Alexa woes

Echos have their own internal speaker. It's not high quality, but it is OK for voice replies.

Hi jgatie

The OP has the Echo Input, which has no internal speaker.

Echos have their own internal speaker. It's not high quality, but it is OK for voice replies.

Hi jgatie

The OP has the Echo Input, which has no internal speaker.

Oh! I see now.

UKMedia, that is the impression i was under, 3.5 cable or bluetooth.
Not sure when the info on that Amazon link was uploaded but the input appears to be doing what it should via cable and line-in.
ive done a bit of digging elsewhere and it seems the input will drop the volume for voice if skills is enabled but not for music.
this is where i was struggling.

I feel the solution is that the Sonos needs a bit of a feature upgrade. Something link an 'Echo Input mode' on the 'Line In'. This mode would essentially 'mix' the line in over whatever is playing, rather than a binary 'stream' vs 'input'.

So:
Given an Echo Input plugged into a Play x Line In with the same Sonos unit set as the preferred speaker
And given the Sonos is streaming (regardless of if you initiate this via the Sonos app or the Echo Input)
When the Echo Input outputs to the Sonos Line In (e.g. to talk)
Then the Echo Input is heard over the faded stream

This would mimic the behaviour that the Echo Dot has

I feel the solution is that the Sonos needs a bit of a feature upgrade. Something link an 'Echo Input mode' on the 'Line In'. This mode would essentially 'mix' the line in over whatever is playing, rather than a binary 'stream' vs 'input'.

So:
Given an Echo Input plugged into a Play x Line In with the same Sonos unit set as the preferred speaker
And given the Sonos is streaming (regardless of if you initiate this via the Sonos app or the Echo Input)
When the Echo Input outputs to the Sonos Line In (e.g. to talk)
Then the Echo Input is heard over the faded stream

This would mimic the behaviour that the Echo Dot hasBut if you leave echo input cabled to the Sonos speaker line-in and disable the Sonos Skill, it then works exactly like all the other Amazon echo speakers work at the moment... so I can’t see that Sonos would be allowed to make any changes, like you suggest. The answer has to be to simply remove the Sonos Skill from the Alexa App.

I feel the solution is that the Sonos needs a bit of a feature upgrade. Something link an 'Echo Input mode' on the 'Line In'. This mode would essentially 'mix' the line in over whatever is playing, rather than a binary 'stream' vs 'input'.

So:
Given an Echo Input plugged into a Play x Line In with the same Sonos unit set as the preferred speaker
And given the Sonos is streaming (regardless of if you initiate this via the Sonos app or the Echo Input)
When the Echo Input outputs to the Sonos Line In (e.g. to talk)
Then the Echo Input is heard over the faded stream

This would mimic the behaviour that the Echo Dot hasBut if you leave echo input cabled to the Sonos speaker line-in and disable the Sonos Skill, it then works exactly like all the other Amazon echo speakers work at the moment... so I can’t see that Sonos would be allowed to make any changes, like you suggest. The answer has to be to simply remove the Sonos Skill from the Alexa App.

I want the true integration with Sonos though, which you only get from the Sonos skill. So I want to control from my Sonos app or z-wave controllers (next track) etc. and, when I use multi-room, I don't want Alexa booming out of every Sonos speaker in my house.

To your point Sonos doesn't need to make any changes to the Echo. The changes would be on the Sonos side entirely. The suggestion is to 'mix' the input channel with the streaming channel (only on the connected speaker). The Echo Input would be completely ignorant of this setup.

Now, whether Sonos can support mixing (maybe a hardware/software restriction), and whether that doesn't raise any other issues, I don't know. I'd leave that to Sonos.

Can you not sort the issue by using an Echo Dot rather than an Echo Input? I tell my Dots what I want to listen to on my Sonos, but I don't have them linked with any cables - they act as a controller not a source.