Microphone sensitivity for the “Alexa” wake word is low

+1. Have been a avid supporter of SONOS up until now, but this needing to shout at Alexa to get her to wake up is very very poor. Looking to take this one back and rely on the dots which work almost perfectly. Come on SONOS, pull your finger out and rectify this stupid situation.

Also finding the wake word sensitivity very hit and miss and this is with little background noise and no music playing. At times having to raise my voice actually wakes some of the Echo's in other rooms.

To me it seems to have got worse over the last couple of weeks.

My 4 yo son simply cannot trigger the wake word on the Sonos One. He has near 100% success with a Dot. As others have said we need to talk loud enough that it triggers the Dot that is three rooms away before it triggers the One.

Same mic sensitivity issue for me. I bought four. One is exactly where the original Echo was in the kitchen. I have to face directly it and practically shout at it, when before I was easily heard by the Echo. SONOS: the most important issue here (assuming that it's indeed a software fix) is to give us a time frame. I like the One, but I will regrettably have to send them back within the refund window because the mic sensitivity renders them unacceptable. You say "no worries, it'll improve over time." I say, "how much time, and how much improvement?" After all, it's my kitchen, my money, and my time. I'd love to keep them, but I need info!!! It's a BIG issue, and I urge you to email all Sonos One owners with a definitive update on this. Please.

I have just bought my first Sonos product, a Sonos One, as a Christmas present. I agree we need some certainty on what and when?! Otherwise I will be a very short lived Sonos owner, as i don't want to give a defective product for Xmas...

I think Sonos need to take this seriously or lose customers, like me.

I've literally had my face sitting on the speaker and said "Alexa" and it was like I'd personally offend her by existing! Then when I do get a response, she is quiet as hell. Like do I owe you money or something? Why are you acting like that?

Wanted to post an update, I will say the situation has gotten better....sometimes. It definitely seems like it's being worked on, because at times I can actually speak relatively normally (still not as normally as I can with my regular Echos) and the One will pick it up. However other times I'll still be standing there "Alexa, Alexa, ALEXA" in a quiet room from a close distance. I'm not sure if the inconsistency is an improvement or not, but at least it's good to see signs of something happening.

However a new concern (for me at least, I'm sure others have noticed), the TV in the room where the One is isn't used often, but a few weeks ago my wife and I binged some TV one night, and I was hearing the One beeping with false positives several times an hour all night long. The One is probably 7-10 feet from the closest surround speaker in the room. Then last night I was on a facetime call with my iPad about 5 feet from the One, same thing, all conversation long the One was beeping and Alexa was going "hmm, I don't know about that". I finally just muted the mic until I was off the call.

For anyone here who wasn't an Echo owner from day 1, I will say that seeing the sensitivity change over time for devices like this doesn't seem to be uncommon. When I first got the Echo it picked up everything on day 1......everything. A few months later I started to notice that I was having to speak very s l o w l y and clearly to get the Echo to recognize the wake word. It was probably a year before it got to the point where the Echo is now, very few false positives and almost 100% reliability on picking up the wake word if you're anywhere near it. I will say I'm surprised that Sonos went as conservative as they did with the sensitivity, I would have rathered them skew towards over sensitive than under.

mjgunn, you made some good points. However, how can the sensitivity change without a software update? Since the original mandatory update that was done when I installed the Ones a couple weeks ago, there has been no firmware update pushed out to me. Do you know whether firmware updates are done automatically without my involvement or knowledge?

Regardless of the truth in what you pointed out about tweaking over time, I still have to decide whether to trust things will improve, or return the Sonos Ones within the refund window and buy some additional Echo products. Aside from the cost difference, the Echo listens well and sounds okay; the Sonos sounds awesome but doesn't seem to listen very well. Not sure what I'll decide, but that's the dilemma I and perhaps others face.

mjgunn, you made some good points. However, how can the sensitivity change without a software update?

Mic sensitivity and accuracy is in the cloud and the Alexa implementation, which do not require a Sonos firmware update.

Wanted to post an update, I will say the situation has gotten better....sometimes. It definitely seems like it's being worked on, because at times I can actually speak relatively normally (still not as normally as I can with my regular Echos) and the One will pick it up. However other times I'll still be standing there "Alexa, Alexa, ALEXA" in a quiet room from a close distance. I'm not sure if the inconsistency is an improvement or not, but at least it's good to see signs of something happening.

However a new concern (for me at least, I'm sure others have noticed), the TV in the room where the One is isn't used often, but a few weeks ago my wife and I binged some TV one night, and I was hearing the One beeping with false positives several times an hour all night long. The One is probably 7-10 feet from the closest surround speaker in the room. Then last night I was on a facetime call with my iPad about 5 feet from the One, same thing, all conversation long the One was beeping and Alexa was going "hmm, I don't know about that". I finally just muted the mic until I was off the call.


Yes, the sensitivity does appear to have improved a bit, I may finally be able to disable the Dot. However, was listening to NPR on the One, and it triggered several times from its own speaker! Doesn’t appear to trigger on music, thankfully. Still have to yell “Alexa!” to trigger the One when it’s playing even at moderate levels. Sigh. I’m confident all this will be worked out over time, but wondering why Amazon didn’t share its Alexa tuning with Sonos.

Will we need to go through all this again for “OK Google!”?