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Contributor I
October 24, 2017
Answered

Disable Sonos One Alexa from playing a sound when I say "Alexa"

  • October 24, 2017
  • 313 replies
  • 36112 views
I just set up a Sonos One with Alexa and the sound is noticeably better than the Amazon Echo. On the Sonos One though, each and every time I call "Alexa" it plays some kind of acknowledgement tone. When I call my Echo or Dot, thankfully there is no such tone. Is there anyway to disable it?
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Best answer by Ryan S
Hi everyone, starting today with Sonos 10.0, you can go into the Sonos room settings in the Sonos app, and turn off the wake sound for Alexa on Sonos One and Sonos Beam speakers.

313 replies

Lyricist I
March 9, 2018
PLEASE allow us to disable the tone. I won't buy another Sonos until this issue is resolved because it's too annoying.
Lyricist I
March 9, 2018
That tone is so incredibly annoying! How can we make it stop? My other Echo devices don't do that and Google's don't either...argh. Help. Please. Sonos.
Ryan S
Retired Sonos Staff
March 9, 2018
Thanks for the continued feedback everyone! The suggestion list for Alexa changes and requests isn't a short list, but I'm making sure to keep the most active discussions here in front of the team that's working on them. I don't have any specifics today to let you in on regarding turning off the "boop". You'll see some improvements to ducking and some other things soon though, so stay tuned. And you might have noticed that Deezer was added today!
Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.
Enthusiast II
March 10, 2018
This wake tone is bow causing me real problems in using the Sonos one with Alexa.

Our kitchen has a fair echo in it being large and fully tiled, if you don't wait for the wake tone to go silent before making a request to Alexa then she mishears about 50% of instructions given. This means we can't speak fluently to the Sonos one in the kitchen like we do to the rest of the Alexa devices in the house.

Whoever designed this product with the wake tone has clearly done about zero real world tests. There is a flashing light on the top of the device with the ability to change colour, so why not just use this instead of the stupid wake tone.

I have several play 1's around the home and many with echo dots in the same room. My intention of replacing these with a single play one in each room simply will not happen until Sonos sort out this stupid wake tone.

Sonos are very quickly going to lose out on the whole house audio market to the likes of Google or Amazon themselves if they don't start acting a bit more swiftly to resolve issues such as this which are drawing criticism from many owners. How many months is it now that people have been complaining about this, and whats been done? Nothing.
Enthusiast II
March 10, 2018
Thanks for the continued feedback everyone! The suggestion list for Alexa changes and requests isn't a short list, but I'm making sure to keep the most active discussions here in front of the team that's working on them. I don't have any specifics today to let you in on regarding turning off the "boop". You'll see some improvements to ducking and some other things soon though, so stay tuned. And you might have noticed that Deezer was added today!

So they are concentrating on items like Deezer and ducking, whilst the single most complained about issue goes unresolved.

Do your developers actually talk to people who are customer facing or do they just get up in a morning and start doing what THEY want to see rather than the customer.
Master T
Prodigy I
March 10, 2018
Ugh ... just realized the issue is even worse when you enable Alexa's new Follow-Up mode. You not only hear the Wake Sound when you say Alexa, you hear it AGAIN after she acknowledges your initial command and waits for another.

Ryan, I'm a big supporter, but your continuing platitudes on this issue are rapidly wearing thin.
Lyricist I
March 10, 2018
I'd like to add my agreement about the pointless response tone.
Also, I've just spent the best part of 5 hours trying to get Alexa to play my iTunes library which is located on my NAS. Tried it with Plex and MyMedia and the result is the same. She says "playing X" and then silence. I can play the music from the app, but that's not why I bought it! (I was specifically told by a Sonos rep in a web chat that this was easily implemented, but there are hundreds of people having the same issue.
Not happy.
Lyricist I
March 11, 2018
If only I read these threads before I went out after much persuasion by my wife and bought 2 ones. I already have 5 play 1’s and a connect. That chime is annoying and the dev’s need to get on and fix it a bit quick please otherwise I’ll be going back old school.
Enthusiast II
March 11, 2018
The excuse given 4 months ago was:

"Since the Sonos One doesn't have the light ring that you might find on the Echo Dot, the tone was enabled so that you know when the Sonos One heard you and when it's communicating with the cloud."

I mean if only there was something like an LED built into the top of the unit that was able to light up green, orange or white.

If only it wasn't such a huge and ambitious technical ask for an LED to cycle through those colours to give a visual indication like on the echo devices.... :8
Lyricist I
March 11, 2018
Adding my voice to those calling for this. I have been with Sonos from the beginning (so long that I bought my Sonos One with the credit from my discontinued controller) and the inability to turn off the noise has my wife asking me to unplug the new device.