Whenever I ask my Sonos Beam to play music using, “Alexa, shuffle songs by the McGuire Sisters” and later stop the music with “Alexa, stop”, I’ve noticed that the Beam will be in Muted state and cannot be unmuted verbally. I must manually grab the remote for my connected Roku TV and raise the Volume from 0 to 40.
For example, say I’m watching YouTube on the full-HDMI connected Roku TV (TCL brand with CEC enabled), using my HP PC’s web browser. I hear audio fine at the expected Volume level (40). I then listen to a random song via Alexa – the Sonos/Roku volume remains 40 – then ask it to stop, as outlined above. Music ceases playing, as expected. Resuming the paused YouTube video, however, results in no sound! Volume level is now 0 (but never actively displayed on-screen as such).
Saying, “Alexa, volume 4”, or pressing the PC’s up-vol button on the keyboard (I realize that’s a separate volume setting, but I want to assure readers here that it’s at max. vol.), doesn’t help. ONLY THE ROKU REMOTE’S VOL UP button has the effect of raising the volume back from 0.
Weird, no?
Best answer by LibraSun
SOLVED!
Turns out my suspicion that this is a TCL Roku TV issue and not the Sonos or Alexa itself was correct. I made three specific changes on the TV’s Settings:
- TV Inputs > “Computer” (HDMI1) > HDMI Mode > from “Auto” to “2.0”
- Audio > S/PDIF and ARC > from “Auto Detect” to “Auto-Passthrough”
- Audio > TV Speakers > from “On” to “Off” (elective, likely not relevant)
Now, whenever I initiate music via Alexa, then stop it with “Stop”, and subsequently resume audio content on my HDMI-connected PC, the TV’s volume correctly resets itself from 0 to the previous level. The ramp-up takes approximately 3 seconds.
I’d like to leave this Topic active in case other users with similar setups encounter the “stuck ducking” problem. Thanks!