Alexa lowering volume

Really bad that Sonos haven't fixed this issue yet with ducking, i've disabled the skill for now and left a 1 star review. Will not re-enable until they fix this. There should be configuration so that if someone in another room is using alexa it does not mute my speaker that I am using in a different room, also it should be possible to enable ducking only in the room alexa is in where the speaker also resides. For example:

Lounge: speaker + alexa - someone talks to this alexa and this speaker mutes, no other speaker in the house mutes.

Why isn't this configurable?

Absolutely agree with all of you. This is completely unacceptable timelines to provide a fix for this "ducking" issue!!!!

I'm guessing no one from Sonos bothers reading their own forums and would like to enlighten their customer's as to why such an absurd delay???

Absolutely agree with all of you. This is completely unacceptable timelines to provide a fix for this "ducking" issue!!!!

I'm guessing no one from Sonos bothers reading their own forums and would like to enlighten their customer's as to why such an absurd delay???

That's a bad guess. Sonos staff comment on the forums all the time.

As far as why this hasn't been fixed yet, Sonos probably hasn't gotten the fix from the Amazon side of things. For all we know, the issue could be entirely Amazon's issue to fix. If Alexa is telling all Sonos units to duck, and doesn't state which echo unit is listening right now, there is no way Sonos could possibly know which speaker to duck. Really, it should be Amazon that looks at it's own group setting and tells Sonos the specific speaker to duck. Otherwise, Sonos would have to maintain it's own link of echo device paired to Sonos room. It makes no sense to main groupings/pairings on the Alexa side and the Sonos side.

I am not crazy about the timeline to get this done either, but I blame Amazon, not Sonos. I can somewhat understand that it's not a high priority issue for Amazon, as fixing it isn't going to sell too many more units for them, and most customers believe it's Sonos issue to fix anyway.

BTW, I don't think Sonos can officially point the finger at Amazon for this. It's not the best practice to through your integration partner under the bus, even if they may deserve it.

It is 100% on Amazon. They announced this functionality, along with grouping of 3rd party speakers to a single or multiple Echos, will be forthcoming in a new SDK. In 2017, they stated this Multi-Room Music SDK would be "available to device makers building Alexa-enabled products early next year." That SDK has not yet been released.

Well Muti-room music using Echo devices Is here. It's been close to a year since the "beta" of Alexa support. I'm not sure why Sonos can't make the ducking feature configurable (default it to "use ducking" if you'd like) and let users control their experience.

Absolutely agree with all of you. This is completely unacceptable timelines to provide a fix for this "ducking" issue!!!!

I'm guessing no one from Sonos bothers reading their own forums and would like to enlighten their customer's as to why such an absurd delay???

That's a bad guess. Sonos staff comment on the forums all the time.


What I see everyone saying here is that we have not heard anything from Sonos about this issue. Why can't someone from Sonos participate here and say something like "We are working with Amazon to resolve the Sonos ducking issue when using Echo, and work is actively being done on both sides to address this, and our plan is to have this resolved in 3 months"? How difficult would that be to acknowledge the problem and then let the community know that Sonos cares about their customers and is working on a resolution with Amazon and what the expected timeframe for resolution is? I don't believe that Sonos and Amazon have an arms-length relationship given the SonosOne/Echo integration.

Well Muti-room music using Echo devices Is here. It's been close to a year since the "beta" of Alexa support. I'm not sure why Sonos can't make the ducking feature configurable (default it to "use ducking" if you'd like) and let users control their experience.

But multi-room music using 3rd party speakers is not. Hence the need for the new Amazon multi-room music API.

Well Muti-room music using Echo devices Is here. It's been close to a year since the "beta" of Alexa support. I'm not sure why Sonos can't make the ducking feature configurable (default it to "use ducking" if you'd like) and let users control their experience.

But multi-room music using 3rd party speakers is not. Hence the need for the new Amazon multi-room music API.

OK I understand that, but Sonos could at least provide a control to disable the automatic ducking. That is probably one of the most annoying features of the Sonos Alexa skill and is a deal breaker for me.

I started this post when alexa was first realeased for Sonos and in seven months no one from sonos has posted any form of reply. The most sensible post so far is that in the sonos skill you can tag your speaker to a specific Alexa and it only drop the speaker, speakers that are connected.

Strangely the play bar and play bass and play ones on the tv do not drop the volume when you summon Alexa.... so it can be done.....

Sonos a response please....??

Same issue here, i have 4 Alexa devices in rhe house and when the kids talk to them the music in the living room is lowered! That is very annoying. Sonos: please sort this out as it is a really pointless Alexa skill at the moment.