Interesting read. Nice to see what the developers of Snips had envisioned for their voice assistant before Sonos bought them.  They had a rather bold vision, but more than what Sonos is doing with the tech right now, but I doubt they would have been able to really make it happen.  Just not enough capital or experience.  As well, we don’t know where Sonos will take this in the future.

Some commentators over on the Reddit forum are reporting having the new Sonos voice on their updated app. But then some others don’t (me included in the UK). Do we have any news on whether some countries have this included in the 14.8 update?

Not available here in the US, so I wonder if those folks posting in the reddit thread may be tied in some way to a beta, and shouldn’t be posting about it. But yes, I’m running S2 14.8. Only two voice assistants offered in the iOS controller, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. 

Me too. Besides the update there was a huge speaker update but nothing for me with 14.8. Someone said their was no Beta for 14.8 that it didn’t have SVC in it.

Sonos has said here that all users regardless of where they are located in the world will get SVC at the same time via the same version update. The only difference in user experience of SVC should be where the different streaming services that SVC works with have different availability across the world.

To clear up any confusion - Sonos Voice Control is not available yet.

It will launch on June 1st as originally stated in this thread 

@James L. While I liked your answer, I do not like your answer. 

eh.  Just one week to go.  I only wish it went live on a weekend so I could play with it immediately, rather then wait till I get home from work.

edit: Of course, that would likely mean more Sonos staff would have to work the weekend for support reasons...which makes me a tiny, tiny, bit sad.  

Hey Sonos!

Add UK

Add Spotify

Lots to read in this thread, but English will be one of the released language and UK will be getting it. 

Hey all,

I’m really excited to announce that Sonos Voice Control is now available globally in US English!

We’ve published an article detailing the full list of commands you can use with SVC:

Please continue to leave us feedback on your SVC experiences 

SVC is working okay for me here in the UK. I will just briefly mention that during ‘first-time’ setup (on a Sonos Roam) I didn’t initially notice an option to set a ‘default’ music service for the new voice assistant (unless I missed that?), but I did find that it was possible to set that quickly anyway by going to ‘Settings/Services & Voice/Voice/Sonos Voice Control’ in the App where I was able to easily set a default music service (Amazon Music in my own case).

What has surprised me is just how quick the service responds to a request to play music - it started playing the requested audio much more quickly than the other voice services I use. I just need to go away and play some more with the commands available.
 

One further thing I did notice is my Roams ‘Now Playing’ screen showed an ‘UltraHD’ badge, so it looks like the voice-requested audio is in the available higher resolution formats, where such tracks are available from the music services and is supported of course by the chosen Sonos playback device. So that’s great to see too.

@Ken_Griffiths - that’s all good to hear as I’m in the UK too. Currently in the office but will have a play around with it when I get home. I too have Amazon so will link that as my preferred service and I’m glad to hear it will play the HD and Ultra HD music.

Another UK user saying all’s good so far. My Playbase/Sub/One’s HT system responds well, and I can choose which of the One’s has voice recognition active. Control of different rooms also working great, as is selection of artists to play. Nice work, Sonos. And you’ll tell me the time and respond to a “thank you”

US here. I was pleasantly surprised to wake up with SVC upon opening. No update needed!  Setup was easy, less than a minute for each of my devices. Did not see the default music choice in set up as well but knowing it was out there, it was easy to find and turn on-Apple Music for me. Still figuring out timing of asking and response as was stated; it seems quicker and don’t have to pause between statements. My wife and I use Sonos HD Radio mostly so this is a great help that it now supports voice commands for that. Well done Sonos, can’t wait to turn off Alexa. 

Played around with it a bit this morning.  Not enough to really get anything close to a full impression.  Being able to group rooms by voice is probably going to be my favorite feature.  It also does seem like it understand natural language a bit better.

It’s going to take a little mental training to get used to a new voice assistance.  At least twice, I said ‘Hey Google’ instead of ‘Hey Sonos’.

@James L. Just to confirm can you have Alexa and sonos Voice enabled at the same time? I use Alexa to control my lights etc, so wouldnt want to lost that function

Yes, absolutely 

@James L.

When using SVC with a streaming service are the played tracks fed back to the streaming service so it updates its recommendations?

Each music service handles playback on external platforms, such as Sonos, in their own way.

But, yes, the service will know the tracks that have been played via Sonos Voice Control in the same way they’ll know if a track has been played through the Sonos app.

Many thanks

So a few thoughts - 

I like it overall.

It turns on the TV and turns it back off again via the Beam Gen 2 (Google assistant would only ever turn the TV off, never on).

It plays or pauses bluetooth streams on my 2 grouped Roams.

It will resume playing my Audible book which I have always queued on my Move.

It works nice and quickly.

Things it does not seem to do (unless I’m doing something wrong) =

Does not seem able to pause my Audible book on my Move (says nothing is playing?)

Cannot see a way of using a voice enabled speaker to play music on a non voice enabled speaker. for example I have my Roams in the kitchen which are used a lot for bluetoothing in a group as one is one end of the dining kitchen and the other is the other end. I also have 2 One SLs stereo paired but if I try to ask a Roam to play music on the One SLs it does not work (maybe that’s something it’s unable to do right now?)

Any thoughts?

I only played with this briefly before heading out to work this morning, but I was able to use the Roams mic to command a room that had no mics in it.  Of course, I did have to name the room in my command.  Also, I just raised the volume, didn’t initiate playback, so maybe that makes a difference.

It would be really nice if you could tie a Roam, or any speaker really to default to playback in a different room, so you wouldn’t have to add the room name.   It’s not as ideal as an echo dot or echo show, primarily due to cost, but it would make it easier to add voice to those rooms that have no mic’d speakers.  You could even still make SVC commands to the Roam/speaker itself by adding the ‘here’.

Either way, I plan on using a Roam outside near the pool where outdoor speakers are powered by Amp.  It won’t matter if the Roam gets splashed or even falls in.

Are you including the One SLs ‘Room’ name in your instruction and are all devices in the same Household on the same subnet. Example:

"Hey Sonos, play music in/on Kitchen” ..  (instruction given to a Sonos Roam here called ‘Vortex’)

The above example is working for me - ‘Kitchen’ is a stereo pair of One SL’s and begins playing music. I was also able to stop the music in the Kitchen from the Roam too. 

Here’s what’s kind of slick for non compatible speakers; I just asked it to move my music to those speakers. Was listening on my Beam (gen 1) in the BR and was going to the office. Just said “Hey Sonos, move music to Office” and Giancarlo said, “Moving music to the Office” and there it was. That’s odd that it doesn’t work for you; I just tested it cold by going in the BR and asking it to play in the Office and it worked. Also, heads up be careful because when I did that I started with Hey, Sonos Move instead of Play and it transferred the show my daughter was watching in the basement Arc to my BR Beam.