Amazon Allows Calling and Messaging on Third Party Alexa Devices - Sonos?

Am I the only one who thinks Sonos should just leave all the voice stuff to Google and Amazon, and concentrate on making great sounding multi-room audio?

There's no way Sonos can keep up with all the changes going on in AI, they simply don't have the resources. Just allow Echo/Dot/Show to default to Sonos for music, and leave all the other AI junk to Echo (which already works fine).

Same thing with Google - the Home Hub (or whatever Google has renamed it to) is FAR more useful with its screen; just let it default music to the Sonos speakers, leave the AI stuff to the Hub.

I can only imagine how different AI will be in five years' time. Sonos needs to spend its precious resources on sound, not keeping up with the constant AI changes.

Am I the only one who thinks Sonos should just leave all the voice stuff to Google and Amazon, and concentrate on making great sounding multi-room audio?

There's no way Sonos can keep up with all the changes going on in AI, they simply don't have the resources. Just allow Echo/Dot/Show to default to Sonos for music, and leave all the other AI junk to Echo (which already works fine).

Same thing with Google - the Home Hub (or whatever Google has renamed it to) is FAR more useful with its screen; just let it default music to the Sonos speakers, leave the AI stuff to the Hub.

I can only imagine how different AI will be in five years' time. Sonos needs to spend its precious resources on sound, not keeping up with the constant AI changes.

I think the opportunity for Sonos to take that approach has passed. They could have simply added line-in ports to all of their products so you could connect whatever voice assistant you want and let those companies worry about the advanced voice features while Sonos focused on new products and an advanced API to make sure they can integrate well.

Now they are committed to providing the entire user experience through their software which means meeting the expectations of users who have come to expect certain things because they are provided from the voice assistant devices they have been using. I'm sure Sonos had a vision of having support for multiple voice platforms on their hardware such that you could invoke whatever assistant you prefer merely by using the appropriate wake word. Unfortunately they were not able to accomplish this. Now they are faced with folks who are used to having a screen showing them lyrics in sync with their music and desiring a higher fidelity version of phone and intercom features with no way to deliver it (except via a wired connection on the few Sonos models that support it,)

I don't think you can blame people for wanting their system to work in a particular way or to include all of the features that either platform can provide on its own and I don't think people are ever going to stop asking for that to happen.

Am I the only one who thinks Sonos should just leave all the voice stuff to Google and Amazon, and concentrate on making great sounding multi-room audio?

I go back and forth on this. On one hand I agree with you. Today, it makes more sense to build your system by 'pairing' and echo or Google Home with Sonos speakers for each room. The only real downside from the user experience is having 2 devices instead of one.

However, I don't know that that will sell speakers very well. Are customers who don't own Sonos speakers right now going to really grasp how this work, or be motivated to buy Sonos instead of just using the speaker that comes with their voice assistant or some other brand? Amazon,Google and Apple now have speakers and speaker setups that can be viewed as competing with Sonos in sound quality (not as good, but maybe good enough). And Sonos is certainly not the only speaker company that's putting voice assistants in their products.

Put another way, I have no doubt that Sonos One well outsold Play:1s last year. I'm sure some of that is do to newer model and airplay, but mostly due to onboard voice assistants. How many people bought it for the promise of Google Assistant? You could also argue that Sonos now has some leverage being the only device that works with both popular flavors (although only one at a time unfortunately), which gives them a little leverage in the market.

I think you could make an argument that even though an all-in-one VA speaker doesn't give you the most features or is the most economical, it is what people were wanting and what Sonos needed to provide. You could say the same about soundbars perhaps. They aren't going to give you the best sound due to lack of separation, but people want that all-in-one device.

There's no way Sonos can keep up with all the changes going on in AI, they simply don't have the resources. Just allow Echo/Dot/Show to default to Sonos for music, and leave all the other AI junk to Echo (which already works fine).

Same thing with Google - the Home Hub (or whatever Google has renamed it to) is FAR more useful with its screen; just let it default music to the Sonos speakers, leave the AI stuff to the Hub.

Agreed. I think Sonos needs to draw a line in the sand so to speak to be clear about what features they do and do not support as well as what you can expect as far future features. Amazon and Google really should be involved with this and give clear designations for third party devices that use their services on what level of features they have. "Alexa devices" doesn't let people know what you can and cannot do very well, or even suggest that their might be a different between an alexa device and an echo.

I can only imagine how different AI will be in five years' time. Sonos needs to spend its precious resources on sound, not keeping up with the constant AI changes.

I would much rather see Sonos look to add Siri, Bixby, or perhaps their own voice assistant for music related controls. Not to mention non-voice assistant features.

Am I the only one who thinks Sonos should just leave all the voice stuff to Google and Amazon, and concentrate on making great sounding multi-room audio?

There's no way Sonos can keep up with all the changes going on in AI, they simply don't have the resources. Just allow Echo/Dot/Show to default to Sonos for music, and leave all the other AI junk to Echo (which already works fine).

Same thing with Google - the Home Hub (or whatever Google has renamed it to) is FAR more useful with its screen; just let it default music to the Sonos speakers, leave the AI stuff to the Hub.

I can only imagine how different AI will be in five years' time. Sonos needs to spend its precious resources on sound, not keeping up with the constant AI changes.


No, not the only one... as you say... just concentrate on audio. Of course there are more ways to expand Sonos other than spending time and resources on Voice and to be honest the family are sick of the wrong music being played or one of the backend servers not quite “functional” so either no response or silence instead of music.

Hi Sonos Team,

I have a Sonos one in the living room and everyone in the family absolutely loves the sound quality and features! It is the only thing we use to listen to music so I wanted to put one in each room in the house and get a couple Beams for the TV. The only problem, your devices don’t support Alexa calling or drop in features. I have two young children and the ability for them to say, “Alexa, call Daddy” provides additional piece of mind and security when I’m out.

Because of this I purchased Amazon Echo Dots for their bedrooms instead of Sonos Ones which not only means revenue lost for Sonos but more importantly as a company you are not meeting your objective of providing a whole home solution to your customers.

Considering how many threads there are asking for this feature I would have hoped Sonos would be listening more seriously in an effort to retain and grow their customer base. I am the proud owner of one Sonos One but I could have been the proud owner of eight Sonos Ones and two Beams. Give your heads a shake Sonos, give your heads a shake.

And continue to wonder why Amazon’s licensing policy doesn’t allow Sonos to implement this.

I bought 4 sonos ones and put them in different rooms only to find out that drop in doesn't work with sonos. Lmao. Thought sonos is going to replace echo device. Guess not at all. I am going to return all the sonos and get echo plus or something.

Bought a One to replace an Echo device without reading the fine print on Alexa functionality (or lack thereof).  There should be a big fat * next to Alexa in the marketing info explaining this.  Or they should refer to it as Alexa-Lite.  It needs to have parity with Echo devices because you can’t have a Sonos Alexa-enabled device in the same room with an Echo device unless you turn off Alexa on the Sonos.  At that point, you might as well get a Play:1.  Returning this thing until features are aligned.

 

I believe Amazon actually coined the phrase ‘Alexa-enabled’, and Sonos probably can’t refer to their products in any other way.

 

You can change the wake word on your Echo device so that you can direct your command to the Sonos One or the Echo accordingly.  As you pointed out though, it doesn’t really gain you anything,  I have a Beam and and echo show in the same room, and simply turned off the speaker on the Beam.