I have 13 Sonos products in my home. Needless to say, I love Sonos. When Sonos One was released, I definitely saw the advantage of adding Alexa to the mix. So I bought a pair of Sonos Ones to add one each to my upstairs 5.1 system and downstairs 5.1 system. That way we'd have Alexa in both levels of the house. I installed the first Sonos One upstairs replacing an existing Play 1 in our 5.1 system. And it would not add the new speaker to the 5.1. So I called tech support (which now routinely has 30+ minute hold times) to troubleshoot the problem. I was informed that to add Sonos One (and Alexa) to my 5.1 would require TWO Sonos Ones. Who in the world needs two Alexas in that close proximity to each other? Begrudgingly, I decided to put two Sonos Ones in a single 5.1 system because apparently I had no choice. And then I was hit with another doozy. When you connect two Sonos Ones to a 5.1 system, you lose Alexa! This is insane.
So I removed both Sonos Ones from my system and returned it back to a regular 5.1 with two Play 1s. Now what? I decided that I just purchased very expensive Alexas, so I might as well use them. So I put one in the main living area and one in our bedroom. And we tried to speak instructions to play music from our music library (which is why we own Sonos in the first place), but Alexa didn't work. Another call to tech support, this time a 40-minute hold. And to our dismay, we were informed that Alexa could not play music from our library! Was I dreaming? Apparently Alexa only works with music services, which we don't use. We own hundreds of albums and thousands of songs and can't use Alexa to play them.
Sonos, what were you thinking here? I'm quite dumbfounded.
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Not sure where you got the idea that using Sonos One speakers as surrounds in a 5.1 configuration means you lose the Alexa function, but it is 100% false. If Sonos support told you that, it is disturbing, for they have truly lost their fastball.
This is one of the big question marks that needs to be addressed by both Amazon and Sonos in 2018.
On the Amazon side they have no mechanism to play music except from streaming services. This means not only the rare tracks you may have collected over the years but some pretty common stuff you might want to hear are not available (Try getting Alexa to play "Helen Wheels" by Paul McCartney and Wings from Amazon Music Unlimited for example... by no means an obscure track.)
On the Sonos side you can play music from your local collection but there is no way to do so using voice commands using native Sonos supported methods. You can look at third party Skills or home automation solutions to access your local Sonos library through Alexa but it requires some extra hardware and a fair bit of skill to set up.
There is a pervasive attitude amongst audio equipment vendors that embraces the following ideas:
1- Most everybody listens to music on streaming services these days so there is no real economic advantage to try to accommodate the few remaining consumers who maintain a music collection or who want to listen to any track they have paid for without being constrained to what is currently available in a given music services library.
2- Nobody bothers to build custom playlists anymore and are happy to listen to curated ones that reflect the taste of the music service providers. (Some offer algorithms that claim to build lists to match your taste but I have never found one that works very well and I suspect they are designed more to collect data to better market things to you)
3- Nobody cares if their favorite song from last month suddenly becomes unavailable on a music service. They will just listen to whatever is pushed at them.
4- If you have a track of little Susie singing in the school choir or a bonus track your favorite band only made available through their fan site that you won't be annoyed if you can't play it on your main music system using voice commands... and so on.
As I said I think both Sonos and Amazon need to address the local library issue and give folks a way to get all of the music that is important to them in one place from which they can play it using a modern voice command interface. Will they actually step up and do it? For the reasons noted above I kind of doubt it.
On the Amazon side they have no mechanism to play music except from streaming services. This means not only the rare tracks you may have collected over the years but some pretty common stuff you might want to hear are not available (Try getting Alexa to play "Helen Wheels" by Paul McCartney and Wings from Amazon Music Unlimited for example... by no means an obscure track.)
On the Sonos side you can play music from your local collection but there is no way to do so using voice commands using native Sonos supported methods. You can look at third party Skills or home automation solutions to access your local Sonos library through Alexa but it requires some extra hardware and a fair bit of skill to set up.
There is a pervasive attitude amongst audio equipment vendors that embraces the following ideas:
1- Most everybody listens to music on streaming services these days so there is no real economic advantage to try to accommodate the few remaining consumers who maintain a music collection or who want to listen to any track they have paid for without being constrained to what is currently available in a given music services library.
2- Nobody bothers to build custom playlists anymore and are happy to listen to curated ones that reflect the taste of the music service providers. (Some offer algorithms that claim to build lists to match your taste but I have never found one that works very well and I suspect they are designed more to collect data to better market things to you)
3- Nobody cares if their favorite song from last month suddenly becomes unavailable on a music service. They will just listen to whatever is pushed at them.
4- If you have a track of little Susie singing in the school choir or a bonus track your favorite band only made available through their fan site that you won't be annoyed if you can't play it on your main music system using voice commands... and so on.
As I said I think both Sonos and Amazon need to address the local library issue and give folks a way to get all of the music that is important to them in one place from which they can play it using a modern voice command interface. Will they actually step up and do it? For the reasons noted above I kind of doubt it.
Listen to the podcast with Patrick Spence here, at about 32 minutes in, for some very positive news regarding Alexa controlling local media and other music services.
https://www.recode.net/2018/2/2/16961978/sonos-patrick-spence-apple-homepod-alexa-virtual-assistants-too-embarrassed-swisher-goode-podcast
https://www.recode.net/2018/2/2/16961978/sonos-patrick-spence-apple-homepod-alexa-virtual-assistants-too-embarrassed-swisher-goode-podcast
Thanks for the link. The answer was kind of mixed in with the discussion of Airplay and playing from iOS devices so I don't know if it will help folks who have their library on a NAS but good news for Apple folks.
Yes, Sonos support told me that if I use to Sonos Ones in my 5.1, I would lose Alexa functionality. I didn't even bother trying to hook it up.
Question for you. My rear speakers in my 5.1 are 6-7 feet apart. If what you're saying is correct, when I say "Alexa", which speaker will answer?
They are programmed so the closest one will answer.
90% of my music is either provided by my local NAS drive or streamed from Deezer, Alexa integration is pretty much useless at the moment ( luckily I only bought an Echo Dot).
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