Sonos One vs. Echo Dot?

OK - am I missing something? Why then is the VR on the Sonos One not working as well as that on the Dot? Why are customers having to yell or speak very loudly to it as opposed to the Dot. I thought the advertised 6 microphones were going to take care of that? What went wrong?

Amazon does VR very well, Sonos does multi-room music very well. Marrying the two is not easy, and both companies have their goals and requirements. Those goals and requirements are not necessarily mutual, and most likely are even diametrically opposed. In many ways these are competing companies, and to paraphrase a statement I make to my boss many times, it ain't easy to get Pepsi and Coke together to make you a bottle of Poke.

Now that actually makes some sense to me. It would certainly account for the present problem. We assume that if two companies team up together on a product that might benefit both, that they both would be on the same page and have the same goals.....um maybe not?

OK - am I missing something? Why then is the VR on the Sonos One not working as well as that on the Dot? Why are customers having to yell or speak very loudly to it as opposed to the Dot. I thought the advertised 6 microphones were going to take care of that? What went wrong?

That has been addressed here by a Sonos rep. There's learning that needs to be done over time to fine tune the VR. Amazon apparently hasn't shared that learning with Sonos, whose system will need to catch up. Might take weeks, maybe months.

OK - am I missing something? Why then is the VR on the Sonos One not working as well as that on the Dot? Why are customers having to yell or speak very loudly to it as opposed to the Dot. I thought the advertised 6 microphones were going to take care of that? What went wrong?

Echo is a mature product on a mature hardware platform. The microphone array on the One is brand new and hasn't undergone the same maturity cycle that the array on the Echo has. Sonos has stated that the sensitivity and recognition abilities are all software based, and will learn as it goes along. Even in the week or so it has been out, the larger user base and the feedback that entails already has it seeing some improvements. It was mentioned today that Alexa on the One seems to be hearing better and distinguishing commands more accurately.

Dynamic AI is a pretty new thing, and seems to be working, albeit slowly. Of course that could mean Terminators in our midst in a decade, but hey, how bad is an apocalyptic rise of the machines if we can get a few years of voice controlled music? 😉

The joys of being an early adopter!

I've been using the 1st generation echo for almost 2 years and it's flawless in picking up commands but the sounds quality was lacking and it didn't have an aux out. I was excited about the Sonos One but the mic sensitivity is seriously lacking and annoying. I would have to yell a few times for it to "wake up" I've used it for 2 weeks and am looking into using an echo dot with play3.

We assume that if two companies team up together on a product that might benefit both, that they both would be on the same page and have the same goals.....um maybe not?
Erm...maybe not is just as possible I can say, having tried hard to stitch a joint effort between a US company and a Japanese one in the machine tool business. By the end, it all happens - usually, but not as slickly as you would think; it is still a people driven process.
That said, I suspect that the resolution of this specific issue is more a Sonos side thing, so the best that this implies for the time line for the fix is sooner rather than later.