Question

Google.

  • 8 October 2020
  • 8 replies
  • 140 views
S

Hello, I was wondering if anyone can help me. I have a number of Sonos products including a Beam and Two Sonos Ones Gen 2. The Google Assistant that I have set up with the products is truly awful. I have to ask it several times to play a song or to even stop, it doesn't understand questions like “what time is it”. I have 3 nest minis and these work perfectly and understand every command. The nest minis are much further away from the router than all my Sonos products. My Beam is right beside my router. Can anyone help? 

 

thanks

 

 

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8 replies

M

That's unfortunate. I don't have a solution for you, but I was curious how well the Google assistant would work via my Playbar. I'm guessing the actual processing hardware and software that is built into the Sonos devices is inferior to the corresponding hardware and software Google has built in to their devices. And that is extremely disappointing because it should absolutely be the opposite situation. I paid, what, around $700 for my Sonos Playbar, partly because it has an onboard built-in Google Assistant. But now I find out it is absolutely inferior to the regular Google assistant devices that are already in my home? Yeah, that's some serious b*******

 

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the community guidelines.

 

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

@Morganonymous Your Playbar doesn’t have a microphone. You can only command it via GA if you connect it to something like a Nest Mini.

My personal experience with GA via Sonos is much better than I read in @suthed ‘s post. Is it better than on a Mini? No, but most of these differences seem to stem from Google giving their devices a head start on new and better features. @suthed Have you tried voice match?

Edit: advice worded to strictly.

M

@106rallye Thanks for the info!  Very interesting… I do have a remote control for my tv with a microphone on it, I wonder if that would work.  Unless you have to connect Playbar to another google device because the google device is doing the actual processing and the playbar is just acting as a speaker? But I suspect from what you said that the google device only acts as a microphone that relays that info to the playbar which then processes the command.  Is there a way to update the GA software for the playbar?  I would hope so, otherwise it would become extremely outdated pretty fast.  

Just thinking outloud, thanks!

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Take a look here: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3490?language=en_US

If your TV runs on Android it might work. On a Nest Mini I would add the Playbar as a preferred speaker, to get it to play Spotify for example is told to do so by GA, but this might be difficult if you use a TV for GA.

M

I don’t think my tv runs on Android, at least not that I know of. It’s a 2019 LG model. 

Anyways, I’ll look into your link, thanks for your help, kind sir. :wink:

S

@106rallye Ill give voice match a go - but I was hoping for a better experience with Sonos - Google Assistant seems slow and ‘laggy’ - not great really 

JamesDan
Userlevel 4
Badge +6

That's unfortunate. I don't have a solution for you, but I was curious how well the Google assistant would work via my Playbar. I'm guessing the actual processing hardware and software that is built into the Sonos devices is inferior to the corresponding hardware and software Google has built in to their devices. And that is extremely disappointing because it should absolutely be the opposite situation. I paid, what, around $700 for my Sonos Playbar, partly because it has an onboard built-in Google Assistant. But now I find out it is absolutely inferior to the regular Google assistant devices that are already in my home? Yeah, that's some serious b*******

 

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the community guidelines.

 

I have seen a few teardowns of the Sonos One and it actually has internals that are a lot more powerful than the components Google uses for its own speakers, including more powerful processing chips and memory.

There is one thing that rings true about Sonos products: they aren’t lacking in the hardware department, not one single bit. The part encumbering the Google Assistant experience is the software being used. The Google Assistant integration needs a lot of work, not the hardware.

I do understand your frustrations though, as Google Assistant on Sonos is severely lacking.
 

This is not to be expected of speakers from a premium brand like Sonos. While Google is primarily a software company and Sonos a speaker company that makes money selling hardware, there are quite a few other audio companies that have perfect Google Assistant integration, including things like Chromecast.

Sonos need to get this fixed.

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

@Morganonymous No Android, no GA….

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