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Sonos Arc or other voice enabled Sonos speaker recognition issues

  • 9 March 2022
  • 6 replies
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I am need of some support.  To clarify I have had number of Sonos speakers and google home devices for over 5 years I think so am familiar with both technologies and their capabilities however I have recently purchased an Arc which is the first sonos speaker I have owned with built in assistant capabilities.

I have set it up and the “hey google” wake word works 99% of the time regardless of how loud the speaker is this is fine.  However I have found the actual voice recognition is very hit and miss.  I have been doing some experimenting and to remove variables I only use a single voice command during testing “activate the movie scene”.  I have found that this probably works less than 50% of the time.  When it doesn’t work it is not miss understood, the speaker simply ignores the command completely.  Sometimes it only detects part of the command but sometimes it is the start of the command or the end of the command but never the bit in between or misinterprets the words.  Furthermore I have found that when it works I can say it over and over again at different volumes with a hey google in between each command and it works 100% of the time.  But when it doesn’t work if I do the same it never picks up anything even if I speak louder or move closer to the mic.

At first I thought there was an issue with the mic itself but if that was the case why would the wake command always work?  It is starting the feel like a software issue but can’t see that anyone else is complaining of having issues.

Would appreciate any feedback on how to further troubleshoot this issue or find a root cause or even just to know there is someone else who is experiencing something similar as I can find no evidence of this in the forums or happening to anyone else.

 

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Best answer by Ken_Griffiths 10 March 2022, 13:06

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6 replies

Excuse my response, I am new to the forum and just assumed based on your number of posts and the Sonos devices you list as owning that you were an employee.  I appreciate your direction.

Ken, thats a bit of a wishi washi answer, I assume you are a sonos employee?  Although I appreciate that is a demarcation point between what is Sonos responsibility and what is googles I would expect a better understanding of where the issue is before dismissing it.  Based on what I am experiencing it could be a hardware fault with the microphone.  I will test further with music based commands and see if I can create the same behaviour and report back.

No not an employee. Sonos staff are clearly denoted in the community. I’m just a Sonos user like yourself and simply trying to assist. Sorry I can’t help further, but it is possible to contact/chat Sonos Support Staff about the matter via this LINK. If you think the mic may have a fault, then I would also submit a Sonos Diagnostic Report and make a note of its reference for the staff to perhaps check on that issue too. Hope that helps.👍

Ken, thats a bit of a wishi washi answer, I assume you are a sonos employee?  Although I appreciate that is a demarcation point between what is Sonos responsibility and what is googles I would expect a better understanding of where the issue is before dismissing it.  Based on what I am experiencing it could be a hardware fault with the microphone.  I will test further with music based commands and see if I can create the same behaviour and report back.

In that case I don’t think I can assist further here, as I’ve not come across that particular Google instruction, but note that not all features are available through Sonos, as it not a full featured Google assistant, but rather it’s a ‘Google enabled’ Sonos device that’s mostly geared around music playback and control of the speakers, so whilst some features may still work outside of that remit, sometimes you may encounter things that may not always work as expected.

I was not aware of this but as it happens “activate the movie scene” is not a routine listed in my routine in google home it is part of an integration with Home Assistant.  I have found the same results with other commands but wanted to remove any variables when testing.

I am not sure if I have tried any routines on the arc, it is a curious feature not to be supported.  I assume by “not supported” it means it will work but if you have issues sonos wont help.

If there is a command you know to be supported I am happy to test with a different command but as I said I do not have a routine setup for the phrase “activate the movie scene”

I assume that your mentioned ‘movie scene’ is a Google routine that you have created. If that is the case, then see this link: