Sonos sound not ducking

My post above is a just a very simple 'example' of the Amazon Alexa grouping features and how they work with Sonos devices.

I have added a few labels/text to the same screenshot, which (hopefully) may also assist in the understanding of the basics of what each section of a group can do.

I thought it was membership of the group, not inclusion in preferred speakers, that determined which speakers ducked when the controller device received a command.  Or is this a recent change that I have missed?

Edit: Ken's annotated screenshot also implies group membership determines ducking. Having said that, in most cases they are likely to be the same.

John B

Yes the changes mentioned by @Ryan S sound interesting, I’ve not seen anything about the group changes either..??

Although it doesn’t Apply in the OP’s case, I understand the Sonos Ones with built in Alexa, cannot be included in the second section of a group for audio ducking purposes, but they can be placed in the 1st section enabling/controlling area and so they too will duck their audio when spoken to, using the built in Alexa.

There have been times however where users wanted to use their Sonos Ones in two groups, such as 'Kitchen' and 'Downstairs’ … the latter being a larger overarching group of Sonos Rooms.

Problem with using the second overarching group, is you cannot place the Kitchen Sonos One in the first controlling section of the ‘Downstairs’ group if it has already been used in the Kitchen group, as it can only be used once only to enable/control an Alexa group. Effectively that means it would not duck it’s audio when speaking to the controller/enabler in the Downstairs group.

... so my thoughts are 'perhaps' Sonos have now added to these features and made the Sonos Ones now also duck their audio if they are simply held in the 3rd ‘preferred’ section of the group? That would be really helpful and solve the issue of using a Sonos One in more than one Alexa group.

Hope that makes Sense?… but let’s see what @Ryan S has to say about the changes.

In fact I’ve tested the theory above @John B ...and the audio doesn’t duck on the Sonos One if it’s also held in the ‘preferred' section of an overarching group, so I’m not sure what the changes might be?

I’ve checked in with the team and it looks like the new changes I mentioned are still rolling out, they’re not yet there for everyone, but they should be by the next Sonos software update. With that said, I don’t think what you’re seeing right now is the new changes, so I’d suggest waiting until the next update to see if those changes make ducking on your system work as expected. If you wanted to test out a few things, you could try removing that Everywhere group, or putting an Alexa enabled speaker in there as the input device as suggested. 

John’s correct here, it’s just being part of the group, not the preferred speaker that sets the ducking rules. Preferred speaker is the device(s) that will be targeted by default for playback commands.

Please bear with me because I am new to all of this; I went into Devices, I saw my existing group of Sonos speakers which I have labeled “Everywhere”, and I added an Echo device to the group.  All 3 components of the group are checked off:  Living Room, Family Room (both rooms are Sonos speakers) and Outside (which is an Echo).

When I give the command to “play music Everywhere”, the Echo does not play, even though it is checked off in the group.  What am I missing?

Can you perhaps screenshot your Amazon Group and post it here so we can see please.👍

That looks fine, when you speak to the ‘outside’ Alexa device and ask it to play music, the two Sonos devices ‘Living Room' and ‘Family Room’ should Group together automatically and Play the music. 

You wont get it to also play on 'outside’ echo device in this case, as speakers from different manufacturers do not play together. That’s how it is unfortunately.

Got it, and yes, the sound does duck with the echo as part of the group.  So, the idea is, the echo won’t play the music as part of the group with Sonos in it, which is actually fine, but it will serve to duck the sound when I give a command, is that it?