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Is this normal? If so this is awful. It's exactly why I've never been able to use them for surround sound with the beam and alexa.



My room is very long, now I have to shout all the way across when I'm at the other end of the room.
Hello ratty, your right. It works the way you mentioned. It works. It’s definitely better in my situation. Thanks so much.
I just got my 2nd Sonos One (a gen2) and added it to a stereo pair with my first (a gen1). Worked ok the first time around, but then I thought since only one speaker is allowed to have the voice assistant, I should put it on the gen2 with the faster processor, which was initially on the right. So should be easy-peasy, right? Just unpair, re-pair, and this time press the button on the gen2 when asked to designate the left speaker. I can swap them physically.



Not so much. It turns out that most of what you read above is wrong. It is NOT the left speaker that gets the voice assistant in a pair, it is the one that had Google Assistant assigned to it first. In my case, the gen1, whether I designate it left or right. So I had to unpair again, remove Google Assistant from both, re-add Google Assistant to the gen2, re-pair, the change the name because now it has the wrong name. Ugh! What a mess.



Wouldn't it be great if you could have Google Assistant on one and Alexa on the other?
+1 on this - the mic should be enabled on both speakers. Seems like a big miss.
THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE THAT GOOGLE ASST ONLY WORKS ON MY LEFT SPEAKER 20 FEET AWAY FROM MY KITCHEN!!!!!! $2,000 SPEAKER IS UPSETTING US
THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE THAT GOOGLE ASST ONLY WORKS ON MY LEFT SPEAKER 20 FEET AWAY FROM MY KITCHEN!!!!!! $2,000 SPEAKER IS PISSING US OFF.



You can switch it to the right speaker, either in software, or just swap the speakers physically if you don't care which is left/right for music. You just can't have both at once.
This is poorly implemented. I thought it was my system problem. Wasted so much time trying to find a solution. Silly me to expect GA will work like Alexa. So dumb. Let me understand this, even with the hack, I can still only get 1 speaker to work with GA (L or R, but not L+R), correct?
+1 to fix this. I agree this is a bug and not a feature ...
There are two parts of the problem actualy:


  1. Only one mic is enabled for Google Assistant
  2. Only one speaker of a stereo pair is playing back e.g. News when started via Google Assistant.

If fixing the mic issue is trickier - why not at least allow play back on both speakers, as first step of issue resolution?
For me issue is less about active microphone and more (much) about have sound from both speakers when I'm listening to news, etc.

I totally agree with this point. It is weird to listen assistant from 1 speaker when I should have 5:1 surround in my livingroom
Sonos shouldn’t sell speaker sets that include multiple smart speakers if only one of the speakers in the set can be used as a smart speaker. I bought two Ones but effective have. One and a Play:1 due to this bug.
This is actually really crap in a bedroom when one person has to yell over the other sleeping one to turn off the lights. First world problems I know but at this price point....come on. Needs to be fixed ASAP.
one person has to yell over the other sleeping one to turn off the lights. First world problems I know

Amen to that.

Any status updates on this? Really want this fixed!!! Also bunch of feature requests around this like being able to quickly switch between surround and individual control of the speakers. 

Though I've not tried it, I understand that you can get GA onto the right speaker by:

  • un-pairing
  • installing GA on the right hand unit
  • re-pairing

This didn’t work for me, unfortunately. Tried it five times now.

I have a 5.1 set up with two Ones as surrounds.

I removed the surrounds, added GA just on the right one and then re-added both as surrounds. Once they were re-added, neither had GA working on them; I had to add the service again. When I did that, it only added to the left one.

I also tried removing the surrounds, adding GA to both and then re-adding them as surrounds but, again, had the same issue.

I know it’s not a big global issue or anything, but the right One is closer to my groove in the couch!

Same problem as everyone  else.  Bought the beam and 4 ones. First find out you cant pair 4 ones with the beam, only 2. So so set 2 up the ones as surround and found out the mic's are disabled when used as surrounds. So had to disable surround and use them as stereo pair and then find out the right mic is disabled in stereo pair.

 

Why did I pay so much for smart speakers that cant be used as smart speakers. And what kind of speaker system is this if they can only be setup individually to take advantage of smart features. Lastly 5.1 configuration have been around for decades and even that has issues?

Same problem as everyone  else.  Bought the beam and 4 ones. First find out you cant pair 4 ones with the beam, only 2. So so set 2 up the ones as surround and found out the mic's are disabled when used as surrounds. So had to disable surround and use them as stereo pair and then find out the right mic is disabled in stereo pair.

 

Why did I pay so much for smart speakers that cant be used as smart speakers. And what kind of speaker system is this if they can only be setup individually to take advantage of smart features. Lastly 5.1 configuration have been around for decades and even that has issues?

 

If you set yours up in a 5.1 config using a Beam, Sub and two Ones as surrounds, is it the Beam that has the mic active?

Just asking because I have a Playbar, which doesn’t have a mic, so my left One surround ends up being ‘it’ in a 5.1 set up.

I would actually be pretty happy if the central sound bar could be the one with the active mic - it’s in the middle, after all… To be honest, having too many speakers with active mics in a small area gets a little annoying for me with Google Assistant since you can’t control which one is going to answer. I end up trying to talk to my One in the bedroom and the One in my ensuite bathroom answers and plays the news!

Yes, the Beam’s mic would be active in the 5.1 configuration. 

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