New Sonos speaker with built-in Alexa mics?

  • 23 January 2017
  • 7 replies
  • 2302 views

http://www.whathifi.com/news/sonos-plans-new-speaker-amazons-alexa-voice-control-tech

Dunno, i read the Variety article and did not come to the same conclusion. Maybe i missed something. Looks like new CEO may be open to an IPO, though. He's a sales and marketing type, so I'm afaid Sonos' long run of great engineering and support may be ending. Too bad, if true.

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7 replies

In August, Sonos announced that it would add Amazon Echo support to its existing speakers, an experience that the company is now testing with a subset of its users, who can now control their Sonos systems with the help of an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot. Spence said this week that the partnership between the two companies would eventually go further. Asked whether there will one day be a Sonos speaker that has microphones and Amazon’s Alexa assistant built-in, he said: “Yes, there will be.”
Read it before coffee, lol. Looks like it will be down the road a bit, then.
Isn't one already there, in the form of the mic equipped 5 unit? Why could that not go live in the first phase, with only other Sonos kit requiring echo/dot to be added for its voice control?
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
I doubt the play:5 mic would do very good for Alexa as not an array assume. Personally I think a remote dot not right beside speaker loudly playing music would be more reliable then a built in mic. And with obviously the format war in full swing and Google mentioned too - would building in for a single platform make sense.
The Play:5 mic is not the far field array needed for Alexa.
Hmm..pity about that. So when it does get used, I suppose it will be only for some advanced version of Trueplay.
Userlevel 2
Badge +1
This may be down the road, but I think for now we're going to have to have an Echo and it will just integrate with Sonos. Hopefully across multiple music services, because Tidal is just so much better on Sonos than any other service.