Multiple Accounts and Google Assistant


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So my wife and I just bought a Sonos Beam and got it setup. Admittedly we did little research before this purchase, we just learned that Google Assistant was added and thought it would be a nice addition and a perfect way to start our road to building out a nice sound system for our home...



Unfortunately we have been hit with disappointment after disappointment:

1st was the shoddy setup, we had to do a factory reset out of the box because for whatever reason it wouldn't go through the start up as expected. We resolved the issue, but it was annoying that this device had such a problem not even 5 minutes out of the box.



2nd was this nonsense about not being able to connect multiple accounts to the speaker - this is absolutely ridiculous. My wife setup the device and then when I created my account, thinking I was going to join the speaker and connect my accounts, I was sadly mistaken that the speaker was registered to my wife alone... how is this even still a thing? If the idea is this product is to be a part of a smart HOUSE then is should support multiple PEOPLE that live in said house. Again, we found the workaround of being able to sign in to one account and adding and connecting our different profiles for Spotify, Souncloud, etc in as different users, but it shouldn't be like this. This is a HUGE problem and I hope for how expensive these devices are that this is on someone's radar to address in the very near future.



Lastly is the deal breaker, google assistant. I now see exactly why this was delayed for so long and honestly I think it should have been delayed indefinitely until they fixed the fact that it CAN'T UNDERSTAND MULTIPLE VOICES! That is a HUGE selling point for google assistant, how they got sign off to implement it without such a key feature is beyond me. And the multiple profiles actually causes a conflict with Google Assistant where it can't choose which profile is associated with the set google assistant account. So that completely breaks the workaround we had for the 2nd issue.



As for as a speaker goes, this is a decent device. It sounds great, is aesthetically pleasing, and gets the job done for media consumption. However for this expensive product I was hoping to get more and I've been severely let down.



Does anyone have any insight as to whether or not they will be adding multiple account support in the future? More importantly will they allow Google Assistant to understand multiple voices? I highly doubt I will continue with Sonos without these features getting implemented. I could get a much cheaper sound system with the same quality that doesn't try to attempt features it doesn't do well.

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44 replies

The complete lack of any response from the Sonos devs made my frustration peak and so I have had to move on. I sold off all of my Sonos Ones and purchased a LG xBoom WK7. Here is a quick review for those considering the same move.

 

I tested both side by side playing music via Spotify. First impression, the WK7 is about the same size which is good, its a little bit taller, but the footprint is pretty much the same. Sound quality wise, the Sonos One is better, but the WK7 does a really job of competing against it.

Vocals and mids are on par with the Sonos One. The WK7’s bass is a bit muddy, there is better clarity and seperation with the bass on the Sonos One.

Only other thing I noticed was volume. The Sonos One at around 2/3 volume was on par with the WK7 at full volume. But the WK7 at full volume is still nice and clear, no distortion which makes me think it was a casting limitation, only later did I realise I was using Spotify Connect to stream to the Sonos and Google Cast to stream to the WK7.

 

But even if the volume on the WK7 does not reach the same volume as the Sonos, the more competitve price makes putting two WK7s in a stereo pair much easier on a reasonable budget. If you need a lot of volume.

 

The Sonos is still the gold standard for audio quality in this market category. The LG WK7 gives it a good run for its money and once you factor in that the WK7 runs Google Assistant natively, it becomes a much easier choice. The WK7 gives you all the functionality you would from Google branded speakers. I do not regret my change at all in the end.

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Sonos, any update regarding support for multiple voice profiles via GA integration?  Why is this topic being ignored?

Sonos, any update regarding support for multiple voice profiles via GA integration?  Why is this topic being ignored?

Sonos rarely, if ever, comment on their development roadmap and as this one likely involves working with partners, it may also depend on some development by the partner too. I am sure Sonos are aware of this requested feature, but I’m not so sure they will make any advanced announcement until such a feature is fully tested/ready, or about to launch. (if that is their plan?)

I think it’s perhaps a case of ‘wait and see’ what each new update may bring to the platform.

Userlevel 3
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Sonos, any update regarding support for multiple voice profiles via GA integration?  Why is this topic being ignored?

Sonos rarely, if ever, comment on their development roadmap and as this one likely involves working with partners, it may also depend on some development by the partner too. I am sure Sonos are aware of this requested feature, but I’m not so sure they will make any advanced announcement until such a feature is fully tested/ready, or about to launch. (if that is their plan?)

I think it’s perhaps a case of ‘wait and see’ what each new update may bring to the platform.

At a minimum it would be nice to see some acknowledgement. 

This is not a good workaround, nor should it seem like I am letting Sonos off the hook with this (because it's absurd that they don't support voice recognition), if you have a Google home mini already, you can put it in the same room as the Sonos, disable the assistant on the Sonos, and use the mini to make the Sonos play. Basically saying " Hey Google, play X on Y" where X is your music choice and Y is the name of the Sonos target speaker you want. That way the Google home is handling the assistant stuff and the Sonos is just doing what it does. (Or you can set the Sonos as the default play device for music requests from that Google mini in the Google home app)

 

Totally defeats the purpose of GA on Sonos, but it works. Like I said, bad workaround, and  I'm not letting Sonos off the hook but it makes the best of a bad situation. 

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Massive +1 on supporting GA voice match on Sonos.

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Any update? 

Dear Sonos

My kids each got a Sonos One for Christmas as they wanted voice controlled speakers.

The two speakers were added to our existing Sonos Setup with Spotify as music service. We have always been listening to different streams using the different Sonos speakers, and at the same time.

Is it not possible to add two different Google assistant for the two new speakers so we had to go with one shared GA.

The issue is:

When any of the kids ask their Sonos One for a song then music is terminated on all other speakers. This means that the Sonos now has lost multi-room capability! We assume the reason is that Sonos/GA makes Spotify percieve we are using more than one device.

We have now bought several Spotify accounts. It really doesnt help as sonos/GA cannot dedicate a specific spotify stream to a specific Sonos One. 

We need a software fix from Sonos so GA and Spotify see the Sonos System as one device allowing multiple streams at the same time. Multiple GA accounts is also needed for personalization.

For the time being we have created to two separate Lan systems for each of the Sonos One’s.

It is VERY unstable. Sometimes Sonos pause or stop for music for some reason.
 

Please, help.

 

Its ridiculous that you need to have the google home mini in the setup for this to work correctly. I bought 2 sonso One’s so I wouldn’t need that device any more. So yes, the only work around for now,it seems, is that you turn off Google assistant on the speakers, whose ONLY benefit over the SL is Google assistant, and use a third party device to control them.. 

 

REALLY bad customer service on the part of sonos for not even acknowledging these threads and complaints. I guess this is one of the reasons people still feel Bose is the way to go. 

Customer service is as important as sound quality!  

Have they brought any updates to Google Assistant integration at all? To me it looks like its stayed exactly the same as at launch, I’m also very disappointed about Assistant not supporting multiple users.

I have one Sonos Account with multiple systems connected to it (different locations). It all works fine and I am pretty satisfied with Sonos.

 

My issue resembles the ones on top, but i slightly different.

I also have different “Homes” in my Google Home Account (one for each location). When I connect the Sonos account to Google Home, I have to select which Sonos System I want to use. When I do so in Location X and I select System X for Home X, everything works as expected. But then when later I am at Location Y, when I add System Y for Home Y, then the devices in Home X have also changed to the in from System Y. So, I am no longer able to use the Google Assistant to control the devices at Location X …

 

Got it? :) .. I know it’s a bit difficult to explain. But in short: customers who have multiple locations (home, office, vacation house, ….) are in trouble ..

 

Any update on this????  

My wife wants to play Spotify and direct the output to our Sonos speakers her Google Assistant. We have one Sonos account (under my email), we each have our own Spotify accounts under family premium, and we each have our own  Google Assistant (under each gmail account). Using Google Assistant I can play Spotify and direct the output to all of the speakers in the house, including Sonos and Google speakers. My wife cannot direct her Google Assistant to play Spotify on one of the Sonos speakers it comes back and says her Google assistant and Sonos needs to be the same account. THIS IS A JOKE!! Is there any work around on this ? I appreciate your reply. 

bump

really need to fix. sonos competitors like Bose have full voice match on their speakers. 

What a Joke!!  Wish I could return all of the very expensive sonos gear i own. 

Bump. This needs to be fixed ASAP! 

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Voice Match for Google Assistant on Sonos has been available for about 3 months now.

There‘s an official announcement you can find here:

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/google-assistant-voice-match-available-on-sonos-6842485

Voice Match is not supported for Google accounts managed by Family Link, which is quite unfortunate. Many other third party Google Assistant speakers support this feature amongst many others while Sonos don’t.

Voice Match for Google Assistant on Sonos has been available for about 3 months now.

There‘s an official announcement you can find here:

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/google-assistant-voice-match-available-on-sonos-6842485

Voice Match is not supported for Google accounts managed by Family Link, which is quite unfortunate. Many other third party Google Assistant speakers support this feature amongst many others while Sonos don’t.

It still doesn't accept multiple voice profiles. One of the sonos support team confirmed that through online chat today.

Actually doing the steps here I think has fixed it https://en.community.sonos.com/google-assistant-and-sonos-229109/voice-match-in-ga-6827617/index2.html

SOLVED

I’m putting my experience in here because nothing I’ve found it quite accurate of the process as of Jan 2021. Finally worked it out. Hope this helps as it took my weeks to get this right.

  1. Make sure you have Assistant and Home installed on each users device
  2. Make sure Assistant responds to specific voices - now available in the assistant app settings
  3. Make sure both google users are on the Family Home network.
  4. Add second users spotify premium account to their assistant app account
  5. I actually logged out of all spotify accounts then re-added them one at a time as it seemed to fail several times if one of mine was logged in
  6. It should work by each users voice command on each speaker now

Please contact me if this doesn't work as there were several odd moments that didn't make much sense as to why they worked or didn't each time I did this. Good luck - hope this works for you. Working from home in Covid days this needed sorting as my wife is in one room and i am in another and had to listen to one account before. All the best.

 

James