Contributor I

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How to activate Alexa mics on Sonos One surrounds?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
July 19, 2018
57 replies
15977 views

I have a Beam with two Sonos One surrounds, and it's my understanding that the mics on the Sonos Ones are by default OFF, and that the Beam is the only one with mic input for Alexa. Is there a way to turn on the mics on the Ones? I ask because I'm usually closer to the Ones than the Beam when using Alexa, and Alexa on the Beam usually has trouble hearing me (I usually have to yell). Thanks!

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Best answer by Ryan S

As soon as you Enable the Sonos skill within Alexa then all Sonos Alexa devices have the capability to take voice commands. Can you please open the Sonos App>Settings>Room Settings>{Your Sonos One} and ensure that Voice Services are Enabled? If not please click Enabled and follow the prompts.

This would work for everything but with the Beam and Sonos Ones.

When bonded with a Beam, Sonos Ones will have Alexa disabled on them. We found during testing that the best experience was when the Sonos Ones microphones were turned off. CEC based Alexa commands don't work through the Sonos One, so if those were hearing your commands instead of the Beam, it wouldn't pass them to the TV. I'll pass the word along to the team that you'd like to be able to turn the microphones back on, and more importantly, that the Beam is having trouble hearing you. That shouldn't be the case.

You might want to give us a call on our support line and see if they can help get the setup cleaned up a bit and improve the Beam's listening.

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UKMedia

I once purchased the Beam and Sub, had nothing but problems with it, returned them. Kept the Sonos ones, but now having the mic problem, just stopped working and yes I did disable sonos and re-enable it in my skills and yesi tried to turn on the mic, still not working. I am now replacing all sonos components and will never have another sonos device in my house and I will never recommend sonos to anyone wanting he experience sonospromises, but never delivers.

If you still have the Sonos One’s, can you open the Sonos App>Settings>Services>Voice Services>Amazon Alexa and ensure that they are listed as enabled.

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)

J

jay9000

Lyricist I

Any progress on this problem. It seems there is a lot of people who could benefit from this functionality. My partner who was sceptical about this setup from the beginning is about fed up with having to yell at across the room all of the time. Please allow the this function!

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John B

Any progress on this problem. It seems there is a lot of people who could benefit from this functionality. My partner who was sceptical about this setup from the beginning is about fed up with having to yell at across the room all of the time. Please allow the this

You could get an Echo Dot or Google Mini to avoid the need to yell. (Or possibly just an Echo Input, although I have not yet looked into those.)

I

ImranKarim

Lyricist I

I’d love to have an update on this from the Sonos team. We want to use our surround Ones the way we want.

Please allow us to use the mic and have Alexa function on the surrounds. This has been a request from many people on this thread. It seems like a common need and should be a reasonable request to the dev team.

Very frustrating at the moment since the mic on the Beam sucks!

M

mamba123

Lyricist I

Please fix this! Please enable alexa mics on Play Ones surrounds

I've the same problem. So please take a look and fix this damn thing!

C

chris911-4

Lyricist I

I spend half day trying to enable Alexa with Sonos 1 when setup in 5.1 and was not able to do it as the link to Alexa is lost as soon as you configure the play ones from stand alone to 5.1. This is very frustrating as I bought them for this purpose replacing 2xPlay 5 that i am using stand alone in another room. Please SONOS fix this setup issue. I do not want to add another Echo for this purpose. Thank you

106rallye

I am a Google Assistant user (on a Beam, setup with One’s as surrounds) and have no Alexa experience, but it does seem odd to me that Beam-users should have to shout at their Beam to have Alexa work. With GA this has never happened to me. With some issues I have had it has helped to uninstall GA from Sonos and then reinstall it. Would this not also work on Alexa?

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RGranada

Trending Lyricist I

Add me to the list of customers who what this ability enabled! I just purchased another set of Ones to add as surrounds to have extra Alexa capabilities. I was fine with having Play:1s but the wifey wanted an Alexa device closer to her. I figured I would replace the Play:1s with Ones since I have that set up with my Playbar. To my surprise it’s disabled with the Beam. Please come up with a software update!

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lyubomirs

Lyricist I

Yes, Sonos, add this, I cannot shout all the time. It just doesn't work.

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jrg128

Lyricist I

Another frustrated and dismayed user here. It does explain why they don’t advertise a Beam and 2x Ones bundle, only the Beam and 2 x One SL.

Please look into what seems like a fairly simple logic update, or even an option with some limitations if necessary.

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