Any progress on Ducking issue?

Hi lay3r3, we're still working with the Alexa team on the Sonos integration, and ducking is on the list. It hasn't been changed overall just yet, but rest assured, when it does, we'll be posting announcements here so that everyone can see what's new.

I don't mean to pile on on the OP thread, but it will soon be a year that the Sonos x Alexa integration has been released "in beta".
It certainly feels like no progress or improvements were made in the 10+ months since this original release and it's a bit frustrating.
By then I would have certainly expected to have seen these reported problems (we've discussed the ducking issue here since day one) fixed, as well as bringing much requested essential features such as grouping speakers through Alexa...
How were the developer resources allocated in 2018? Everybody full time on Airplay2?

Hi William, I know that when there's a feature or change you're looking for, other things can certainly seem unimportant, but the Alexa integration has had a lot of improvements over the last year.

A big one is that the voice recognition of the Sonos One has been improving and is in a great state now. We've also added support for many new skills and several more music services got added as well, like Audible, Spotify, and Deezer. Alexa support on Sonos has expanded to several new countries this year since launch. Most recently, Ireland and France.

And let's not forget, we've just added Alexa Announcements, and of course, there's a new Sonos player that has Alexa built-in, Beam.

There will be lots more to come, and we'll keep on improving features that currently exist as we also add new ones. We'll be announcing here whenever things change or there's news to share.

it's too bad Sonos doesn't provide an option on players with a "line-in" connection to to automatically switch back from line in to the queue when there is no signal for 5 seconds. This would make an attached Echo take over long enough to respond to a command or question and then let it switch back to whatever was being streamed without affecting any other room even if they were playing the stream as a group.

I have several rooms where I use an Echo Spot into a Connect Amp to create a Hi-Fi Echo for family members who will only use Alexa while retaining the option to use Sonos for myself. Unfortunately I will probably have to swap out the Connect Amps for auto-switching amplifiers that are designed to switch back to the original source after there is no signal from the Echo for 5 seconds. I am testing this in a couple of rooms using these amps and a Connect as the other source and it works exactly the way everyone wishes the software ducking in the Alexa skill would work. With a couple of tweaks to Sonos firmware I could do the same thing with my Sonos amps and avoid the third party equipment. Then the wait (Many more months? A year?) for a full production Alexa skill would not be so bad and the eventual transition from line-in to that skill would be simple. I doubt if this will happen though.

I finally decided to disable Alexa from Sonos. Had been waiting to ducking long for a fix. It was driving me crazy. I am currently researching other speaker options. Growing less and less fond of Sonos.... the loss of lock screen controls another major downer. Get your ducks in a row Sonos. I'm fed up.

I re-enabled the Alexa Sonos skill yesterday, encouraged by the addition of Sonos as 'Preferred Music Speakers' within Alexa Groups, and claims by some posters that the ducking issue had been solved. While the former is true, the latter is not: ducking is still global, rendering the entire Alexa/Sonos integration impractical for me. I guess I'll just disable the Sonos skill again for another year.

Ryan, no offense, as the features you listed as having been delivered are all pretty good things, but since I have not enabled Alexa for my Sons One speakers since I ran smack into the ducking issue almost a year ago, these features are all irrelevant. If nobody wants to use Alexa with Sonos because you will not fix ducking (and have made the experience so unpleasant that there are scores all over these forums who will not use Alexa with Sonos), why bother adding features and music services? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make a noise...? Stop felling trees all alone and give us all a reason to be in the forest again--fix the ducking issue.

I wanted to come back to this thread and let you know that today, we've announced an integration with Sonos and Alexa Groups which makes the volume ducking with Alexa on Sonos, and more, much smarter. Check it out here.

Yes ! about ducking time

No longer have a ducking problem :)

Using a preferred speaker means that it doesn't duck on any other player.

However, it doesnt actually duck on the one in the group either, still, its an improvement and you dont have to say 'in the dining room' anymore so its definitely an improvement

It ducks for me on the required speakers