Amazon Dot and Play 5 line in going quiet when replying from Alexa

So just to be clear if I was to remove the line out/in connection I currently have setup with my Sonos Connect will all voice commands still be played via Sonos? I understand it's fine for playing music but what about any question I throw at Alexa? Will it then still be delivered through Sonos or the tiny internal Echo dot speakers (which is something I don't want)? As I have my Echo Dot build into the kitchen wall it's not something I can easily try out 🙂

Same problems. In fact, my volume was going up and down a lot, and seemingly randomly. My use case for the line in is that Alexa doesn’t use the Sonos as an external speaker without the line in. We play Jeopardy on the dot, for example, and I’ve enjoyed using the sonos speaker for that. After all, the dot can use external speakers and Bluetooth speakers. But this was just weird.

As Stephen G says, by removing my P5 from the Alexa skill I have regained the volume of the dot through the P5 and also regained control over my Spotify account through the Dot . I can once again play Spotify through Sonos controlled by the dot , if I could control my music collection stored on my NAS then that would be perfect !

Hi guys, I can speak to what you're experiencing. It's part of a feature that's called "ducking". What this means is that when you say Alexa, the audio playing on all Sonos and Alexa devices "ducks" down, or lowers, so that the microphones can properly hear you. If you have the Alexa skill enabled for Sonos, the players will all do this when you issue a command.

The problem you're running into is that the line-in on the player is ducking too. So Alexa is responding appropriately, out to the line-in, to a player that has the audio "ducked", so you can barely hear it.

This is an interesting situation since everything is technically working exactly as it's supposed to.

There isn't a way to prevent the "ducking" at the moment, but we've heard this from others and I'm making sure to spread the feedback on to the team for you.

For now, there are 2 ways to go:
1. Disable the Alexa skill for Sonos, your player will be working the way it was before the update.
2. Disconnect the line in from the Dot, and you'll have the responses for your Alexa commands playing out of the Dot itself, and not over the line in.

Hi Ryan,

many thanks for your reply. Unfortunately for now I had to disable the Sonos skill and I can confirm it is indeed working as before. I really do hope this is something the team will address though.

Ryan thank you for the explanation this seems to be something that Sonos/Amazon could ,and should have sorted out from the start? Is it unreasonable to assume that at some point the technicians must have hooked a speaker and an echo or a dot up like this and got the same results ? And yet they didn't think it a problem ?

I can't speak to the testing specifically, but there's definitely a lot that would have gone into the decision. For instance, if the line-in on your PLAY:5 was any other device, like a record player, you'd probably want this volume drop to happen so that the Alexa in the room can hear your command properly, and you the response.

From the PLAY:5's perspective, since it doesn't know what's connected to the line-in, something is connected to the line-in and playing.

The skill and integration is going to improve. It's still in beta right now, and we'll continue to work on it even after it's no longer in beta.

Ryan I understand that improvement will happen and skills will be refined and updated ,it just seems that a basic problem that affects users expectations of the new system has been overlooked . By reverting back to my original set up and taking out the Alexa skill, I now get a better user experience with Sonos and an Amazon dot than the new update gives me, that's hardly a step forward .

Oh wow! I just spent over 20 minutes with Sonos support (who claimed no knowledge of the problem and told me to call Amazon) and 45 minutes with Amazon support (who had me switch echo dots and audio cables and then credited me for $5 and had me buy an Amazon branded audio cable (arriving Sunday) and they will call me back on Monday to continue troubleshooting!

Both Sonos and Amazon Alexa support need to update their support staff with this info pronto.

BTW, thank you Stephen G! That's a great workaround!