Amazon Echo / Dot and Sonos Integration

Well, since Sonos has finally opened it's architecture to casting from native apps, with Spotify and Pandora on board already, the ball is most assuredly in the BBC court even more than before. All the BBC has to do is enable casting to Sonos and Bob's your uncle!

The Sonos video demonstrate how this will work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFJ7O7N5Yok

At the one minute mark, the home shows two zones: a Play1 in the kitchen (next to a Dot) and a Playbar in the living room. A guy says "Alexa play new music", and music starts to play in the kitchen. He doesn't name a zone, he just tell it to play music and the system knows to play on the Play 1. Then he says "Alexa play in the living room", and the music switches to the living room zone.

So, his kitchen Play1 must be the default zone connected to his Dot, but you can move the music to other zones via voice command.

The video gives hints as to whether Sonos replaces the Dot's speaker.
1. Whenever the Dot "talks", a Sonos speaker is also in the frame
2. The Dot's sound quality is quite good, indicating it's coming from Sonos not the tiny speaker in the Dot.
3. Music pauses when Alexa speaks the name of the song, and resumes again once Alexa stops speaking . If the Dot was merely a Sonos controller and used it's own speaker for Alexa's voice, it would talk at the same time music played from the Sonos.

Based on all this I conclude that you will be able to designate a default zone for each Echo, and that zone will always act as Echo's voice. It would not surprise me if there were also an option on the Echo app that let you choose whether to use the Echo or Sonos as Alexa's voice.

I just realized something odd about the video. When music is playing in the living room the daughter says "Alexa what's playing". The music pauses and Alexa responds with the name of the song, and then music resumes. When Alexa responds the video switches from the living room to the Dot and the Play1 in the kitchen, implying that Alexa's voice comes from the Play1. Let's assume that's what actually happens.

That's a problem. It means that music in the living room paused when someone asked the Dot a question in the kitchen. What if I tell Alexa to play music for a party in my den, and then someone in my kitchen asks the Dot what the capital of Kentucky is? Will the music pause in the den while it answers? Do we have to refrain from asking Alexa anything while music is playing in another zone?

I hope it doesn't really act this way. It aught to pause music only if the default zone is playing when you get a response from Alexa.

I can't see the bbc spending any licensce payers money on sonos, the numbers aren't there.
But they have worked with google and chromecast, so maybe they will work with amazon and get Alexa integration, iam sure amazon would like iplayer logo on the box in uk, and alexa can send it to sonos?? maybe...

Maybe they will, they've got the Bake Off money available now..:8

I can't see the bbc spending any licensce payers money on sonos, the numbers aren't there.
But they have worked with google and chromecast, so maybe they will work with amazon and get Alexa integration, iam sure amazon would like iplayer logo on the box in uk, and alexa can send it to sonos?? maybe...

Well that will be disappointing to the folks who have been claiming for years that "If Sonos would just open their architecture like Squeezebox, this would be done by now!" Of course those people will find a way to blame Sonos anyway. 😉

so Denon have again jumped on the same bandwagon:
http://www.slashgear.com/amazons-alexa-integrates-with-another-big-speaker-brand-denon-heos-20456795/

Hopefully this will give sonos some incentive to launch this sooner rather than later !

Wow the blatant copying continues. I guess we will see who does better job with it. I assume denon will do better with this then the announced Google casting ability they announced to sell more speakers then said they couldn't do it a year later.

Note: Not only did the play:5 being hooked to the dot not do me a lot of good. The play:5 would take about a second or two to come out of standby and I would miss the first word or 2 Alexa would respond with.
You can actually fix this. I set up my original Dot feeding into a CONNECT:AMP and observed the same issue. However, in the Alexa app, go to Settings for the particular Dot. In there is an option to have Alexa play a tone when voice response is activated. You can set this to either start or end of voice response. Setting it to start (e.g., when Alexa recognizes the wake word and starts waiting for you to give it a command) means the CONNECT:AMP has always come out of sleep before any meaningful audio is generated by Alexa, even if you don't really pause between the wake word and the command. If the CONNECT:AMP is already awake, the little "bing" noise is very unobtrusive and actually nice as you know Alexa is really listening to you without having to look and see if the ring is lit up.

Thanks CAW. I will have to check that out.

Note: Not only did the play:5 being hooked to the dot not do me a lot of good. The play:5 would take about a second or two to come out of standby and I would miss the first word or 2 Alexa would respond with.
You can actually fix this. I set up my original Dot feeding into a CONNECT:AMP and observed the same issue. However, in the Alexa app, go to Settings for the particular Dot. In there is an option to have Alexa play a tone when voice response is activated. You can set this to either start or end of voice response. Setting it to start (e.g., when Alexa recognizes the wake word and starts waiting for you to give it a command) means the CONNECT:AMP has always come out of sleep before any meaningful audio is generated by Alexa, even if you don't really pause between the wake word and the command. If the CONNECT:AMP is already awake, the little "bing" noise is very unobtrusive and actually nice as you know Alexa is really listening to you without having to look and see if the ring is lit up. Thanks, that works a treat. 🙂