Echo Dot on Sonos Connect Line-in

1) The line-in needs to wake up first. Setting the Wake Up tone to on in the Alexa app will wake up the line-in in time to hear the responses. It's in Settings > Your Echo’s Name > Sounds. From there you can turn on 'Wake up sound, Play a confirmation sound when you wake the Echo'.

2) The setup above is not the newly announced Alexa voice control. It merely sends Alexa audio to your Connect line-in. For the actual Alexa skill, you do not need a cable and it will allow you to control audio on all of your Sonos speakers. See this link on how to setup the actual Alexa skill:

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/alexa-now-playing-on-sonos-6791301

I've got the same setup with an echo dot audio-out connected to a play5, which has been setup since last year and worked without issue. Recently (within the last week or two), when Alexa "talks" through the audio-out, the play5 is VERY quiet, but then when it plays music via spotify through Alexa, it's normal volume. So I can't hear Alexa's responses when i ask for the time or set a timer, but when i play music it sounds normal.

I understand the new skill eliminates the need for connecting through audio out, but it didn't work when I tried to use spotify as the default music player in Alexa, so I've kept is hard-wired for the time being.

Have you had any reports of this, or know what i can do to fix the issue of Alexa whispering to me except when she is playing music through audio-out?

What you're seeing John is part of a feature called Ducking. We talked about it here.

Some more work is being done on it right now, but for now, it's actually working the way it's supposed to.

it might be the ducking functionality that Ryan pointed out. If you turn it up a lot, do you hear anything? When you ask her to play music, does it play anything?

probably unlikely, but if you have the sonos paused, it won't play the audio via the audio-in either.

@johnleese I'm not playing any music at the moment via my Sonos, does that count as "paused", the volume of both my dot and my Sonos are at maximum and the receiver is fairly loud as well, normal music okay and even during setup of the dot I could hear the audio from the dot perfectly via the line in on my connect.

by paused i mean the play/pause button on the top of the unit. it toggles between play and paused (same functionality in the app). I don't have a connect to know much about any limitations on functionality or troubleshooting. I'd verify that if you unplug the audio-out from the dot, that the dot plays audio as you would expect. I'd verify that if you play music through the app to your sonos, it plays as intended. and i'd check any setting in the sonos app regarding the line-in - you want the connect to play the line-in when it's detected. (don't have the app in front of me right now). and if you have the alexa sonos skill enabled but are using the audio-out, i'd inactivate the skill (to address the ducking issue if that's what going on).

So I got myself an Echo dot, I connected it with an RCA-Y cable to the line in of my Sonos Connect.

No longer need to connect the Dot to Sonos via analog connection, it's done in the cloud now ( except Spotify for now).

@chicks sure but I want the audio feedback of the dot coming through my sonos and not the little speakers of the dot, hence the connection to the line-in...