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mikek401
Contributor I
February 27, 2021
Answered

Is the Alexa AudioPlayer interface now fully supported?

  • February 27, 2021
  • 16 replies
  • 427 views

Does anyone know what elements of the "Alexa AudioPlayer interface" is not supported on Sonos One?

The reason I ask, I have a skill that streams our radio station just fine on Amazon made speakers but plays only silence when the skill is enabled on Sonos One.   The skills interacts fine and says it is playing the station, but only silence is heard - no error prompts.  The station streams fine with the TuneIn skill but we would prefer to promote the "Get Me Radio" skill.  Wondering what I could tell the developers to help them determine why it fails only on Sonos speakers.

 

p.s. I have disabled and re-enabled the skill many times...works consistently with Amazon speakers but fails with Sonos One, no matter what station I select.

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    Best answer by James L.

    Interesting @Xander P .  In our case, the stream should be 128 kbps as we supplied this stream url: https://streaming.live365.com/a08828

    Hey Mike,

     

    The issue isn’t with your stream URL - that works perfectly fine and is as you say; 128kbps. The issue is with the URL the Get Me Radio! skill returns, which is https://alexa.getmeradio.com/stations/docradio-christianhits-2051/listen.pls. It seems like there’s an issue with that URL that causes the Sonos players to throw up an “unsupported format” error. We can’t say for certain what the issue is, but as Xander mentioned earlier, it looks to be identifying as a 33kbps stream, instead of redirecting to your 128kbps URL. In something like VLC player, the stream redirects correctly to the URL you provided.

     

    I hope that helps :slight_smile:

     
     
     
     
     

    16 replies

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    mikek401Author
    Contributor I
    March 3, 2021

    @James L.  @Xander P  Would you be able to provide the url of the .pls sent to your speaker when you say “Alexa, ask Live365 to play DOC Radio Top Christian Hits”?   The Live365 Alexa skill is able to stream the station on Sonos speakers so it would be helpful to compare the contents of that .pls with the ones that fail.

    James L.
    James L.
    Retired Community Staff
    March 4, 2021

    @James L.  @Xander P  Would you be able to provide the url of the .pls sent to your speaker when you say “Alexa, ask Live365 to play DOC Radio Top Christian Hits”?   The Live365 Alexa skill is able to stream the station on Sonos speakers so it would be helpful to compare the contents of that .pls with the ones that fail.

    Sure, the URL returned by the Live365 skill isn’t actually a .pls file, it requests and plays https://streaming.live365.com/a08828 

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    mikek401Author
    Contributor I
    March 4, 2021

    @James L.  @Xander P  Interesting... the official developer information from Amazon for the Alexa AudioPlayer Interface states that .PLS is a valid format for the "audioItem.stream.url" parameter:
    https://developer.amazon.com/it-IT/docs/alexa/custom-skills/audioplayer-interface-reference.html#audio-stream-requirements

    So that brings me back to my original unanswered question (and post subject): Is the Alexa AudioPlayer interface now fully supported?  Any chance you could ask a Sonos developer for the valid options for the audioItem.stream.url parameter?

    Remember they can easily re-create the issue by creating your own streaming skill and specify any valid .pls file: https://blueprints.amazon.com/skills/create/amzn.ask.bp.8f2b73a4-056c-4baa-a439-47791d941bad/en-US?ref_=ask_bp_detail_make

    James L.
    James L.
    Retired Community Staff
    March 5, 2021

    So that brings me back to my original unanswered question (and post subject): Is the Alexa AudioPlayer interface now fully supported?  Any chance you could ask a Sonos developer for the valid options for the audioItem.stream.url parameter?

    Remember they can easily re-create the issue by creating your own streaming skill and specify any valid .pls file: https://blueprints.amazon.com/skills/create/amzn.ask.bp.8f2b73a4-056c-4baa-a439-47791d941bad/en-US?ref_=ask_bp_detail_make

    I’m afraid this question would be better posted over on Stack Overflow for our developer community to take a look at. You’ll get a more accurate answer there a lot quicker than here, since this is a general community forum for Sonos products and services. 

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    Gavin - Get Me Radio!
    Lyricist I
    May 4, 2021

    @James L. 

    Hi James, is there any way we can contact someone at Sonos (business to business) to discuss this?

    We’re struggling to make contact with someone to find out how we can resolve this? Is there any way you could PM me a contact at Sonos to discuss further?

    Many thanks.

     

    Gavin. 

    James L.
    James L.
    Retired Community Staff
    May 6, 2021

    Hi @Gavin - Get Me Radio!,

     

    I’m afraid not. I can only suggest you contact our customer care team and refer to this thread, so they can pass the query on to someone who may be able to handle it further. You can make it clear that I’ve sent you over there, and they can reach out to me with any questions.

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