Headliner I

Question

Sonos One problems

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
October 23, 2017
60 replies
9006 views

My Sonos One arrived this morning, I've unplugged my Echo and setup the One in it's place ready for use. I've upgraded to 8.1

Problems....

- You cannot change the wake word from Alexa.

- Music does not play. I say "Alexa, Play some UB40", Alexa confirms and says it is playing but no sound comes out.

- Other non Sonos skills don't work e.g. Hue. If I say "Alexa, turn on the Hall lights", Alexa says that the hall is not responding. This works fine from the Echo when plugged back in.

- The white light on the unit does not turn off when you disable it in the settings

- With the Echo plugged back in I say, "Play UB40 in the Kitchen" I either get "Shuffling songs by UB40 in the kitchen, something went wrong" or "Cannot find songs by 'UB40 in the kitchen' " :)

Anyone else have issues like this?

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Ryan S

Retired Sonos Staff

@VoiceOfSoftware, as far as I know, there aren't any legal reasons for using just Alexa as the wake word. The reasons are almost certainly technical, not legal. We're currently only using Alexa on the Sonos One, but I'd happy to pass on the interest in others to the team.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

J

Jcup

Lyricist II

Yep, for me it is the performance of the mic array that is the most disappointing - very touch and go and I find I have to shout to have any chance of getting a response. I'm disappointed but I believe that this along with the other niggles that people are reporting will get fixed with a software upgrade - probably fairly urgently. Also,.. I thought voice control for Spotify was coming next year, not later this.

R

rubberduck

Renowned Enthusiast I

Yes , I agree with the general sentiment, very disappointing product.... not as feature rich as an Echo. The killer for me is that spotify doesnt work at all, and any request for music get routed to amazon music....am I the only one that thinks that is a bit too much of a coincidence.

Nope.

A lot of us months ago thought the same when we found out Alexa couldn’t access our local libraries even though we thought this would be an obvious feature.

Only use for this is if you want to rent,sorry stream, music form amazon. I don’t.

R

rubberduck

Renowned Enthusiast I

Sure, if by "only if you investigate" you mean prominently displayed in the Announcement section article for Alexa on Sonos, the FAQ on how to use Alexa on Sonos, and the Sonos Blog entry on the introductions of Alexa on Sonos and the new Sonos One, not to mention a giant splash page on the main website stating:

Ask Alexa to play music from these featured music services. Or pause, resume, skip or change the volume with all services available.

Look out for improvements—like fully supported voice control for Spotify, coming later this year.

Yeah I don’t want to rent music, id like Alexa and solos to work with my local library not Amazon’s library

R

rubberduck

Renowned Enthusiast I

Yeah, Amazon is afraid of losing sales to Spotify so they don't allow Alexa to initiate play from Spotify on Sonos, but they don't care at all about supporting Spotify on the devices they themselves manufacture, and outsell Sonos devices by 100 to 1?I suspect that the most likely (and boring) scenario is that it's easier for Amazon and Sonos to get things working initially on a service that is completely within the two companies control. As we've seen already there's a lot to fix and literally adding a third party will slow that down even further. I'm sure some at Amazon will have seen that as a double bonus with their own service being 'exclusive' for a while.

It's clear Sonos have missed several ways already that lots of users want to use the new function and currently isn't supported. It's also clear (to me anyway) that Amazon themselves really need to sort out room support as the current approach is unworkable with Sonos in more than one room.

As for Sonos having launched when it appears to be too early, my guess would be that since Amazon have added new function to play music across multiple Echo devices, Sonos are in danger of losing what has become a core part of their market. Google are also getting involved. Music is the key use of these voice enabled devices right now and Sonos con't compete with Amazon or Google here. No, the Echo's won't be as good as Sonos, but at £89 each in the UK, and if you buy three you get £50 off, you can have voice enabled multi-room music for not much money...

Sonos will want to be seen as a higher end version of that, the trouble is that it doesn't work as well as the cheaper option probably will, and also doesn't work in the way existing Sonos owners expect, so at the moment it's in danger of disappointing new and existing owners which is not good. The reviews are all positive, but I suspect that they are banking on many of the issues being sorted quickly so that when people hit their sites in a few months time they're more accurate. In the mean time there's a bit of a gap between the hype and reality, the pressure is on Sonos to fix issues and respond to owners needs quickly. Amazon I suspect are more focused on their own new devices which launch officially in the next few days. I'm sure someone is going to compare the new Echo against a Sonos One, I'm not sure it's going to go too well at present.

Launching too early? It was in beta for over 18 months

J

jonhunt

Contributor I

You can of course use the wake word Blake’s 7 😳

J

jthynne

Contributor I

I had these issues after 2 days whereby Alexa stopped playing music. I posted it to this forum along with my fix if you search for posts by me. It involves a few steps of removing the skills and doing the same on the Alexa web app to fully get rid and then setting up again. It’s been working fine since

James

B

Bill M in NY

Contributor II

If you have a song playing from any other source but Amazon, Alexa will not work to stop, skip track or pause...
I find if I have songs in queue and Ask Alexa to play a new song, it will say playing new song and then it won’t play.. If I clear my queue it will work again.

The speakers themselves sound great but the software and Alexa are buggy.

UKMedia

If you have a song playing from any other source but Amazon, Alexa will not work to stop, skip track or pause...
I find if I have songs in queue and Ask Alexa to play a new song, it will say playing new song and then it won’t play.. If I clear my queue it will work again.

The speakers themselves sound great but the software and Alexa are buggy.

It will but at the moment you need to specify the room name in the voice command, if audio was started from the app.

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)

Ryan S

Retired Sonos Staff

If you have a song playing from any other source but Amazon, Alexa will not work to stop, skip track or pause...
I find if I have songs in queue and Ask Alexa to play a new song, it will say playing new song and then it won’t play.. If I clear my queue it will work again.

The speakers themselves sound great but the software and Alexa are buggy.

This should be resolved as of yesterday. The Sonos One targeting for Stop shouldn't be needed anymore.
It will but at the moment you need to specify the room name in the voice command, if audio was started from the app.[/quote]

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

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