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Seeky
Prominent Collaborator II
April 25, 2020
Answered

Ducking not entirely working yet?

  • April 25, 2020
  • 47 replies
  • 1128 views

So as I understand the new ducking possibilies which rolled out some months ago, all speakers within an Alexa group should duck.

I have the following speakers:

  • 1x Play One SL stereo pair
  • 1x Play:5 stereo pair
  • 1x Play One
  • 1x Echo Dot 2nd Gen

All three Sonos are in a group, and also selected as “Preferred Speaker”

The Sonos One and the Echo Dot are selected as Alexa enabled devices.

 

When I talk to the Dot all speakers duck, when I talk to the Sonos One only the Sonos One ducks?

That does not seem right. Due to another bug i have undergone a full factory reset of all speakers, so it probably is an issue everyone is having? Can anyone confirm?

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      Best answer by Ryan S

      The ducking issue should be all fixed now for everyone. So go ahead and set up your Alexa groups as you want and the Sonos One should duck devices as expected.

      47 replies

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      SeekyAuthor
      Prominent Collaborator II
      May 1, 2020

      Here is what I think you can do.  In either case, all Sonos speakers will duck.

      Either:

      Setup 1 - single Alexa group

      Sonos One (your only Alexa-enabled Sonos device) is the controlling device, obviously with mic switched on and Alexa enabled in the Sonos app.

      In the same group you have the One SLs and the Play:5

      The preferred speakers are the One, One SLs and Play:5

      There is no role for the Dot here.

      OR

      Setup 2 - single Alexa group

      Controlling device is the Dot

      All Sonos speakers are in the group, and all are preferred speakers.  The Sonos One has mic off (or possibly needs to have Alexa removed in the Sonos app)

      Do you believe anything else has been promised?  

      What do you mean by ‘the ducking functionality does not work with the Sonos One’?

       

      Setup 1:

      Configured exactly as you wrote it, result when you speak to the One:

      Sonos One ducks, Play:5s and OneSLs do NOT!

      Setup 2:

      Configured as you write, result when you talk to the Dot:

      All speakers, One/SL/Play:5 duck

       

      Here’s a third option.  Single Alexa group.

      Alexa-Enabled device - echo dot, Sonos One

      Devices (for ducking) - One, One SL,  Play:5

      Preferred Speaker - One, One SL,  Play:5

      Then go to the settings for the echo dot specifically under ‘CONNECTED DEVICES’, change the Speaker.  Under WI_FI SPEAKERS, select your Sonos One (Preferred Speaker). This setting will mean that all Alexa responses that your dot hears will come from the Sonos One. 

      If you’re Sonos One is doing all the talking, then it is ducking by default.  I’ve done some testing with this feature, but not really to resolve the issue you’re looking to address.  It may end up causing other issues, not sure. I also know that for echo show, you can’t have another speaker do it’s speaking for it, presumably because it can’t sync video.  It may also be that you need to create 2 Alexa groups, one for the echo dot as the enabled device and one with the One as the enabled device.

       

      As far as changing the feature so that the Sonos One can both listen and receive duck commands at the same time...I don’t know if that’s really a bug and something that can be fixed, or something that’s necessary for other features to work properly.  

      This is the setup I currently have. However, when the Sonos One is receiving the mic input the One SL and Play:5 do not duck, despite being configured exactly as you wrote. The Sonos One does duck in all configurations, no matter if you talk to the Sonos One or the Echo Dot.

       

      I think there is either a bug, or some weird configuration issue which can not be cleared by a factory reset?

       

      SeekyAuthor
      Prominent Collaborator II
      May 1, 2020

      Having done a few experiments I am not convinced my ‘Setup 1’ does work as described.  At the moment it is only ducking the Alexa-enables speaker that is the control device.

      Setup 2 works as described on my system.

      Okay so you’ve posted while I was writing the answer to your previous post.

      That actually confirms my expectations.

      This would all come down to the following issue:

      Non Alexa enabled Sonos speakers do NOT duck when the user talks to an Alexa enabled Sonos speaker, even if they are placed in the same group.

       

      Is that what you observed? I unfortunately can not test this with a Beam.

      SeekyAuthor
      Prominent Collaborator II
      May 1, 2020

      Okay, so i’ve done some more test including two Sonos One inside a group.

      If I talk to either one, the other one won’t duck.

       

      My guess would be: Sonos Alexa enabled speakers so not send out the ducking command at all? Could that be? I’d be very surprised, that would affect many people.

      John B
      May 1, 2020

      I would be very surprised if the Beam and Sonos One behaved differently.  

      I can only comment on how my own system works, because I can’t be sure I have set it up correctly.  But yes, on my system it is true that when I speak the wake word to my Alexa-enabled Sonos device, the non-Alexa Sonos speakers in the same group do not duck.

      I am not sure if Sonos has stated otherwise.  I found this article that seems to confirm that this is how it is (or was in early 2019).

      https://www.the-ambient.com/how-to/sonos-speakers-amazon-echo-ducking-volume-mute-issue-1211

        melvimbe
        melvimbe
        May 1, 2020

        Okay, so i’ve done some more test including two Sonos One inside a group.

        If I talk to either one, the other one won’t duck.

         

        My guess would be: Sonos Alexa enabled speakers so not send out the ducking command at all? Could that be? I’d be very surprised, that would affect many people.

         

        No, my Beam ducks just fine.  Again, I have it’s mic off typically.  But just tried it with mic own.  Still ducked. I don’t know it if it was ducking because it was listening (although it didn’t respond, my echo Show did) or because it received a ducking command.  Taking a look at the Alexa group, the Show and Beam are listed as Alexa devices, The Beam is the preferred speaker.  I don’t even have the Beam listed as a smart device...which I thought was what made a speaker duck.

        Danny
          John B
          May 1, 2020

          Incidentally, Sonos factory resets never cure anything, and Sonos recommends against trying them for troubleshooting.

            SeekyAuthor
            Prominent Collaborator II
            May 1, 2020

            Okay, so i’ve done some more test including two Sonos One inside a group.

            If I talk to either one, the other one won’t duck.

             

            My guess would be: Sonos Alexa enabled speakers so not send out the ducking command at all? Could that be? I’d be very surprised, that would affect many people.

             

            No, my Beam ducks just fine.  Again, I have it’s mic off typically.  But just tried it with mic own.  Still ducked. I don’t know it if it was ducking because it was listening (although it didn’t respond, my echo Show did) or because it received a ducking command.  Taking a look at the Alexa group, the Show and Beam are listed as Alexa devices, The Beam is the preferred speaker.  I don’t even have the Beam listed as a smart device...which I thought was what made a speaker duck.


            The issue is a different one. When you speak to the beam, other Sonos speakers in that group won’t duck. For example your rears. The device you talk to always ducks as it seems.

            John B
            May 1, 2020

            Okay, so i’ve done some more test including two Sonos One inside a group.

            If I talk to either one, the other one won’t duck.

             

            My guess would be: Sonos Alexa enabled speakers so not send out the ducking command at all? Could that be? I’d be very surprised, that would affect many people.

             

            No, my Beam ducks just fine.  Again, I have it’s mic off typically.  But just tried it with mic own.  Still ducked. I don’t know it if it was ducking because it was listening (although it didn’t respond, my echo Show did) or because it received a ducking command.  Taking a look at the Alexa group, the Show and Beam are listed as Alexa devices, The Beam is the preferred speaker.  I don’t even have the Beam listed as a smart device...which I thought was what made a speaker duck.

            But if its mic is off it isn’t acting as the controller for the group - that’s not the situation we are talking about, unless I am misunderstanding something.

              SeekyAuthor
              Prominent Collaborator II
              May 1, 2020

              Incidentally, Sonos factory resets never cure anything, and Sonos recommends against trying them for troubleshooting.


              I can tell you this is actually wrong. I had an issue where Sonos speakers were not able to skip songs anymore last week. The factory reset did really work. You can read it up in the thread from last week.

               

              Regarding the article you posted. @Ryan S posted a while later here, that a change was made:

              https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/sonos-one-echo-dot-group-ducking-6830792

              From https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3169?language=en_US

               

              To me it sounds that what we two just tried to do should work?

              SeekyAuthor
              Prominent Collaborator II
              May 1, 2020

              @melvimbe 

              I suspect you can reproduce it like this:

              • Put the Show and the Beam into a group, both as controllers
              • Set the Show as preferred speaker
              • Mute the Shows mic and activate the Beams mic
              • Start music on the Show
              • Speak to the Beam, if we are right the Show won’t lower the volume, but it kinda should….
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