Sonos as Intercom / PA system

Get a Panasonic TDA50 phone system. It has room-to-room intercom and a all page
Got it... Just a thought. I install them and they are great!

The SonosVoice App on my iPhone5 works pretty well. The voice quality is excellent, and the volume control puts all of the volumes at the same level when you go to adjust (Its a great start). If Sonos is listening, I recommend the following. Be able to preset which zones you want to be part of the paging and set the volume within each zone. Then when done, return all zones back to what they were playing and at the volume they were playing.

Jeff - that is not an app developed by Sonos ... it is a third party app.

Jeff - that is not an app developed by Sonos ... it is a third party app.
You are correct, it is a third party app and is why the developer called the app "SonosVoice". If you search "Sonos Voice" on an apple device, it will show up. Its 99 pennies. For me it is working very well. However when you are done with a page, the music does not return automatically. I am hoping Sonos integrates this into the "Sonos" app and does a little better job.

Jeff - that is not an app developed by Sonos ... it is a third party app.
Another vote for a "priority announce" feature to be enabled on *all* Sonos units... I see that there is an "autoplay" setting on the line-in on the Play:5 and the Dock, neither of which I have, so I don't know if the feature works as I (and it sounds like many others) would prefer... many units already have line-in inputs, so it would be a purely software implementation that sonos would need to add...
i.e. on all units that have line-in, some additional configuration options: Option to configure the input as a page/announce input, which when set monitors the line in for any audio signal, and when incoming audio is present:
a) stores the current source/volume/position of anything currently playing on that zone (or any group that it's currently joined to)
b) pauses the current output (if any) on that zone (and *optionally* also on other zones in the same group)
c) switches the live input on that zone (and optionally on other zones in the same group) to the line-in (some buffering may be required to ensure the first second or two of the audio is not lost)
d) plays the incoming line-in audio for as long as the signal is present. As soon as there has been a configurable period  (say 0.5 seconds) silence on the input, then re-instate the original source/volume/position which was stored in step (a).
this would then allow any line-in equipped unit to become a very capable PA bridge. My use cases would not be served so much by mic in from a mobile device, or the ability to only break-in to the current audio with a limited set of WAV files... I have a fairly complex home automation setup that uses text-to-speech to announce a whole plethora of events, I would love the ability to distribute that TTS audio all over the house right from within the Sonos environment. Currently I can accomplish something akin to the above behaviour, but it relies on a number of 3rd-party software components with all the attendant 'faff' that entails.
Sonos could implement an elegant in-system feature right in the Sonos hardware, and I suspect it wouldn't be all that hard to do...
The transition between the line-in audio and the original audio should be crossfaded, or at least have the option in the software to enable x-fade between the two...
Give me this, and I'm immediately buying a couple more zones!

Jeff - that is not an app developed by Sonos ... it is a third party app.
PAUL:   AMEN and AMEN!!  I have this exact same need!!!    I do home automated voice announces via the Line-In on one zone - -but use very funky ways to group zones to do this.   AND - - I have a near-impossible time to do any kind of "RESUME".  

There is an update to the iphone app for Sonos Voice. It came out 11/12/2013.  It is working much better.  Somehow they've got it so it will resume music play after being interrupted with a page from Sonos Voice.  You have to leave the Sonos Voice app on the screen until it completely stops, then it goes back to the music playing in the app.  It appears to have paused the music, then resumed it.  It's getting closer to what I wanted.  Sonos needs to buy this app and incorporate it into their system.

Mark

I just spent the $0.99 to try out the Sonos Voice app and here is my feedback:

1. Although it works, it is buggy and crashes regularly.
2. It does not seem to allow you to pause music from the app, make an announcement, and then resume the music; it just switches the source for the speakers you select to Sonosvoice.wav and then you have to go back into your Sonos controller and reselect your music source.
3. No documentation.
4. There is an echo/ffedback on the broadcasted voice that is sent to the speakers.
5. All said, kudos to the app developer for making the app though; it shows it is possible and there are ways to improve it... Sonos?

I agree with Mark below, integrating this into the standard Sonos controller apps would be very nice.

Actually, if you have the latest version of the app, after you use the page app, hit the stop button.  It takes a few seconds, and says "stopping...".  Let it finish, and then the music will come back on.  Works every time for me.  It was a big improvement over the first version.  Looking forward to them coming out with another version.

Mark

It would be great to be able to speak in a mic of a computer / phone / tablet either through a separate app or, better, through the controller, to send some announcement to a  player. That would bring a whole new usage to the Sonos system and potential drive buying more players. 

I could not test the iphone app as I am using android, but it looks like an interesting first step.

I strongly support this idea.