Retired Community Manager

Introducing Sonos Voice Control

Related content:Software

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Hi Sonos Community members!

Today, we introduce the first voice experience created purely for listening on Sonos. Designed with privacy at its core, Sonos Voice Control is the simplest way to control your music, offering complete command of your Sonos system using only your voice.

Sonos Voice Control works on every voice-capable Sonos speaker, processing requests entirely on the device.

No audio or transcript is sent to the cloud, stored, listened to or read by anyone.

Available on new voice capable products and as a free update for existing customers, Sonos Voice Control is compatible with Sonos Radio, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora at launch. More services and markets will follow.

Fast, accurate control of your music and your Sonos System

Sonos Voice Control finds the music you want to listen to, processing requests entirely on the device. Local processing delivers faster response times, and effortless follow-ups.

All you need is one “Hey Sonos” and you can follow up without the need for additional wake-words.

Just like the Sonos app, you can control music and speakers in any room, easily move music around the home, save and like your favorite songs to your personal music library and more.

Natural conversation with Giancarlo Esposito

Sonos Voice Control understands the nuance of human communication and will respond to natural commands like “turn it up!”. After a careful search, Sonos chose award-winning actor Giancarlo Esposito - best known for his roles in Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and The Mandalorian - to deliver a familiar voice for US customers. With careful recording, advanced processing and mastering, the voice is natural, unobtrusive, yet confident and engaging.

Sonos’ first voice will be joined by others over time as Sonos continues to expand the experience to new people and places.

Sonos Voice Control is available in the US starting June 1 and in France later this year, with additional markets to follow.

Read the full press release on Sonos Voice Control here.

Sonos Voice Control

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106rallye

@Talvish That would mean the voice assistant would also need voice match (of which I have read nothing) and would not work in the same way the system does now, i.e. controlling the last used user profile for Spotify on this Sonos speaker. Though this would be very nice, I detect som hurdles here….

James L.

Retired Community Staff

Is it really only going to be launching in the US on 1st June, and not any other English speaking countries?

Looking forward to trying it in the UK.

Sonos Voice Control will launch on June 1st worldwide, with US English being the supported language. This means you can enable and use it in the UK, but there may be accuracy issues with stronger accents.

While I know Spotify isn’t supported at the moment, I’m curious how it will work in my situation when it does . . .

Our house has a Spotify Family account where each person has their own Spotify login. When Spotify is supported, will Sonos support multiple user ‘voice prints’ and map them to the appropriate Spotify account instances on the Sonos? Sonos does already support having multiple instances of a service today, so it has at least part of the solution. And technically it could support this notion on any music service, not just Spotify.

This is highly desired so my Spotify account isn’t ‘polluted’ by what my wife and kids listen to 🙂 and to support multiple streams playing at the same time by different people through-out the house.

Google Home can do this via voice prints and auto-choose the right Spotify account (at least on Nest/Home devices, never tried on the Sonos). Alexa requires you to ask it to ‘switch profiles’ (and that does work on Sonos).

More services will be added to SVC over time 🙂

As for the voice prints/voice match, I’ve passed this feedback on to our development teams as a feature request.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

N

nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

Is it really only going to be launching in the US on 1st June, and not any other English speaking countries?

Looking forward to trying it in the UK.

Sonos Voice Control will launch on June 1st worldwide, with US English being the supported language. This means you can enable and use it in the UK, but there may be accuracy issues with stronger accents.

I can’t believe our British accents are worse than American ones 😉 Roll on, June 1st.

K

Kumar

I can’t believe our British accents are worse than American ones 😉 Roll on, June 1st.

Surely it depends on what you mean here by British?

Seriously though, I think that this feature as well as the fact that it will now roll out at the same time wherever a S2 Sonos product with a mic is working, is the most significant release under S2, never mind it took them 2 years after the S1/S2 event. Hi Res was a damp squib, as expected.

melvimbe

Is it really only going to be launching in the US on 1st June, and not any other English speaking countries?

Looking forward to trying it in the UK.

Sonos Voice Control will launch on June 1st worldwide, with US English being the supported language. This means you can enable and use it in the UK, but there may be accuracy issues with stronger accents.

I can’t believe our British accents are worse than American ones 😉 Roll on, June 1st.

It’s science. 😎

Danny

melvimbe

Not sure why you feel the need to justify their choice? It was a dumb decision to not include assistant capabilities in the Five at the time it was released or since, and it is even dumber now that they are developing their own assistant.

I’m just clearing up some facts and pointing out there are a lot of unknowns and assumptions in your conclusion. My conclusion was “I don’t know”.

Danny

melvimbe

While I know Spotify isn’t supported at the moment, I’m curious how it will work in my situation when it does . . .

Our house has a Spotify Family account where each person has their own Spotify login. When Spotify is supported, will Sonos support multiple user ‘voice prints’ and map them to the appropriate Spotify account instances on the Sonos? Sonos does already support having multiple instances of a service today, so it has at least part of the solution. And technically it could support this notion on any music service, not just Spotify.

This is highly desired so my Spotify account isn’t ‘polluted’ by what my wife and kids listen to 🙂 and to support multiple streams playing at the same time by different people through-out the house.

Google Home can do this via voice prints and auto-choose the right Spotify account (at least on Nest/Home devices, never tried on the Sonos). Alexa requires you to ask it to ‘switch profiles’ (and that does work on Sonos).

Out of curiosity, is there alternative ways that this feature can be achieved without voice match? Just wondering if adding the ability to set a default service by room/speaker would help to achieve the same thing. You’ll almost always want the kids room to be pointed to their account, right?

Secondly, would it be useful to switch default account via voice command? That would probably work ok for the wife, but not the kids if they were younger.

Danny

C

caesar327

Prodigy I

So I have Sonos Ones with Alexa. Can someone explain why I would want to use this? What are the advantages of this over Alexa? I’m not sure what the benefits are over what we already have?

Also, will voice commands to set an alarm work? Such as, “Hey Sonos, set alarm for 7 AM”?

melvimbe

So I have Sonos Ones with Alexa. Can someone explain why I would want to use this? What are the advantages of this over Alexa? I’m not sure what the benefits are over what we already have?

1 - It’s not an either or situation, you can have Alexa and Sonos voice on the same speaker

2 - Privacy. Alexa sends a recording of your voice to the cloud for processing. Sonos does not.

3 - Speed. Commands are prmised to process faster

4 - Music service covered. Right now, each have a subset of music services covered. Sonos is promising to increase that.

5 - Sonos voice allows you to group/ungroup speakers at any time during audio playback.

6 - Based on discussion above, Sonos seems to be a little smarter in determining what music to play than Alexa is. Yet to be seen.

In my mind, it’s worth giving it a shot. If I don’t find it more useful than Alexa, I’ve lost nothing.

Danny

C

caesar327

Prodigy I

So I have Sonos Ones with Alexa. Can someone explain why I would want to use this? What are the advantages of this over Alexa? I’m not sure what the benefits are over what we already have?

1 - It’s not an either or situation, you can have Alexa and Sonos voice on the same speaker

2 - Privacy. Alexa sends a recording of your voice to the cloud for processing. Sonos does not.

3 - Speed. Commands are prmised to process faster

4 - Music service covered. Right now, each have a subset of music services covered. Sonos is promising to increase that.

5 - Sonos voice allows you to group/ungroup speakers at any time during audio playback.

6 - Based on discussion above, Sonos seems to be a little smarter in determining what music to play than Alexa is. Yet to be seen.

In my mind, it’s worth giving it a shot. If I don’t find it more useful than Alexa, I’ve lost nothing.

Thanks for the reply. Will Sonos Voice work with a music library on your PC? Also, can you have it set an alarm?

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