Introducing Sonos Voice Control

@melvimbe -  yeah so I basically added SVC to my kitchen roams (and bare in mind I also have 2 One SLs in my kitchen), and then I asked SVC to play a particular album on the One SLs by using their ‘room’ name, but it said for me to check the room name in the app. I was saying the One SL room name exactly as it appears in the app. My rooms are a little complex as I name them the speaker name, with a hyphen, then the actual room, for example my kitchen One SLs are called ‘Sonos One SL - Kitchen’. Not sure if that is what is confusing it but I would not have thought so lol.

One other thing is with more music services the more precise you need to be. I called for playing “Main Stream” from Sonos Radio HD and it instead played a Mainstream station from Apple Music (my default music service). A quick specification of saying Play Main Stream from Sonos Radio HD fixed it, but you will just have to learn your stations, etc..

Wonder if it would be possible to create specific default stations for each unit. For us, we use Sonos Radio HD (Bedroom, Bathroom & Kitchen) but for my daughter the default on her Roam would be Apple Music. Probably too much but just a thought.

Yeah, I started that way as well but have learned to simplify it solely on the room. In the case of my Kitchen I have a Move as well as two Play 1s (no SVC) and so I have those as just Kitchen and my Move as Kitchen Move. It seems to work pretty well.

I do wonder if my ‘room’ names are a little complex as I don’t just have say ‘kitchen’ or ‘lounge’ 

Maybe I need to re-name them to try that way? But then how does it work if you have a Roam in your actual kitchen plus 2 stereo One SLs? Would one be in Kitchen and the other in say Kitchen 2?

Sorry if I sound silly but I have all my sonos speakers in rooms with their own actual name…… I may need to have a play around with my room names

I would not be surprised if that tripped it up.   I noticed in the list of commands, they had an example where the use the speaker name rather than the room name...’Stop on Roam only’.  They don’t talk about it, and Roam may just happen to be the room name if it was never changed from default, but I got the impression you’re allowed to reference the speaker name in some situations.  That would fit with the attempt to use more natural language perhaps.

I was going to suggest going with Kitchen One and Kitchen Two, but those may be problematic.  I have some named like that, so will have to see if it causes issues.  Also curious to see if it handles named groups well.

I suspect your room names are the issue @SarahN, maybe it’s the hyphen character, you need to include it when you say the name, perhaps?

James talked about this back on page one, and it did work for the Cruise Control station in his test.  I tried it myself and it started playing something from Amazon.  However, when I asked it to play Cruise Control radio, it worked, even though Amazon is my default service.  

As far as having different default stations, seems like it would be do-able since the commands are processed locally on each speaker.  I’m not sure I would want that as it would be confusing to remember the default of which room your in, but it does make sense for kids room.  If you never group your daughters room with other speakers in the home, you could just setup her room as a separate household, with a different default service.  That would cause problems if you’re using Alexa with SVC though, as Alexa can only connect to one Sonos household.

@Ken_Griffiths and @melvimbe - think I found a workaround. So I made a group called Kitchen and just put the One SL pair in it. Just asked sonos (via the roam of course), to play music in the kitchen, and it resumed the queued Amazon music I have on the One SLs, so happy days! 

It’s actually a good naming convention typically, IMO.  If you were building out a smart home, with several different types of smart devices in each room, you have often have to specify the device type/brand in the name to avoid confusion.  For Alexa, I used to name all my speakers with ‘Sonos’ in it, but they changed the icons around, and I know that any name without the device type in it is the Sonos room/speaker by default.

Just tried it also in my lounge which has the Beam home theatre plus a pair of Fives attached to my turntable. Made a group called Lounge, and asked SVC (via the Beam) to play music in the lounge and my Fives started playing their queued music so that is good to know.

I don’t need to re-name my actual ‘room’, just create these groups lol