Sonos breaks 'Drop-In' completely

  • 4 December 2021
  • 8 replies
  • 1226 views

I have an Echo and a Sonos Beam in the same room. If I try to drop in on another room (i.e. using Alexa as an intercom) then the Sonos always wins whatever negotiation goes on to handle commands that hit several devices but then says "I don't know how to do that".

The end result is that I cannot use Drop-In in that room or anywhere nearby unless I turn off the Sonos mic completely.

Couldn't it just ignore commands it can't do and let other devices take care of them?


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8 replies

 

Couldn't it just ignore commands it can't do and let other devices take care of them?

I doubt that Sonos could do this, given that Alexa is doing all the voice processing. How would it be known what was being asked for before it reached the Amazon Cloud?

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Why not let the Echo handle all requests? What’s the advantage of having both devices working with with (or in your case against) eachother?

I was assuming having Alexa enabled on the Sonos added some value over it being just an add-on speaker to a separate Alexa device?

If there's nothing it does any better then I guess I'll just disable voice on it altogether.

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

I do not have any experience with Alexa, but reading about it here and considering my experience with Google Assistant, I'd expect Alexa to work better on a true Alexa device. Not that it works badly on Sonos, it just works a bit better better on a device that's been built by the service provider itself (in my case Google).

It’s a voice-enabled speaker.  It isn’t an Echo device.  That’s useful to some people, but not necessarily everybody.

I'm not expecting it to provide full Alexa functionality, just to not break the functionality of any Echo devices in the same room.

I would just give the echo device a different ‘wake word’ - that would likely solve the matter.

I see the echo devices will currently allow ‘Hey Santa’ as the ‘wake word’… 🎄