Retired Community Manager

Introducing Sonos Voice Control

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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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melvimbe

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

For the first question, I believe the answer is No. Someone asked if ‘NAS control’ was possible, which should be the same thing. Second question, it hasn’t been asked as a question yet.

Danny

T

Talvish

Enthusiast II

@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….

Yup, the only way this works is if Sonos supports it and they didn’t announce it yet so thought I would mention it here to get it on a backlog (which @James L. did mention forwarding to the proddev team . . . thanks James!)

T

Talvish

Enthusiast II

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.

Thanks James! I was trying to convince the proddev teams it was going to be simple since you already support multiple accounts per music service 😉

T

Talvish

Enthusiast II

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.

re: default per room, that will work for the kids rooms BUT will definitely NOT work in other areas of the house. My wife and I have very different tastes and most of the other speakers in the house are shared. It would be a small disaster 😉.

re: manual voice switch. That works and is also a great iterative release until auto-voice print match. In fact this would solve my biggest pain point today. We manually switch profiles with Alexa BUT the problem is, when in my wife’s account we lose all home automation items (since Alexa doesn’t support household members having access to the household devices) and are constantly swapping profiles. If we could leave the Alexa account on my profile but switch Sonos profile, that’s a win.

I

ianm

Avid Contributor I

Can you set default music services? Per system or per room?

Yes, you can set a default music service for your Sonos system. You can activate Sonos Voice Control on all voice-capable Sonos products. You can control all other Sonos products in your system through any of these supported speakers.

Can a room (or speaker) be set to act on a different room by default, similar to Alexa groups. For example, you have a Roam (Room 1) and an Amp (Room 2). Can you set it up so that a request to play music, change volume, etc be made to the Roam automatically go to Roam 2? “Hey Sonos turn up the volume “...and the volume on Room 2 goes up?

Not exactly in the way you described. Sonos Voice Control can control all other Sonos products in the household, but some commands require explicit targeting.

Will the product control commands work regardless of music service currently played? For example, if you’re streaming spotify, and request to fast forward, will it work?

Yes. If you are using other music services, you will not be able to ask Sonos Voice Control to search and start music, or manage your content library. You can still use other functions of Sonos Voice Control such as skip, pause, volume, and grouping.

Is it only the speaker you are within voice shot of to control or any speaker on your network. For example, can I use a bathroom Roam to turn on the Kitchen (with or without a mic as I have both).

You can control all other Sonos products in your system through any SVC-enabled speakers.

Can you request to play music from an aux input?

Can you trigger or integrate something like Shortcuts where you can say, “Run Patio Party” and it will go thru a series of steps with launching certain speakers, certain music etc..?

Any chance we will get Sonos app voice integration if you are away from voice shot of a speaker (like Alexa can)?

Will Sonos Voice Control play music in lossless (ie Apple Music)?

Not sure I missed this in preceding posts - is NAS control part of this?

Not at this time, though I’ve passed these suggestions on to our development teams for consideration. 🙂

No doubt that this request will be thrown in the trash can like it has been ever since voice control was launched. We dont all subscribe to spotify, amazon or apple.

melvimbe

Not sure I missed this in preceding posts - is NAS control part of this?

Not at this time, though I’ve passed these suggestions on to our development teams for consideration. 🙂

No doubt that this request will be thrown in the trash can like it has been ever since voice control was launched. We dont all subscribe to spotify, amazon or apple.

Both Amazon and Google don’t allow Sonos speakers equipped with their voice assistants to have features that are not available through their own speakers. In other words, if you can’t do it on an echo or Google speaker, they ain’t going let you do it on Sonos. So blaming Sonos for the lack of ability to control local music library vis Alexa or GA is a bit misguided.

However, I would expect Sonos to prioritize efforts based on what services and features are used most frequently by customers….putting local libraries further down the list. Then again, the ability to play from local libraries isn’t common amongst competitors, so perhaps it could be higher on the list for that reason.

Danny

K

Kumar

Not sure I missed this in preceding posts - is NAS control part of this?

Not at this time, though I’ve passed these suggestions on to our development teams for consideration. 🙂

No doubt that this request will be thrown in the trash can like it has been ever since voice control was launched. We dont all subscribe to spotify, amazon or apple.

Both Amazon and Google don’t allow Sonos speakers equipped with their voice assistants to have features that are not available through their own speakers.

However, I would expect Sonos to prioritize efforts based on what services and features are used most frequently by customers….putting local libraries further down the list. Then again, the ability to play from local libraries isn’t common amongst competitors, so perhaps it could be higher on the list for that reason.

I don’t get this; Amazon/Google can't do local libraries period - not just via their voice assistants. But in any case that isn't relevant for SVC and local libraries surely. Sonos does local library play already via the Sonos app from the time it has existed, and for SVC to do all that the Sonos app can do, should not be a stretch? All the development for that is within the Sonos universe after all. What is the point of SVC replicating what is done via the Alexa integration where it comes to music play? Yes, SVC can do that even in places where Alexa integration isn't available but in the US for example is there anything really more different that can be achieved using SVC v Alexa? If local libraries can’t be played?

melvimbe

Not sure I missed this in preceding posts - is NAS control part of this?

Not at this time, though I’ve passed these suggestions on to our development teams for consideration. 🙂

No doubt that this request will be thrown in the trash can like it has been ever since voice control was launched. We dont all subscribe to spotify, amazon or apple.

Both Amazon and Google don’t allow Sonos speakers equipped with their voice assistants to have features that are not available through their own speakers.

However, I would expect Sonos to prioritize efforts based on what services and features are used most frequently by customers….putting local libraries further down the list. Then again, the ability to play from local libraries isn’t common amongst competitors, so perhaps it could be higher on the list for that reason.

I don’t get this; Amazon/Google can't do local libraries period - not just via their voice assistants. But in any case that isn't relevant for SVC and local libraries surely. Sonos does local library play already via the Sonos app from the time it has existed, and for SVC to do all that the Sonos app can do, should not be a stretch? All the development for that is within the Sonos universe after all. What is the point of SVC replicating what is done via the Alexa integration where it comes to music play? Yes, SVC can do that even in places where Alexa integration isn't available but in the US for example is there anything really more different that can be achieved using SVC v Alexa? If local libraries can’t be played?

First off, the comment I was responding to stated “this request will be thrown in the trash can like it has been ever since voice control was launched”. I assumed this was speaking of Alexa and GA voice control, since SVC hasn’t launded yet. I am basically saying the same thing as you, that Sonos had no capacity to add control of local libraries with Alexa or GA. You can’t use that as precedent to assume it won’t happen with SVC.

As far as why SVC doesn’t control local libraries at launch, I have no idea. From the outside looking in, it’s seems the tech processes needed to control local library are the same needed to control Amazon and other services. As well, you can control the local library through API. So I don’t get it. At the same time, I don’t understand why SVC works with only a few streaming services, rather than all of them. I would guess there are some legal reasons that have to be worked out, like Spotify wants certain data from Sonos on how their streaming service is used, but I don’t know. Again, this can be done by API, and in my mind, SVC is a just a layer above API, but I only guess.

As far as the value of SVC if it can’t be used for local libraries, this is pretty obvious, and I believe I already listed this earlier in the thread.

local processing for speed
local processing for privacy (no cloud recording your voice)
ability to group/ungroup by voice mid stream
Can be used with Alexa on the same device (so you could use a different default music service)
Works with different streaming service (hopefully expanding and including TV/aux input/ local libraries)
As described so far, seems that SVC is smarter than Alexa in figuring out what music to play. Will see after arrives.

And SVC is actually at a disadvantage as far as countries it will available in, since just US and France announced for later. They have a long way to catch up.

Danny

K

Kumar

And SVC is actually at a disadvantage as far as countries it will available in, since just US and France announced for later. They have a long way to catch up.

I distinctly remember a Sonos Staff comment here that it will be available at the same time all over the world, but only in US English. Which is only logical if it just an addition to a future S2 update which is made available at the same time all over the world.

K

Kumar

This from James L, three days ago on this thread:

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.

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