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Sonos One Multi-room music speakers group

  • 28 January 2019
  • 11 replies
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The Sonos One has Amazon Alexa built in but it can’t be added to a multi-room music speakers group. Please work with Amazon to make a compromise and allow for Sonos to be added to Alexa multi-room speaker groups and vice versa. Thanks!
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Best answer by jgatie 28 January 2019, 13:31

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11 replies

You may not have heard:

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588/index1.html
Thanks for the quick reply and reference link. Unfortunately that doesn't work for what I'm trying to do. I tried doing what the article said a few times with a few different configurations but it still won't play simultaneously on all speakers (2 Amazon Echo Dots + 1 Sonos One). The link you referred is for setting up "Groups" which allows you to voice control any Alexa enabled devices from any Sonos or Amazon but it doesn't allow for multi-room speaker "music" groups, which is what I'm trying to do.

For example, I'd like to have music playing simultaneously in sync on my 2 echo dots and my Sonos One. With Amazon speakers you can setup a multi-room speaker group and call it "Everywhere" then all you have to do is say, "Alexa, play music everywhere" and it will play in sync on all speakers. The only way to do this is to create a multi-room speaker group (which is different than the "groups"). When setting up a multi-room speaker group in the Alexa app, it doesn't show the Sonos speaker.

See photos attached.


Amazon products only show up in the Multi-Room Music Speakers


But if I create just a "Group", the Sonos will show up (I named it Bathroom)



I assume it's Sonos and/or Amazon not allowing this feature for whatever reason.
Playing Sonos and echo players together in sync is not a supported feature. The Alexa group feature @jgatie reference is useful for setting 2 or more Sonos speakers 9rooms) to play together in sync automatically when you request music through an echo. It also allows you to essentially created a 'named group' so you can specific a group by voice.

There are various technical and business problems with having echos and sonos play in sync, so it's hard to say that getting them to do so will ever happen.
As stated, there is currently no way to group Sonos and Echo speakers together to play in sync. You can group Sonos, or group Echos, but not together. Their syncing methods being so different, it is doubtful if this type of function is ever available in the future.
Thanks for both of your replies! Yeah it's unfortunate and what I expected. It would be useful to have that feature but that's that same as wishing Apple and Google would align on everything, ha. Thanks again for your responses. Sadly I'll probably take the Sonos back because their ecosystem is too pricey to replace all of my Amazon stuff although Sonos has a far superior sound quality. I think it's a little misleading to add Alexa to the Sonos but limit it's ability to fully integrate with the Alexa ecosystem.
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Created a group of Sonos speakers in th3 Alexa app, but when I tell Alexa to play to that group, it only plays on the 1st speaker in the group. I can tell Alexa to play to any sonos speaker in the group. Is this because my sonos speakers are using sonosnet meshed network so effectively on a different network to the echo dot?
Not sure but that sounds like a good guess to me. I couldn't get my Alexa devices and Sonos devices to play music simultaneously so I returned the Sonos because I already had more invested in Amazon. It doesn't make sense why Sonos even offers Alexa if it won't seamlessly allow it to be added to the Amazon mesh or in your case just control all of the Sonos gear. It's unfortunate because I would've bought more Sonos eventually if they worked seamlessly with Amazon. Good luck!
Created a group of Sonos speakers in th3 Alexa app, but when I tell Alexa to play to that group, it only plays on the 1st speaker in the group. I can tell Alexa to play to any sonos speaker in the group. Is this because my sonos speakers are using sonosnet meshed network so effectively on a different network to the echo dot?

Sonosnet has nothing to do with it. I have Alexa groups with Sonos speakers and they work fine, and I'm using Sonosnet.

You may want to check out this thread for some tips on how to setup Alexa groups using Sonos speakers:

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588
It doesn't make sense why Sonos even offers Alexa if it won't seamlessly allow it to be added to the Amazon mesh or in your case just control all of the Sonos gear.

You're only really considering the one use case that you want to use Alexa for. For a person that wants to use Sonos for whole-home audio with voice control, it makes perfect sense. Or if you want really good sound in one room, settle for echo in others, and don't care about whole-home audio...it again makes perfect sense.

IIt's really not that different than having Alexa control your light bulbs or front door. It just that what Sonos does, playing music, happens to be one of the features that Alexa does by itself.
For sure, I agree with you. It's a great feature for those who have complete-Sonos-setups or for those that don't care about multi-room music on mixed brand audio devices such as Amazon and Sonos. People should just be aware if they have Amazon audio devices, they won't be able to add Sonos with Alexa to a multi-room music speaker group for seamless audio synced playback across all of the devices.

It just really breaks down to how you will use all of your devices. Unfortunately for my needs it didn't work, which is why I had to return the Sonos. The Sonos speaker has superior sound quality but if it doesn't work how I regularly use it, it becomes more frustrating than useful.

I also feel it's a little misleading by Sonos adding "Alexa" but not making it obvious that it has limited compatibility with Amazon products. Even on the website it doesn't mention anything about not being able to add to a multi-room music group with Echo and Sonos in the same group (https://www.sonos.com/en-us/alexa-on-sonos). I'm sure buried in the manual somewhere it talks about the inability to play seamlessly with Amazon but it wasn't apparent when I purchased it nor is it apparent on Sonos's website. I just assumed it would drop seamlessly into my Amazon Echo ecosystem after looking around on the Sonos website. Hopefully Sonos and/or Amazon will open up their networks to work together seamlessly.
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Sonosnet has nothing to do with it. I have Alexa groups with Sonos speakers and they work fine, and I'm using Sonosnet.

You may want to check out this thread for some tips on how to setup Alexa groups using Sonos speakers:

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588


Tried again tonight and it worked! Some speakers had low volume so possibly I just couldn’t hear them until I turned them up.:D