Trending Lyricist I

Sonos as Intercom / PA system

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
November 19, 2012
78 replies
50731 views

Surprised I can not find this idea in here. My house is not exactly small, and I am now running 7 Sonos players. When running the Sonos app on iPhone, it would be great to be able to select a sone (or a sone group), press a button and talk via my phone to that sone. I can not imagine it being a technically complex solution. I would be really excited about being able to use Sonos in this way, and so would quite a few others! (see discussion forum): http://forums.sonos.com/showthread.php?t=8672 Is this something that can be considered? If this could be a part of Sonos long term solutions, I would wait for it. Else I would need to start think alternative solutions.

intercom

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Contributor I

I also strongly support this feature. I have four zones in my home and would love to be able make announcements to my family summoning them to dinner or making announcement to guests who are outside.

Lead Maestro

Have you tried the Sonos Voice ios App?

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Contributor I

Have you tried the Sonos Voice ios App?

I saw the posts in this conversation about it, but I hesitated to try it because the current reviews are reporting issues, namely echo. It seems promising so I'll wait until there is more evidence it is working well.

Lyricist III

Have you tried the Sonos Voice ios App?

SonosVoice developer here.

If you turn your volume up really high, there IS an echo. And there isn't much I can do about it.

But as long as you keep the Sonos volume to a reasonable volume you shouldn't hear any echo.

But hey, it's only a buck. Try it out. If you don't like it just send me an e-mail and I'm more than happy to refund you.

Drew

Lead Maestro

Have you tried the Sonos Voice ios App?

It has come a long way since first introduced and works very well now.

Echo - if you call it echo there is a slight delay from when you speak and when it comes out the speakers. Just say what you want and don't listen for your voice and you are fine.

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Lyricist III

Have you tried the Sonos Voice ios App?

Thanks Chris. 🙂

That delay is Sonos buffering the audio stream. Sonos always delays playback by at least 0.5 second to buffer the stream. For music it doesn't matter and isn't even noticeable, but for real time audio it definitely becomes a bummer.

P.S. If you like the app you should totally go and leave a good review. :)

Drew

Contributor I

Have you tried the Sonos Voice ios App?

OK. I'll give it a try soon, and report back how I find it. Thanks!

Lead Maestro

Have you tried the Sonos Voice ios App?

Added review for the app. Drew - great work on all the improvements you have made since the first version (I have had since it first came out). The original had a lot of good intentions and the newest version has become a very solid and useful tool.

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Contributor I

Have you tried the Sonos Voice ios App?

OK. I purchased the app and find that it works pretty well. The "echo" associated with the delay is understandable given the buffering. Most of the time I'll be using this to communicate with rooms out of earshot so it won't be an issue. Overall the app functions as promised and seems stable. I'd recommend it to others especially given that it seems like Drew has been responsive to improvements.

Minor Suggestions:
I was a little confused in the startup phase when the app is connecting with the designated speakers because the button says "Starting..." so I thought I could start speaking. I think "Please Wait..." would be a little more intuitive. But I liked how it seems to make sure the zone was ready to receive audio before you started. I have my zones connected through a distribution amplifier to in-ceiling speakers and if they are in low-power idle mode they take a few seconds to wake up.

Sonos terminology uses "Zones" so it would be a little more consistent to refer to Zones in the app vs. "Speakers". This is just a minor point.

Another idea is to have an option to play a tone at the start of a broadcast which could be fun to catch people's attention.

Thanks.

Lyricist II

Have you tried the Sonos Voice ios App?

I agree with Rob. Very good suggestions.

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