Alexa Multiroom music simultaneously on Sonos and Echo devices

@wheelbase How long ago were you told this would be a feature?

Your Q&A chat could be interpreted as Sonos answering about groups or multiroom music. Sonos has started to allow you to group speakers. With grouping you can ask an echo to play music and music will play via the grouped Sonos.

What I am referencing is the MRM feature that would allow sound to come from both Echo and Sonos speakers at the same time.

I have found no post in the community from a Sonos employee that confirms multi-room music since Amazon has released the SDK update.

@wheelbase How long ago were you told this would be a feature?

Your Q&A could be interpreted as Sonos answering about groups or multiroom music, Sonos has started to allow you to group speakers. With grouping you can ask an echo to play music and music will play via the grouped Sonos.

What I am referencing is the MRM feature that would allow sound to come from both Echo and Sonos speakers at the same time.

I have found no post in the community from a Sonos employee that confirms multi-room music since Amazon has released the SDK update.

The Alexa groups and MRM are complicated structures. I think you're correct @Sonoson, that the chat exchange above is not about being able to play echos and Sonos speakers in sync, but that their are changes in how Sonos speakers operate inside Alexa groups. I don't think we are going to see Sonos speakers and echos playing in sync anytime, if ever. If it ever does happen, I imagine this will be an annouced feature, similar to how we saw Sonos annouce airplay 2 compatibility.

I don't think we are going to see Sonos speakers and echos playing in sync anytime, if ever. If it ever does happen, I imagine this will be an annouced feature, similar to how we saw Sonos annouce airplay 2 compatibility. If you are correct this will be a major miss for Sonos. With more products incorporating Alexa the competition for multi-room music is growing. Once other speakers support Amazon MRM the Sonos products will look antiquated by only supporting their own speakers with a limited list of Alexa commands.

Sonos needs to recognize that wireless multi-room music isn't going to be their competitive advantage moving forward. Instead they can focus on their other strengths while supporting Amazon MRM. Sonos could limit Amazon MRM to only when using an Alexa enabled Sonos speaker (One and Beam). Sonos can also limit the use of TruePlay to only when there is no Echo speaker running in the same room (similar to how TruePlay doesnt work with Connect using third party speakers). Sonos stereo pairs and surround can still only be with other Sonos speakers (Amazon & Sonos currently only allow identical model speakers to be a stereo pair).

I hope someone from Sonos can chime in with an official stance on Amazon MRM support. No Amazon MRM is the deal breaker for me (someone who bought an entire surround set up for the holidays). I have until end of January to return so Sonos has a month to announce support for MRM.

@wheelbase This is a great chat & thank you for sharing. Based on the chat agents responses I'm not sure the agent fully understands the Alexa integration into Sonos enough to answer the question. The agent starts by writing "The One has all the features that the echo and dot have". This is not correct as Sonos doesn't support many commands of Alexa. Some features like drop-in, messaging and calling are listed on the Sonos website as not supported. Other features like MRM have not been supported at all due to Amazon SDK limitations (no longer an Amazon limitation as of early Sept 2018, now its a Sonos limitation). That first statement by the agent shows a lack of understanding of Alexa features & Sonos functionality.

If the agent thinks the One has all functionality of Alexa then I have doubts the agent understands the difference between grouping and MRM. He could have read music groups and answered that music groups were coming. Sonos did release speaker room groupings that allow an echo to play music on a Sonos in the same room group. Unfortunately this is not MRM.

I do appreciate you sharing the chat and attempting to get an answer from Sonos. My doubts are not in you, but in the agents understanding of these two separate features.

It would be wonderful if a Sonos employee, like Ryan, was able to give a definitive answer on whether Amazon MRM is planned.

If you are correct this will be a major miss for Sonos. With more products incorporating Alexa the competition for multi-room music is growing. Once other speakers support Amazon MRM the Sonos products will look antiquated by only supporting their own speakers with a limited list of Alexa commands.


I don't think you're points are invalid, but I think there are other factors at play here. Absolutely, their are customers out there that will opt not to get Sonos because you can't play echos and Sonos speakers in sync (at this time). There are also customers that may opt to buy a Sonos One instead of an echo for the same reason. I can't say which group is bigger for sure, but I would guess you're group is bigger.

But it's worth point out though that Sonos multiroom is definitely superior in terms of features to that of Alexa multiroom. Beside the fact that the speakers are better quality, you also more options for bonding speakers together, the ability to work with more music sources and line in options, and the ability to change grouped speakers on the fly. I personally would be very disappointed to trade in Sonos multiroom for Alexa multiroom in it's entirety.


Sonos needs to recognize that wireless multi-room music isn't going to be their competitive advantage moving forward. Instead they can focus on their other strengths while supporting Amazon MRM.


I can't agree with that statement. I think there's room to support MRM, but Sonos multiroom tech is definiitely an advantage, even as other companies are catching up.


Sonos could limit Amazon MRM to only when using an Alexa enabled Sonos speaker (One and Beam). Sonos can also limit the use of TruePlay to only when there is no Echo speaker running in the same room (similar to how TruePlay doesnt work with Connect using third party speakers). Sonos stereo pairs and surround can still only be with other Sonos speakers (Amazon & Sonos currently only allow identical model speakers to be a stereo pair).


I can't see Sonos speaker pairing rules changing because of Amazon MRM, but I don't think it's necessary to modfiy Trueplay in any way. If you're going to use Sonos and Echo speakers in the same room, you've pretty much already decided that sound quality isn't that important to you (not you personally).


I hope someone from Sonos can chime in with an official stance on Amazon MRM support. No Amazon MRM is the deal breaker for me (someone who bought an entire surround set up for the holidays). I have until end of January to return so Sonos has a month to announce support for MRM.

I would just recommend that you work out an alternative plan before returning to the store. To me, the sound quality and additional features of Sonos are worth the price. And the ability to link/pair an echo to a Sonos room(s) give you the best of both world in a lot of ways.

I don't have any specifics I can share as to if multiroom music with Sonos and Alexa playing together will be available, but I'll make sure to let the team know continues to be requested.

Just echoing what others have said here and saying that I too would greatly enjoy this functionality. I love the sonos speakers and would continue to buy them regardless of what system it is used to actually do the multi-room part.

In any case, the new features released this month and in particular the preferred speaker option is already an awesome addition and i love it. Thank you for the hard work and for listening to your customers suggestions / asks!

I just spent an hour trying to put my new Sonos play:1 Speakers in a multiroom group. Thanks to this thread, i discovered i was wasting my time. If i had know this before, i would not have brought the speakers. I have my existing Bose system playing through an Alexa Pair Gadget in parts of the house, as well as echos in Kitchen, etc. I wanted the Sonos to support mh Music Everywhere Group. I add my voice to those who would like to add quality Sonos Speakers to their existing setup. Thanks for this thread.