Sonos One - poor voice recognition

  • 11 September 2021
  • 7 replies
  • 269 views

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Why is Sonos One voice recognition deteriorating?

We have a Sonos One in the kitchen and Echo Flex linked to Playbar in the lounge.

Sonos One recognises the Alexa prompt. But then doesn’t respond to commands.
On the latest occasion, with no noise in the kitchen, no response from Sonos One but the Flex in the lounge picked up the alarm request.  When I asked Sonos One though, it confirmed alarm set on Flex - although I didn't know that at first. There was only one alarm set although I had repeated the request.

Voice recognition seems to have deteriorated recently. I could understand if the kitchen was really noisy with background noise.  But it wasn’t. I was fairly close to the speaker and nothing.
When we don’t want Alexa to respond, voice recognition works! 

 

Any ideas?  We already recently reset Sonos One several times following advice with some Alexa/app issues.  And have set up voice control again. At first, there was a noticeable improvement in voice control.  But now it's really poor.


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7 replies

I have just purchased a Sonos One Gen2, I am very satisfied with the sound quality.I am however disappointed with the voice recognition capability with google assistant. The speaker picks up the "OK Google" relatively well, but then it hardly ever understands what happens next other than if I'm close to the speaker or if the sound is very low.Can you tell me why the speaker is picking up OK Google but not more? Is there a way to check if there is a configuration problem? Roblox Guides get-mobdrovip.com
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Hmm, often in a similar area. But we had tried voice control from various locations and no better.
However, when (slightly) repositioning One, I reattached the power cable - rebooting the speaker?

Seems a lot better today. However, will see if that continues.  Thanks all for your help.

I’ll monitor - not sure if it’s different times of day or perhaps some other factor - maybe Alexa is a morning person!

Are you or your wife standing or sitting at a particular spot when there is trouble?

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SONOS ONE has an array of microphones on the top surface. Try rotating or moving the ONE slightly. This might result in better reception of your commands.

I guess WiFi interference could be an issue, especially if there is an operating microwave oven near the unit. I would expect at least occasional issues with playing music if there is transient WiFi interference because music demands a steady connection. It seems unlikely that interference would be an issue only when you are speaking unless …

Water absorbs microwave (WiFi) energy and humans are mostly bags of water. It seems unlikely, but it is possible that you are blocking the WiFi when giving commands. There is a music cache that enables the players to ride through brief transmission issues, but voice commands cannot be cached.

Are any of your SONOS players wired to your network? 

Hmm, I might try moving the speaker slightly to see if that helps. I kind of prefer it to be aligned!
The microwave wasn’t operating at the time. Interesting theory about water and humans - although as you say that seems unlikely.

None of the SONOS players are wired.  It's not really practical to do so from the router.
I guess there might have been a temporary wifi issue although the Flex in another room clearly worked.
It happened to my wife too this afternoon so it's not just me.  Maybe we need to give commands from the next room!  

SONOS ONE has an array of microphones on the top surface. Try rotating or moving the ONE slightly. This might result in better reception of your commands.

I guess WiFi interference could be an issue, especially if there is an operating microwave oven near the unit. I would expect at least occasional issues with playing music if there is transient WiFi interference because music demands a steady connection. It seems unlikely that interference would be an issue only when you are speaking unless …

Water absorbs microwave (WiFi) energy and humans are mostly bags of water. It seems unlikely, but it is possible that you are blocking the WiFi when giving commands. There is a music cache that enables the players to ride through brief transmission issues, but voice commands cannot be cached.

Are any of your SONOS players wired to your network? 

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Definitely much closer to kitchen Sonos One than Flex.  
The Sonos One is on a shelf in a cabinet. But I just used voice recognition and it worked fine.
As you say, maybe some echo in the kitchen.  But seems to be a bit temperamental at the moment.

Perhaps some wifi interference?

I wonder if there is an odd echo associated with the kitchen unit, confusing Alexa, or you might be closer to the lounge unit. I have multiple Alexa units within a few feet of each other in the same room and Alexa is very aware of which unit is closest. The closest unit will respond to the wake word. Occasionally I’ll be surprised by ‘A’ responding when I expected ‘B’, but on reflection I’ll notice that I was a few inches closer to ‘A’.