...

The flow jgatie stated above is very crucial I think when asking the question, "Why doesn't the sonos/alexa integration do XXXX?"

So when we say we want to tell Alexa to play music on Sonos without having to specify the Sonos zone, you have to realize most, if not all, of the development is on the Amazon/AVS side. Sonos is the receiver, it can't do anything that Alexa doesn't tell it to do. If Alexa doesn't know how to tell Sonos what to do, then it can't happen.

So yes, the obvious solution that if the Alexa app allowed a sonos zone to be added to a smart group, along with a specifc echo, then Alexa should know that when I request music played on that echo, I mean I want to play it on the specific zone listed in the smart group. Amazon can now tell Sonos what music on what zone, no problem. And Amazon has to do this, nothing Sonos can do.

Now, on the other hand, theoritically, it could work where Sonos recieves the command to play music from Amazon and determines what zone to play it in based on what echo made the call. That could work, but that means you have to map a sonos zone to an echo within the sonos app. Not sure Amazon would allow that, and it's not ideal for customers anyway since smart groups in on the Alexa app for everything else. It also limits future functionality for combining other smart devices with Sonos zones in routines, utilizing smart groups and such. It works for these feature, but it's not ideal, and it isn't an elegant solution.

Really, when you're designing these things, you want to separate your control and actual functionality as much as possible. It's a big part of the reason why Sonos works well, with separate controllers and the sonos devices providing all the functionality. When you start blending things, it's confusing, and you run into barriers when you need to add new functionality. It does run into issues because it often means certain seemingly easy features become more difficult to impliment than you would think, but it is the better design over all.

So yes, Amazon/Alexa needs to be the controller for this integration, which means Sonos has to have Alexa provide a lot of the functionality that it could do it self, in order to do it right.

Only with the path it's effectively chosen by trying to move the Sonos logic to the cloud.

Can you clarify why Sonos logic has moved, and whether you're refering to the Sonos cloud or AWS (Amazon cloud)? As far as I know, not much of the Sonos coding acutally moved from the devices to the Sonos cloud. The cloud was necessary as a means for Amazon cloud to talk to your sonos devices. Having Amazon talk directly to your Sonos devices is loaded with issues.


In my home, I'm most impressed with the Philips Hue system for integration. It works with both Alexa and Apple Homekit and provides the most functionally rich implementation on both, as well as remotely via it's own app. I suspect that is down to having a local hub device to interact with at all times. Apple homekit uses this too for remote connectivity, but by pigyy backing onto existing devices, the best fit being an Apple TV, the alternative an iPad is far less reliable.


I think you're correct regarding the use of a separate hub between your devices and Amazon. I don't have Phillps, but I have lutron and smartthings hubs, and agree that it works smoothly. Sonos is a different animal since it's more complicated that lights and similar devices, and the Sonos devices are smarter and more 'hub-like' in their abilities. To be clear though, even devices that have a hub also have a a cloud assocated with it. For your Hue system, I assume you can contorl your lights through the Hue app even when you're not at home? That can only be done through a Hue cloud.



So, now, even though Amazon have now provided the ability to tell Alexa what devices we want it to be associated with for better control, the cloud based approach on the Sonos side still makes it hard to process as their cloud has to know about all of our systems.

I think you're correct that the Sonos cloud has to know about our systems, but I don't see how that makes it harder to process. Amazon surely stores the names of the Sonos zones available, since it allows you to pick a name different than setup with Sonos.


Although in this particular instance maybe the Alexa device discovery details is enough information to get the Sonos cloud to send a command to the speaker in the same group.


I doubt the Sonos cloud has any logic around decided which zone should be commanded to play music. That's all decided on the Amazon side and passed to the Sonos cloud. I imagine the Sonos clould that the zone specified in the request from Amazon exists and can process the command.


The Hue system is a great example of the far richer function available to control devices when Alexa has something local to permanently talk to.

I don't think it's really so much about it being local as it being around for lights being a simplier object than a speaker and for the tech being around for a few years. I could be wrong about Hue, but pretty sure there is cloud involved. If you can control the device from outside of your network than a cloud is needed in order to pass through the command. The devices don't use a hub and cloud either are not controllable from outside your network, have a 'hub' built into the device itself, or the echo device works as the hub for the device...as far as I can tell.

I think a lot depends on your definition of cloud.

Many manufacturers are using it to really just describe the ability to gain an entry point into your network without you having to setup your own dynamic DNS.



For Hue, when used with Apple Homekit, Apple use their Apple TV device as the remote entry point, along with your iCloud ID with 2 factor authentication mandatory. The local device (Apple TV) then communicates directly with the Hue bridge, and through the Apple Home app, you can turn your Hue lights on and off and also query the status of Hue sensors. None of this requires a Hue login to be active.


I don't think that's really the case. I could be off on this, but I'd be surprised if the connection between Apple and Hue decides that it doesn't need your Hue login, or that it doesn't communicate through the cloud when Apple and Hue or on the same wifi network.


So I think it's very much an Amazon policy that they do their processing for Alexa in the cloud. Hue can provide remote access to your lights via their app if you create a Hue login and I suspect that they provide simply an entry point to your network to access the Hue Bridge.


Yes and No. For smart skills, Amazon's policy definitely seems to be that they process it before passing it on to whatever vendor cloud needs to act on it. That's partly because they have to figure out where to send it to, otherwise you'd have to say "Alexa, tell Phillips to turn off my bedroom light'. As well, I am sure they want to know exactly what you're asking for so they can communicate state back to you, and for their own research data.

For normal skills, they just pass it to the right vendor cloud and be done with it. As an example, my pool is controllable by wifi. I can change settings from an app, at home or remotely. A couple months ago, an Alexa skill was created. To use it, I have to say, "Alexa, tell Hayward to turn on the filter pump". The Alexa cloud doesn't know what that means and probably doesn't care. Alexa can't tell my whether the pump is running or not, it can only pass to the vendor. And I can't do any routines to turn on the porch light at the same time and stuff like that.


So I think Sonos do have choices here. I don't know if there is enough CPU left on Play speakers (they do seem to run Linux after all) to run some kind of Sonos server app that Alexa and other voice assistants could use for pertinent information as that would be the least disruptive solution to users.


Sonos has had API out for awhile now, so that other devices could control Sonos, and people could write their own control apps. People on this forum have done so, there are a few smart hubs (Smartthings, Lutron) that can control Sonos. So I believe that you are correct in the at the Sonos CPU can handle requests. It was limited in a lot of ways, but possible. One limitation was that whatever hub or program was making the request to Sonos had to be on the same wifi network...because Sonos didn't have a cloud.

I don't know what kind of choices Sonos had in how the interface was created. Maybe they could have create a normal, non-smart skill. But that has limitations. Maybe Amazon wasn't going to approve such a skill, I don't know. Maybe Sonos didn't want competitors creating a smart skill while their skill wasn't.


Cloud IMO makes it harder to integrate local Sonos function as then Sonos Cloud is collecting information about *all* Sonos systems and potentially what's playing on them and maybe all the local libraries. That's a lot of info to hold centrally at Sonos and process in a timely fashion so that response times are acceptable in response to commands. The logic may not be that hard, but what happens if Sonos have issues?


I don't really know where cloud processing and local processing is divided when it comes to Sonos. Most smart devices are relatively dumb when compared to Sonos devices, because they never needed to be smarter. Sonos predates smart devices and thus is capable of more. I have seen Sonos staff say though, that if Alexa could request music from your local library, your local library would need to be indexed in the cloud.


It's interesting how Sonos has developed from being primarily a local music multi-room playback system to now more internet/cloud based. The Amazon model isn't the only one out there, and if Sonos are to maintain their position of audio service integrator, I'm not sure copying Amazon and going all cloud will make that the easiest way.

I don't think they're going all cloud at all. From what I've seen, the cloud only exists as a means of control from external sources only. I doubt they are going to start moving any core functions to the cloud, so that t can't function without an internet connection.