Sonos and Alexa Smart Groups Integration

I think his point/confusion was Sonos is advertized as an Alexa when it isn't. I just hate to see threads turn ugly.

Like I said, this thread is now completely derailed.

This has absolutely nothing to do with 3rd party audio speakers or grouping speakers in audio groups of any kind. I do not want to group audio speakers together.

Let me try and make it simple. Let's assume for this scenario that I have two rooms, called a kitchen and a lounge. In each room I have two smart lights, a Sonos Play:3 speaker and an Amazon Echo Dot. Therefore from a smart device perspective it might look like...

My lounge has the following devices:

Lounge Echo
Lounge Light 1
Lounge Light 2
Lounge Sonos

My kitchen has the following devices:

Kitchen Echo
Kitchen Light 1
Kitchen Light 2
Kitchen Sonos.

Before Amazon gave us the new Alexa enabled smart home groups, If I wanted to turn on all of the lights in the lounge I could

1) Say "Alexa turn on Lounge Light 1" followed by "Alexa turn on Lounge light 2"
2) Create a smart home group called lounge, with Lounge Light 1 & 2 in it, and then say "Alexa, turn on lounge lights"

Either way would work, and you could do something similar for the kitchen.

For Sonos, to get Alexa to play music I have to tell Alexa which Sonos to play on. If I don't, and I just said "Alexa play music" then music will play from the Echo dot device that was closest to me and responded. Sonos remains silent. (Remember, this is a Play:3 and an Echo Dot.)

With the new Alexa enabled smart groups, things change. And what they change for is *NOT* for grouping audio, I am not using that feature and do not want to create any kind of audio group, either in Alexa or by grouping my two Play:3's together in Sonos.

Now, I can create an Alexa enabled smart group by adding the Echo Dot into that group, which was not possible before. So, taking the lounge as the example again, I now have a new smart group called lounge (not audio group) that has the following devices in it:

Lounge Echo
Lounge Light 1
Lounge Light 2
Lounge Sonos

To turn on the lights in the lounge I now only have to say "Alexa, turn on lights" and because Alexa now knows it is in a group with other smart devices, some of which are lights, it turns on Lounge Light 1 and 2, which is a much more natural way to interact with Alexa for most people. You walk into a room, and if it has an Echo, and other devices, Alexa defaults to using the devices in the SAME room.... because I configured them in an Alexa-enabled smart group. (Still no sign of any audio grouping...)

My questions were around...

1) It would be really nice if Sonos could use this new functionality so that instead of me having to say in the Lounge, Alexa play music on Lounge Sonos, all I had to say was "Alexa, play music" and just as it does with the lights, Alexa defaults to using the Sonos (just the one... still no audio grouping of any kind) and my configured/supported music service starts to play from my Lounge Play:3. That is it. Audio coming from just one speaker, but I didn't have to name it because I was in the same room, and now Alexa knows this... and if Alexa knows this, then presumably it can instruct the appropriate Sonos speaker to play music just as it was able to tell my Hue Bridge to turn on the lounge lights.Likewise if I now moved to the kitchen, all I have to say is "Alexa turn on lights" and "Alexa play music", and because I'm now talking to the Kitchen Echo Dot, and it knows about the smart group it is in, by default I don't have to name everything when I ask Alexa to do something.

2) If using the above, Alexa knows what Sonos speakers are in the same room as it, or conversely it knows that it is not grouped with a Sonos speaker, could that not be a solution to the current multi-room ducking problem where regardless of what Echo device you might use, *ALL* Sonos speakers duck. This still does *NOT* involve any audio speaker grouping of any kind...

Now, I can think of two complications. The first is that my scenario is using a Play:3 and an Echo Dot... not a Sonos One. In my scenario, "Alexa play music" will cause audio to play on the Echo Dot. I do NOT want the Echo Dot and the Play:3 in the same room to be grouped at all for audio playback in any way shape or form. Therefore in this scenario, Amazon and Sonos need to figure out a way of specifying a preferred device in a smart group for music playback to default to. IF that is a Sonos speaker, then all the restrictions around what a Sonos speaker can or can't support apply. It is not a way to sync music from an Echo to a Sonos using new API's. Just a way to initiate music playback on Sonos via Alexa in the same room without having to actually say the Sonos device name.

The second complication is in fact the Sonos One. Here, obviously, as the Sonos speaker itself is the Alexa device it defaults to that Sonos speaker and only ducks that Sonos Speaker. Fair enough. But that's not really a reason to buy a Sonos One for most of us existing Sonos users. Also, the one comment above by UKMedia comes into play for now, which is the new Alexa enabled smart groups only support actual Echo devices. So as one person accurately summed it up in another thread, you can either turn the lights on without using a name with an Echo+Sonos, or you can play music on a Sonos One without saying a room name, but have to say the name for all your lights and other smart devices. With the new groups, hopefully both setups can work the same way, which is good for all Sonos+Alexa users.

I am sure that the Sonos One will be able to participate in the new Alexa Enabled Smart Groups soon, but either way my requests were for Sonos to basically make use of these new groups. It benefits existing Sonos users with Echo devices, and also will benefit Sonos One users who add smart devices.

So, absolutely nothing to do with multi-room audio of any kind, despite a certain person trying their best to tell me what I needed were a whole load of multi-room music API's that aren't out yet, and going to great lengths to list their restrictions.

This is why I still say it was derailing this thread and completely off topic for what I am trying to talk about. This has nothing to do with multi-room music. It is 100% about the new capability for an Echo, and hopefully at some point a Sonos One to know more about what devices are close by, so that you can use more natural commands to initiate playback, and perhaps also as a result have more intelligent ducking. And that is it...

Thanks for the detail and I also would very much like to configure Alexa the same. However, as the Sonos 1 is an 'Alexa Enabled' device and not an 'Alexa' device it is not possible to create a group with the Sonos 1 as the room voice controlling device. Also, as it is a 3rd party speaker, from an Amazon view point, it is not possible to group the Sonos 1 to your Echo dot with the Echo Dot as the voiced controlling device.

I agree 100% that it would be great if we could and I've spent a couple of hrs trying to get this to work but I still think that this is an area of functionality that is within the design/implementation remit of Amazon and not Sonos, due to licensing restrictions.

Thanks for the detail and I also would very much like to configure Alexa the same. However, as the Sonos 1 is an 'Alexa Enabled' device and not an 'Alexa' device it is not possible to create a group with the Sonos 1 as the room voice controlling device. Also, as it is a 3rd party speaker, from an Amazon view point, it is not possible to group the Sonos 1 to your Echo dot with the Echo Dot as the voiced controlling device..You have to break the line of thought that says if I group a speaker and an echo together it equals speaker grouping. :)

This is about grouping smart devices together that just happen to be speakers. That is all an Alexa enabled smart group is. Forget audio.

Once you do that, you realise that there is now a way for Alexa to know what other smart devices it is grouped with. This could not be done until last week. And I have my Echo Dot in an Alexa enabled smart group with a Sonos speaker (not a Sonos One admittedly) in that group too.

Now that Alexa knows what smart devices we want it associated with, it can potentially make better decisions about how to control those devices.

Now for Sonos speakers, that means it could default to using a particular Sonos speaker for music (not Alexa voice playback) or perhaps more importantly the Sonos Alexa skill could make a much more intelligent decision on speaker ducking in more complex homes. This is still nothing to do with audio grouping between Echo's and Sonos. I do think however responsibility will be shared between Amazon and Sonos to make it work smoothly. Amazon may need to make changes to accommodate what Sonos need to do to make it work seamlessly.

As I said, I think the Sonos One confuses things slightly because it seems to lag behind Echo devices functionally on the Alexa front. I'm hoping for everyone's sake that in general the Sonos Alexa implementation catches up with Amazon's Echo devices. If it doesn't then it's just going to frustrate and annoy people IMO.

[You have to break the line of thought that says if I group a speaker and an echo together it equals speaker grouping. :)
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That true 🙂 And I was also confusing your topic with what I was trying to do, which is subtly different 🙂 I think we are in total agreement now.:$

Thanks for the detail and I also would very much like to configure Alexa the same. However, as the Sonos 1 is an 'Alexa Enabled' device and not an 'Alexa' device it is not possible to create a group with the Sonos 1 as the room voice controlling device. Also, as it is a 3rd party speaker, from an Amazon view point, it is not possible to group the Sonos 1 to your Echo dot with the Echo Dot as the voiced controlling device.

Not to derail this thread too much, but what was the business case for the Sonos ONE, especially given the horrible Sonos Alexa skill integration, which I don't assume is any better when using the Sonos ONE? I really wish Sonos had spent their engineering resources on better integration, not sticking an Echo Dot into a Play:1.

One thing I wonder about is why Sonos doesn't release a version of the Alexa skill that uses the "Tell Sonos to group living room and dining room and kitchen" format where the "tell " part is an all purpose escape hatch that doesn't require Alexa back end support other than to dispatch the skill and pass it the words that Alexa recognized. Sure it won't "integrate" with the Alexa Smart Home feature, but today's Sonos skill doesn't really integrate that well with that feature either.

If I had to guess at why Sonos have launched the One and Alexa integration in it's current state it would be because Amazon are taking a run at what has probably become their core market adding the ability to link Echo's for audio between rooms. (Which is still nothing to do with these smart groups 😃 ) Amazon are selling a lot of Echo's and able to put substantial advertising behind it, and are also less than half the price per speaker (if you take the new Echo, not Echo Plus) than a Play:1 or Sonos One.

The problem with that approach is that the functionality of Alexa outside of an Echo device is far more limited, and the control capabilities are a rapidly moving target as seen. Maybe Sonos are gambling that by the time people unbox Sonos One's on Christmas Day, they will have gotten the integration working a lot better (Spotify added, and most annoying bugs sorted) so that by then the experience won't be quite so bad. The risk is that in the meantime they alienate early adopters or existing customers. This is where I think they need to drop the normal we can't tell you what's coming policy and be a lot more open until it's improved.

As for using something like "Alexa, tell Sonos...." I suspect the problem is that much of the function that tells Sonos speakers to do stuff is actually in the software controller app, which is not running permanently. The Sonos devices themselves are quite dumb and just play what they're told to. So there's nothing to hand off to, unlike say a Harmony hub, where there is a dedicated device sat there all the time.

It could be that the ultimate best answer for Sonos to integrate with lots of voice assistants is to have a Sonos Hub device that sits on the network. This could be combined with boost/bridge functionality as well perhaps.

Like I say though, things seem to be changing rapidly with Alexa (and I'm sure the other voice assistants) as these new smart groups show, and it's going to make Sonos job quite difficult over the coming year or two just trying to keep up with what are three very big companies fighting for marketshare here, Amazon, Google and Apple...

Actually, Sonos has confirmed that the 'hub' functionality is handled by the new Sonos cloud. Effectively, the flow is as follows:

Alexa device sends voice to AVS Cloud which interprets voice into commands.

AVS Cloud sends interpreted commands to Sonos Cloud.

Sonos Cloud sends commands to Sonos device(s).

Sonos device then acts on command.

The flow jgatie stated above is very crucial I think when asking the question, "Why doesn't the sonos/alexa integration do XXXX?"

So when we say we want to tell Alexa to play music on Sonos without having to specify the Sonos zone, you have to realize most, if not all, of the development is on the Amazon/AVS side. Sonos is the receiver, it can't do anything that Alexa doesn't tell it to do. If Alexa doesn't know how to tell Sonos what to do, then it can't happen.

So yes, the obvious solution that if the Alexa app allowed a sonos zone to be added to a smart group, along with a specifc echo, then Alexa should know that when I request music played on that echo, I mean I want to play it on the specific zone listed in the smart group. Amazon can now tell Sonos what music on what zone, no problem. And Amazon has to do this, nothing Sonos can do.

Now, on the other hand, theoritically, it could work where Sonos recieves the command to play music from Amazon and determines what zone to play it in based on what echo made the call. That could work, but that means you have to map a sonos zone to an echo within the sonos app. Not sure Amazon would allow that, and it's not ideal for customers anyway since smart groups in on the Alexa app for everything else. It also limits future functionality for combining other smart devices with Sonos zones in routines, utilizing smart groups and such. It works for these feature, but it's not ideal, and it isn't an elegant solution.

Really, when you're designing these things, you want to separate your control and actual functionality as much as possible. It's a big part of the reason why Sonos works well, with separate controllers and the sonos devices providing all the functionality. When you start blending things, it's confusing, and you run into barriers when you need to add new functionality. It does run into issues because it often means certain seemingly easy features become more difficult to impliment than you would think, but it is the better design over all.

So yes, Amazon/Alexa needs to be the controller for this integration, which means Sonos has to have Alexa provide a lot of the functionality that it could do it self, in order to do it right.