Recently purchased a Sonos One Gen2 to replace a Google Home in my bedroom and I've noticed that the GA support is highly suspect on the One. There are multiple issues that I'm wondering if others are experiencing:
1) No matter what volume I set the speaker, the GA's voice is the same (loud volume), how do I turn her voice volume down?
2) Can I set an alarm volume separately from the speaker volume (similar to what I can do with my Google Home).
3) This is the big one, I often get no response from the Sonos for simple GA commands like what time is it, etc, and eventually GA responds with "There was a glitch, please try again in a few seconds". Is GA on Sonos really this unreliable? It reminds me of my GH when I first got it who knows how long ago (but it runs fantastic now).
Appreciate if anyone can provide feedback, maybe I somehow have a defective unit and need to replace it, but somehow I doubt that's the issue.
Thanks Sonos community!
PS: I also have a Play:5 and a Sub and love those products, but the One hasn't impressed me like those products have.
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The volume of everything is affected equally by the volume setting, including GA voice, media playing, and alarms. Unfortunately there is no common standard for "normalizing" the volume of media to make it all the same and consistent with voice, so it varies from one media source to another, and most people feel that the GA voice is too loud in comparison to music. This is not specific to Sonos, it affects all Google Home/Google Assistant units.
It is not common to have the "glitch" message often. I've heard it with both Sonos One and Google Home, but rarely. I did have a problem for the first several weeks with Google Assistant on Sonos that there would often be a 5-10 second delay between me speaking a command and the light starting to flash to show that it was processing the command. That delay seems to have gone away a few weeks ago.
It is not common to have the "glitch" message often. I've heard it with both Sonos One and Google Home, but rarely. I did have a problem for the first several weeks with Google Assistant on Sonos that there would often be a 5-10 second delay between me speaking a command and the light starting to flash to show that it was processing the command. That delay seems to have gone away a few weeks ago.
I actually find the Sonos to behave differently than my Google Home when it comes to the volume. While on my Home the assistant volume changes based on the volume of the device, on the Sonos it’s just always loud, regardless of what volume the speaker is set to. Definitely doesn’t seem normal to me.
I guess I’ll wait to see if the glitch messages go away after a week or so, if not I’ll likely return or exchange the device and try again. It’s definitely not something I’ve heard using my GH in a very long time (more than a year), so I’d say this issues is more exclusive to the Sonos implementation.
I guess I’ll wait to see if the glitch messages go away after a week or so, if not I’ll likely return or exchange the device and try again. It’s definitely not something I’ve heard using my GH in a very long time (more than a year), so I’d say this issues is more exclusive to the Sonos implementation.
Eluder wrote:
I actually find the Sonos to behave differently than my Google Home when it comes to the volume. While on my Home the assistant volume changes based on the volume of the device, on the Sonos it’s just always loud, regardless of what volume the speaker is set to. Definitely doesn’t seem normal to me.
I just verified that the volume setting on the Sonos One affects both music and GA voice. Tell it to set the volume to 5%, and you can barely hear the music and the voice response. Set it to 80% and both boom out LOUD. I think it's just difficult to judge the voice volume in isolation in that middle range of 40-70% that most people use. You only notice that sometimes it seems loud in comparison to the music.
People have been asking Google for independent adjustment of voice and media volume since Google Home launched. No response from Google.
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Doug Ames wrote:
I just verified that the volume setting on the Sonos One affects both music and GA voice. Tell it to set the volume to 5%, and you can barely hear the music and the voice response. Set it to 80% and both boom out LOUD. I think it's just difficult to judge the voice volume in isolation in that middle range of 40-70% that most people use. You only notice that sometimes it seems loud in comparison to the music.
People have been asking Google for independent adjustment of voice and media volume since Google Home launched. No response from Google.
People have been asking Google for independent adjustment of voice and media volume since Google Home launched. No response from Google.
Mine is absolutely not like that. I tend to set the volume to a max of 10% and the GA voice is loud as heck. For example if I set it to 5% and my alarm goes off, I barely hear it, but if I ask GA something, she’s really loud. Based on what you’re telling me, it’s pretty clear there is something wrong with my speaker and I’ll be returning it. Thanks for the feedback.
Eluder wrote:
Mine is absolutely not like that. I tend to set the volume to a max of 10% and the GA voice is loud as heck. For example if I set it to 5% and my alarm goes off, I barely hear it, but if I ask GA something, she’s really loud. Based on what you’re telling me, it’s pretty clear there is something wrong with my speaker and I’ll be returning it. Thanks for the feedback.
It's very unlikely to be a hardware problem, so whatever the issue is, it's probably easily fixable with a settings change or a firmware update once you identify the problem.
Based on what you have written, you might want to compare different sequences of operations. What happens if you tell GA to set the Sonos volume to 5%, and then ask it the time? Is the result different if it sounds an alarm in between you setting the volume and then asking for a voice response? Maybe the alarm is automatically raising the speaker volume? It doesn't for me, but maybe you are creating a different type of alarm somehow? You haven't set up any automated volume controls, for example to change the volume at a specific time of day?
Doug Ames wrote:
It's very unlikely to be a hardware problem, so whatever the issue is, it's probably easily fixable with a settings change or a firmware update once you identify the problem.
Based on what you have written, you might want to compare different sequences of operations. What happens if you tell GA to set the Sonos volume to 5%, and then ask it the time? Is the result different if it sounds an alarm in between you setting the volume and then asking for a voice response? Maybe the alarm is automatically raising the speaker volume? It doesn't for me, but maybe you are creating a different type of alarm somehow? You haven't set up any automated volume controls, for example to change the volume at a specific time of day?
Based on what you have written, you might want to compare different sequences of operations. What happens if you tell GA to set the Sonos volume to 5%, and then ask it the time? Is the result different if it sounds an alarm in between you setting the volume and then asking for a voice response? Maybe the alarm is automatically raising the speaker volume? It doesn't for me, but maybe you are creating a different type of alarm somehow? You haven't set up any automated volume controls, for example to change the volume at a specific time of day?
The alarm was just an example, regardless of what volume I set the speaker to, the GA voice is one single volume, it doesn’t change. Plus the other issue of the constant glitch messages tell me this thing is defective. It’s already running the latest firmware so no reason for it to be behaving this bad IMHO.
Did you ever try it with Alexa? If everything works fine with Alexa, then you can be sure that the hardware is working fine, including the WiFi, the processor, and the microphones. Then switch back to Google Assistant, and if it's the same problem, then you know that it's something specific to Google Assistant and not the Sonos One hardware.
Tried Alexa integration. Similar problem with the volume; no matter what the speaker volume is set to, the voice responses are loud. The other issue here is that if I ask Alexa what the speaker volume is, the response is always that she’s having trouble retrieving that right now. At one point I had the volume all the way down, couldn’t hear any music when I told it to play some, and since she can’t report the volume I can’t tell what it is outside of the app. This definitely can’t be expected behaviour from the voice assistants.
That definitely doesn't sound normal. Does the voice volume go up and down when you use the controls on top of the speaker? If not, that's definitely a fault in the speaker. If the top controls work, it sure seems like a software fault.
At this point what I would do is:
a) Contact Sonos support and wait a couple of days for an answer. Given the standard of tech support these days, I would assume either no answer or a standard template answer from someone who has no clue. But Sonos might surprise you, so give them a chance.
b) Factory reset: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/1096?language=en_US
Sonos says "not recommended and should not be done in an attempt to resolve an issue", but they just mean that for routine issues it usually wastes your time reconfiguring everything without resolving minor settings or networking issues.
c) Warranty return to Sonos if (a) and (b) fail.
At this point what I would do is:
a) Contact Sonos support and wait a couple of days for an answer. Given the standard of tech support these days, I would assume either no answer or a standard template answer from someone who has no clue. But Sonos might surprise you, so give them a chance.
b) Factory reset: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/1096?language=en_US
Sonos says "not recommended and should not be done in an attempt to resolve an issue", but they just mean that for routine issues it usually wastes your time reconfiguring everything without resolving minor settings or networking issues.
c) Warranty return to Sonos if (a) and (b) fail.
+2I had similar problems with paired Ones gen 2. They worked well with Alexa. When GA became available I changed all Sonos devices to GA. They all worked well except the pair. I had so many issues questions not answered, 5 plus attempts to get a response I won't go on. Ending up factory resetting both speakers preferable to binning them. I reinstalled Alexa rather than GA. Everything now works Both assistants doing their job. I have two other gen2 in separate rooms both have GA no problems with either
I have already tried factory reseting the One and it didn't help.
Switching to Alexa had some issues as well, for example I ask it the volume, and it always says I'm having trouble retrieving the volume right now.
The only time it worked was when I lowered the volume to zero via the on device controls, then asked it, and it responded it's zero. Funny enough, I couldn't hear any music playing, but I could hear Alexa's responses loudly. Changing volume via the on device controls does not have an affect on Alexa's voice volume until I hit something higher (haven't precisely figured out at which volume yet where I notice the change).
I'm going to contact Sonos tonight (hopefully) to figure out if they have any ideas on how to get this thing fixed, but I'd say there is something quite wrong with this unit right now.
Switching to Alexa had some issues as well, for example I ask it the volume, and it always says I'm having trouble retrieving the volume right now.
The only time it worked was when I lowered the volume to zero via the on device controls, then asked it, and it responded it's zero. Funny enough, I couldn't hear any music playing, but I could hear Alexa's responses loudly. Changing volume via the on device controls does not have an affect on Alexa's voice volume until I hit something higher (haven't precisely figured out at which volume yet where I notice the change).
I'm going to contact Sonos tonight (hopefully) to figure out if they have any ideas on how to get this thing fixed, but I'd say there is something quite wrong with this unit right now.
Got a hold of Sonos support last night; they advised that changing the volume of the Assistant (whether Alexa or GA) is not supported on their speakers. My other issues seem to have subsided, so it could be related to this outage they announced yesterday, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.
The inability to change the voice volume may be a deal breaker for me in the bedroom, so I may return this thing and go back to my GH instead. Not sure how this was missed by their Product team, there is very little reason to not want the voice volume to match the speaker volume.
The inability to change the voice volume may be a deal breaker for me in the bedroom, so I may return this thing and go back to my GH instead. Not sure how this was missed by their Product team, there is very little reason to not want the voice volume to match the speaker volume.
Eluder wrote:
Got a hold of Sonos support last night; they advised that changing the volume of the Assistant (whether Alexa or GA) is not supported on their speakers. My other issues seem to have subsided, so it could be related to this outage they announced yesterday, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.
See, this is why people have so little respect for the quality of tech support these days. They answered your question with a boilerplate fact (Sonos doesn't support adjusting the volume of the voice assistant separately), while not understanding or addressing your particular problem (not possible to adjust the voice assistant volume at all).
Maybe they should all be replaced by an AI, because it's a lot like talking to an AI. "Help, my speaker is on fire!" Ans: "Sorry, the Sonos app is not currently supported on Amazon Fire devices."
Doug Ames wrote:
See, this is why people have so little respect for the quality of tech support these days. They answered your question with a boilerplate fact (Sonos doesn't support adjusting the volume of the voice assistant separately), while not understanding or addressing your particular problem (not possible to adjust the voice assistant volume at all).
Maybe they should all be replaced by an AI, because it's a lot like talking to an AI. "Help, my speaker is on fire!" Ans: "Sorry, the Sonos app is not currently supported on Amazon Fire devices."
Maybe I miswrote it, but no, he said the volume CANNOT be adjusted on the voice assistant, not that it can't be adjusted independent of the speaker volume. This means that there is only one volume for the voice assistant on the Sonos; if his response is wrong, well that's a whole other story.
I have 2 x Sonos Ones Gen 2 configured in stereo. Sound quality is excellent. Response to Google Assistant commands however is terrible. I have other Google Assistant devices around my home which respond to commands first time everytime. Is there a known problem here which is being investigated? Maybe a software update in the very near future? Any advice would be welcomed please....
I have the same issue as Ron. I have 2 x Sonos Ones Gen 2’s in different rooms. One wireless and one Ethernet. Both respond to Google Assistant commands perhaps just 30-40% of the time. I have a Google Nest Hub Max which response 100% of the time and also quicker to respond to Sonos (when Sonos decides to work)… I am very disappointed. I might have to standardize on Google HW going forward if this is not resolved. I am based in Ireland with 250Mb down and 25Mb up Internet connection.
Same issue here. Bought Sonos One with the idea to replace GH mini. Sound is great, but Google assistant implementation is a disaster. It responds not more than 30% of the time. OK, I'm not a native speaker, but I have one GH and one GH mini and never had issues with them. They respond almost 100% of the time. I don't think it is a hardware issue with the microphones, but it is something related to software. Although I'm very happy with Sonos One as a speaker this issue is a dealbraker for me. Was planing to completely change GH speakers with Sonos, but this won't happen if they don't fix GA implementation.
I also had similar issues with GA on my one. It seems the consensus is sonos's integration of GA is just really poor and they have no intention of resolving these issues. I believe they are currently suing Google over some patents so this could have something to do with it. In the end I just sold the sonos and bought a Google home max.
The whole situation was quite frustrating because the sonos one really doesn't perform the features it claims to. I would strongly recommend that people who buy this product to use it in conjunction with GA, look elsewhere as you will be disappointed.
Daniel.
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