"Hey Sonos" - Sonos Voice Assistant

At launch, Sonos Voice will work with Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Deezer, and the company’s own Sonos Radio. Spotify and Google’s YouTube Music aren’t yet on board.

I don’t like this part.  It could be a legal/license reason.  If that’s the case then, don’t see a reason where local library or aux input wouldn’t work. I find this a little odd, since services are supported through app and API already.  Why is voice control different?  If it’s technical reasons, then it means it could be awhile before your more obscure streaming source are supported.

Also needs to support control features Alexa and GA don’t do, like changing rooms in the group mid stream, control volume of different rooms in a group...

In my 16 years of Sonos ownership, this would have to come close to the dumbest and most wasteful thing Sonos management have decided to spend their time and resources on. Stability of the system has gotten worse in recent years, yet they want to have a “biggest d**k” contest with the major players in the ever expanding smart home arena. Frankly, from my perspective, unless it will be available across all Sonos devices and can control accessories in my smart home, it will be useless.

…and as I wrote a year ago, it is more obvious than ever that the Five should have been called the Five SL

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

This is a pretty critical reaction for something that hasn’t been released to the general public yet. Would you feel the same if Sonos Voice provides a much better voice assistant experience with Sonos than Alexa and Google Assistant currently provides? What if Sonos Voice allows new commands that aren’t currently available with Alexa and GA? Would it still be useless to you?

Didn't ‘t Sonos purchase a voice interpreting company a couple of years ago? Ah, here it is. Probably years of work involved, especially to do the processing locally, rather than on a cloud. Which is also probably why it won’t read my local library data, since it doesn’t mention local data in that article, just streaming companies. In order to maintain privacy, that is fine, as far as I’m concerned. 

I’ve not experienced any diminution of stability over the time years that I’ve operated my Sonos system, once I figured out what network issues I had, the system has been rock solid. Does what it is designed to do, and without any issues. 

I would think the engineers that have been working on a voice system would not be the same folks focused on stability issues, though. Differing skill sets, doing voice work versus doing networking, or API work. 

Sonos is, from what I can tell, focussing on music, and not entire home control with their voice assistant. In fact, to control the entire home, they’d have to reference cloud data to engage with the other systems, there’s just no way for all of that to be stored locally, in my opinion. 

Probably. Voice control of music is good enough as it is. Will the Sonos voice assistant control my smart home or will I be able to install multiple assistants? Based on the Verge article and previous commentary, I very much doubt it.

Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah…"it must be your network". I hear this all the time in many forums and it doesn’t help keep customers.

One company, one bucket of money, and this is just another distraction. Frankly, you are deluding yourself if you think they are focusing on music, and I for one think they would be a better company with a better offering if they had. They hit a fork in the road twice: once when they decided to allow WiFi-only connections instead of sticking with SonosNet, and again when they thought about jumping into the AV. Personally, I think they might have been a better music company if they had chosen the other pathway on both those occasions.

With regards to privacy: you are participating in social media, so you have already opened the door to having less. In this case it is just a cloak in which Sonos management can drape themselves in their ongoing fight with the majors.

Is not this engagement in the cloud with Amazon necessary for the Sonos Alexa integration to take place, regardless of whether Echo devices or Sonos speakers with mic are used?

I don't also see how that would change with this feature which makes sense only if Sonos were to offer a streaming service of their own.

The other big USP for the feature will be if it can fully control music play via local NAS.

No mention of what languages this will be available in?

+1 for voice control of local libraries. C’mon Sonos, make it happen!

Also, the ability to say “Play album (or playlist) X, starting at track Y” would be great, instead of starting the album / playlist and having to keep saying “Skip Track” until you get to the part of the album / playlist you want.

Article said it’s released in the US only June 1st, other countries to follow.  I would assume that means English.