Retired Sonos Staff

Alexa + Sonos: How it Works

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
October 3, 2017
179 replies
100089 views

So you’ve read all about Amazon Alexa working with Sonos and you want to know more. Here’s a rundown of how the integration works.

Your Amazon Alexa devices are listening for you to say the wake word, “Alexa”. When they hear that word, the microphones record what you say and send the audio to the Amazon Alexa cloud to be translated.

That voice line turns into a string of text. The Amazon protocols determine if it’s meant for Amazon Alexa or for a Sonos player. If it’s for Sonos, that text is then sent directly, and securely, over to the Sonos cloud to be turned into a command using our own codes.

Finally, the Sonos intended command goes down to the system.

Want to try it out?

Here are some fun commands to try. I like starting with:

“Alexa, play some salsa in the kitchen.”

how it works

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Ryan SAuthor

Retired Sonos Staff

Ryan? Also your response to the question of sound quality. Is Sonos One identical to play 1 running on 8.0?

Generally speaking, the Sonos One has just about the same quality as the PLAY:1. I've heard from plenty of people that the Sonos One has a bit more bass to it, but I think that's going to have come down to personal testing. They both sound great.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

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Pantherman007

Lyricist I

+1 On the list of people disappointed by the lack of local music support. That's a huge hole that I hope Sonos can plug soon. I already maintain two sets of my music - flac on a NAS for highest quality and a second version for my Apple devices via iTunes match. Now I'd need to upload yet another set to Amazon (or wherever) in order for the Alexa skill to work? ?☹️

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Gary-C

Avid Contributor I

Works great for me so far.

Wish list -
1 be able to set a particular dot(etc) to default to a sonos group so you can skip the location command (not sure if possible)
2 be able to play from local library

K

Kumar

Ryan? Also your response to the question of sound quality. Is Sonos One identical to play 1 running on 8.0?

Generally speaking, the Sonos One has just about the same quality as the PLAY:1. I've heard from plenty of people that the Sonos One has a bit more bass to it, but I think that's going to have come down to personal testing. They both sound great.

Thanks for that update.
My other question:
Amazon will launch Alexa in India and sell echo etc via the Indian website from October 31.
Thereafter will it directly work with my Sonos kit, or is there some Sonos action also needed? If so, how long will it take Sonos to do what it will take to work with Alexa?

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gibbotwg

Lyricist I

Can sonos play 1 and a Amazon Echo play the same song at the same time? I.e to be both used in one room together?

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Cchris

Enthusiast II

Can sonos play 1 and a Amazon Echo play the same song at the same time? I.e to be both used in one room together?

No.

You can group either platform together with siblings from the same hardware, but you cannot create a group/pair of two differing types of hardware.

Similar restriction on stereo groups for the new playOne. You cannot make a L/R stereo pair from a current Play:1 and a new style PlayOne.

melvimbe

Can sonos play 1 and a Amazon Echo play the same song at the same time? I.e to be both used in one room together?

No.

You can group either platform together with siblings from the same hardware, but you cannot create a group/pair of two differing types of hardware.

Similar restriction on stereo groups for the new playOne. You cannot make a L/R stereo pair from a current Play:1 and a new style PlayOne.

I think we're mixing terms a bit here. The answer to the question is No (unless you can manage to time it perfectly manually), but there is a difference between 'groups', 'pairs, and 'bonds'.

Sonos allows 2 units of the same time to be paired together to form a stereo pair, one zone. That is NOT a group.

Sonos allows certain bonding scenarios where you can mix units of a different type together in one zone. For example, a stereo pair plus a SUB. Or a playbar, sub, and 2 surrounds.

A group, as defined by Sonos, is temporarily playing 2 or more zones in sync. Amazon does groups similarly, however, their zones are nothing more than an single echo. Also, they predefine and name their groups, while sonos does not. The important point though, is that even though both Sonos and Amazon have groups, you cannot put sonos zones and Amazon echos into the same group.

Danny

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Cchris

Enthusiast II

Yep - all understood, I was advising that there is a distinction between a Play:1 and a PlayOne. It may be seen by some that the way to have a stereo pair and voice control is to have one of each of these, but that is not possible.

To have a voice controlled pair of sonos 1's the options are:

Play:1 + Play:1 + echo dot
or
PlayOne + PlayOne.

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BNash18

Contributor I

Have an Echo Dot and a Sonos:1. First rev of the integration works fine for basic controls. Any idea when Spotify will be supported, and are there plans/schedule to be able to add a song that is playing thru sonos to a specific playlist via amazon echo alexa voice commands? Looking forward to future enhancements of this. I suspect my basic hw may be limiting.

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Skelton

Prodigy I

Yep - all understood, I was advising that there is a distinction between a Play:1 and a PlayOne.

To be clearer, it's Play 1 and Sonos One. Still going to be confusing, but it's marginally better.

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