Alexa Multiroom Music Support

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
January 4, 2021
23 replies
6724 views

Is there any update on the support for Alexa multiroom music (MRM) support on Sonos? I just purchased a Sonos Beam with the understanding that it supported Alexa groups. I learned after setting it up, that while it can be added to an Alexa group, it can’t be added to a speaker group with Echo devices. I understand that Amazon released the software to implement multiroom music support in 2018 (link below) and that at least the Polk Command Bar supports this functionality. Is there any possibility that Sonos will add this capability to the Beam? If not, I’ll need to return the Beam and find another solution.

https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/a9acaabd-d5a0-4fdf-b74a-c20cfe4d4ef9/deliver-whole-home-audio-with-alexa-multi-room-music-and-device-targeting

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Best answer by UKMedia

I'm not aware of any multi room speakers that are compliant. The issue remains that Amazon and Sonos both use their own proprietary multi room buffering technology.

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Ken_Griffiths

I just bought Beam 2 and already had several Echo devices at home. Beam 2 works good with my TV, but I wanted to be able to connect it to multi-room setup I have with Echo devices (to play music at the same time on sound bar and other echo devices around my home). It seems like that is not possible and that’s a shame. It supports Airplay 2, so if I had several HomePods around my house it would work, but not with Amazon Echo, that’s unfortunate and seems like there is no easy solution to that from user side.

The only two solutions to this that I’m aware of, is to either use an Amazon Echo devices line-out to a Sonos product that has a line-in, or maybe Bluetooth pair an echo-dot to a Sonos Roam/Era-100 etc. and play on the Amazon Everywhere Group in the Alexa App… All echo devices then play and the line out, or Bluetooth audio, goes to the Sonos speaker, which in turn, using the Sonos App, can itself be grouped with all other Sonos speakers within the same System/Household. The problem of course is there isn’t anything to keep things in sync between the two brands and so if devices are ‘mixed & matched’ in the same physical room, you would likely end up with an echo (pardon the pun) in that room. 😁

I

iljacito

Lyricist I

I just bought Beam 2 and already had several Echo devices at home. Beam 2 works good with my TV, but I wanted to be able to connect it to multi-room setup I have with Echo devices (to play music at the same time on sound bar and other echo devices around my home). It seems like that is not possible and that’s a shame. It supports Airplay 2, so if I had several HomePods around my house it would work, but not with Amazon Echo, that’s unfortunate and seems like there is no easy solution to that from user side.

The only two solutions to this that I’m aware of, is to either use an Amazon Echo devices line-out to a Sonos product that has a line-in, or maybe Bluetooth pair an echo-dot to a Sonos Roam/Era-100 etc. and play on the Amazon Everywhere Group in the Alexa App… All echo devices then play and the line out or Bluetooth audio goes to the Sonos speaker, which in turn, using the Sonos App, can itself be grouped with all other Sonos speakers within the same System/Household. The problem of course is their isn’t anything to keep things in sync between the two brands and so if devices are ‘mixed & matched’ in the same physical room, you would likely end up with an echo (pardon the pun) in that room. 😁

That’s a thing which I did not consider and it feels that this setup will be too “fragile”, not even talking about buying yet another device :) (Era or Roam).

As far as I got from some posts/threads/forums it may be possible to buy Amazon Fire TV stick and then group it with other Echo devices. That solution also has problems like: you need to have your TV being on for that to work :(

Ken_Griffiths

That’s a thing which I did not consider and it feels that this setup will be too “fragile”, not even talking about buying yet another device :) (Era or Roam).

As far as I got from some posts/threads/forums it may be possible to buy Amazon Fire TV stick and then group it with other Echo devices. That solution also has problems like: you need to have your TV being on for that to work :(

Yes a Fire-TV Stick is another option, but as you say it needs the TV powered on (but that’s okay as it can display the lyrics on screen during playback), but in my personal experience the different brands of speaker do not play nicely in sync. The Sonos products are far more stable when grouped in large numbers and of course sound far superior… so I just stick to grouping Sonos devices only around the Home.

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