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Eluder
Trending Lyricist I
July 27, 2019
Question

Google Assistant on Sonos One Gen2 Issues

  • July 27, 2019
  • 20 replies
  • 2943 views
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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    20 replies

    Doug Ames
    Headliner I
    July 27, 2019
    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.
    EluderAuthor
    Trending Lyricist I
    July 27, 2019
    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.
      Doug Ames
      Headliner I
      July 27, 2019
      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.
        EluderAuthor
        Trending Lyricist I
        July 27, 2019
        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.

        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.
        Doug Ames
        Headliner I
        July 27, 2019
        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?
        EluderAuthor
        Trending Lyricist I
        July 27, 2019
        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?

        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.
        Doug Ames
        Headliner I
        July 27, 2019
        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.
        EluderAuthor
        Trending Lyricist I
        July 27, 2019
        Not yet, but I’ll give that a shot.
        EluderAuthor
        Trending Lyricist I
        July 28, 2019
        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.
        Doug Ames
        Headliner I
        July 28, 2019
        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.
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