Alexa & Sonos

About 4 years ago I was watching my then baby son crawling up to my 3 foot floor standing speakers trying to pick himself up to stand and seeing them begin to tip.

Within a week or so all my Hi-Fi separates and speakers were gone and I began the switch to Sonos. Before long I found I had 4 Sonos products in my home, but stopped buying them a year or two ago as I felt like there was an upgrade due.

Now Sonos are about to launch the Sonos One which has full Alexa integration with Siri and the sexily named Google Assistant to come.

I've shied away from assistants up until now but am going to take the dive.

Does anyone else have Sonos and are considering the One?

Any advice on other products worth owning that are Alexa integrated?

The problem with Alexa and Sonos (or Google Asst running Spotify) is that, at any reasonable volume, Alexa won’t “hear” your instructions.

The other problem I’ve had (mostly with Google Home and Spotify) is that the version of a song from an artist can be very hit-and-miss: for random reasons it often chooses a live version. I also haven’t found it particularly convenient to queue up following tracks - ambient music noise not helping.

So, personally, I won’t be in a rush to buy the Sonos One (I have the Playbar, Play 5 (1st gen) And Play 1)

As for products that use Alexa well, Philips Hue lights are right up there.

We use Alexa, Google and Siri. Alexa seems best for operating devices like Dyson purifiers. Google seems best for information. Siri doesn’t seem as good at either as the other two.

Additionally, Alexa seems really poor for BBC Radio - it doesn’t get the stream through BBC and it breaks up horribly. Whether Sonos will solve this, I don’t know. On the positive side, Alexa plays Audible (which Sonos lost the capability to do a while back) so maybe that’ll return.

bear in mind that the Sonos One can only be paired with another Sonos One and not a Play 1. The Ones do not have speaker mounting holes so no discreet wall mount option.

I was on the Beta program for the Alexa integration and it has come a long way. I would recommend an Echo Dot rather than the One as that can be placed next to you and away from the speakers making Alexa commands far more audible for it. The voice commands can be hit and miss and I still prefer to browse via the app, but pause, resume, next, and also occasionally asking Alexa to play songs I might like, or new music is great.

Other Alexa friendly products...
LightwaveRf light switches are fantastic and look good. Hue latest coloured bulbs are nice too but not in bedrooms as they default to full power on in the case of even the smallest power cut. I have nest connected too but cant say I've used Alexa to do much with it other than a few tries when I first connected it. I also have garden lights linked to Wemo switchable sockets and they work well too and can be scheduled.

In general Alexa has been a hit in our house. My wife normally hates all my gadgets but Alexa has been a star. If only it didn't use the godawful bing search

Mrs MRS really likes the Google Home. I think I prefer it to Alexa

Slightly off the subject, but saw this the other day: comedian's James Vetch take on Siri -v-Alexa is quite amusing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_1dhKsELzs

There’s some great feedback in here thanks all.

The marketing blurb says this on the main One page:

‘Be heard
Sonos One is built with a custom six-microphone array to hear you from anywhere in the room, no matter how loud the music is playing. With smart voice capture and noise cancellation, the Sonos One makes sure you’re heard.‘

John good point on pairing One with Play 1, although as it stands I don’t do this in my house. I’d switch my kitchen Play 1 with the One that Play 1 would move into my sons room.

I use TuneIt radio embedded in the Sonos Controller app for all radio and I hope that Alexa would use this too rather than a separate app for which I’d be dissapppointed if it was poor for BBC. TuneIt is absolutely fine to BBC and other stations I listen to.

I’m still going to take the plunge, appreciate that there’s usually bugs but I’m a sucker for a freshly launched gadget!

Interested in the light switches, Hive and Hue, does anyone have the automatic locks for your front door?

Please report back - not that I need any more Sonos players but I am interested to understand how well it works. Noise cancelling makes sense.

I quite like the new voice messaging - I can exchange voice messages with Eve when I'm away in a very relaxed way

I definitely will, I’m 3 Play 1’s, 1 Playbar, 1 Connect and 1 Vinyl play already, always room for more!

Alexa can control what’s playing on non Alexa Sonos products, that’s a big selling point for me too.




And very good bit of light comedy!

Calling between alexa devices is great too. Have one in our kitchen and garden cabin. I can now order coffee remotely

Ha!!

BTW - there’s a thread on HUKD suggesting that Sonos are sending out a code that gives customers 50% off the Dot.

Yes I got that Email from Sonos, however for now I will see how I get on. If I like it I will get one 1 One for the final bedroom and then start to switch Play 1's for Ones, since up until now they hold their value so well.

If any one is interested I can send the 50% dot code I got via PM.

I’m interested - they haven’t sent me one. If I do get one, I’m happy to pass it on.

I'm going to replace our kitchen Echo with a One... and maybe two of them!

MRS you have PM.

They’re out on Tuesday, my preorder with John Lewis is going in tomorrow at 8pm!

If, and its a big if; I wanted home automation I would Build and program a system myself based on PLCs and SCARDA.

I've lived in the last few years with no mobile and home internet. Its liberating.

I also Don't want a robot handling my LPs thanks.

I've spent 10 years writing and perfecting a network level add blocker that not only blocks adverts from static pages but can strip the adverts out of catch up TV. I've extended this to stripping and catching malware.

If malware was not distributed in adverts then I would not feel the need for this. If web pages did not embed auto play noise and trash I would not feel the need for this.

A couple of years ago I paid a fortune for a 2 MB line to where I live and there was no f*ing way I was paying for the bits to sell me tat.

I AM NOT THE PRODUCT!

Extra
From time to time I pull and add malware domains from several lists and my systems got good enough now no not add new domains when I pull other peoples lists. As of 22-10-17 there are (over) 102,831 unique domains distributing malware and adverts. I'm also geo blocking for multiple clients which reduces what I'm able to intercept

Jef, he speak sense.

I have not seen an advert on the internet for years, and neither do I allow any scripts to run which are not strictly necessary for the task at hand - ublock origin and noscript are the first things I install after firefox.

I am unconvinced about the argument 'adverts are the only thing that keep this site up': *this* site, for example, is one for which sufficient people find it worthwhile to pay that it requires no further funding; my own sites are not heavily trafficked but they are funded entirely by me.

The majority of advert and script-ridden websites are purely and simply click bait and behaviour harvesting; I see no reason to encourage them.

The thought of putting a live mic in my house fills me with sincere disquiet (and since you ask, I have neither location services nor live data turned on on my phone unless and until I need to use them, and nor does it live at arm's length from me).

Blimey, that takes me back, what, nearly 20 years. It also feels slightly ironic that you don’t want a machine that they trust to do micro-surgery to put LPs on a machine that works on mechanical interface principle from over 100 years ago.

Certainly, automation has to both work and be useful. There are some exceptionally good examples of home automation (I’m a huge fan of Hue) and some really bad ones. The likes of Alexa and Google Home are still finding their feet. My interest is to watch their progress because I’m in the consumer electronics industry.

Alexa doesn’t have any clue about its location

When it first arrived, it defaulted to my old address in Scotland (I have no idea where it pulled that from) despite being connected to a WiFi router that has another Alexa device on it with the correct location and being connected to the app on the phone.

Ask it for the weather and I get it for a small village 5km south of here

Ask it for the current location and it tells me I’m 5km NW of Malmesbury - I’m nearer 5km SE of Malmesbury

Ask it for the weather in Malmesbury and it says it doesn’t have weather for that location

Ask it for my address and it simply doesn’t reply. Ask it why it doesn’t reply and it tells you that it currently doesn’t have access to my personal details.

Compared to Google Home, that will tell me with fantastic accuracy the time it will take us to get across Cambridge to the hospital, it’s hopeless.

Bing

Partly Bing but also Accuweather for the weather problem. Then there’s just the simple question of knowing where I am.

I've had nearly a week with Alexa and Sonos One. It lives in my Kitchen between toaster and kettle.

The speaker quality is essentially the same as the Play One as far as I can tell. So onto my opinion of our first Alexa device:

Pros
Alexa linked to out Amazon Prime account means we can listen to a fairly wide variety of music using voice commands.
Alexa links into the music in my phone via Sonos app, so I can play directly from my phones local storage.
Can hear me over the music
Can play music on other Sonos's that are not Alexa enabled

Cons
Sometimes thinks other words are Alexa and so lowers the music volume while it listens
Can't understand my 4 year old son 95% of the time which is frustrating for him as he was very much looking forward to telling Alexa to play nursery rhymes or Trolls soundtrack in the kitchen. Every cloud...
Our kitchen is about 6m long and, depending on what else is on in the kitchen, may have to raise my voice a little if I'm sat at one end with Alexa at the other.
If the kettle is on, forget it, no chance of picking my voice out without shouting, although I can forgive that.

Overall I'm very impressed, it works pretty much as expected for what we wanted it for, as voice controller for music.

I don't have one of these things but I was reading up on it over the weekend. One of the things for me would be being able to change the name 'Alexa'. It makes me cringe just writing it... Apparently you can. Options were Amazon, Computer and another I can't remember now. Might be worth trying these out, both for the volume issue and for your son

As an aside, if I can call it 'Computer' and change the voice to the computer's voice in Star Trek Discsovery, I'd get one

I call mine Gil!

Great idea Trappy, I didn’t realise this was possible.

Alexa, order 500 kilos of cabbage. Alexa, confirm...

leave T out of this Neil (kidding ffs)

So it seems you can play Spotify on Sonos. And you can play Spotify on Alexa. And you can play music on Sonos controlled by Alexa - but you CAN’T play Spotify on Sonos controlled by Alexa. What a nonsense!

It’s coming apparently:

https://mobile.twitter.com/SonosSupport/status/917421306336948224

Dealing with Amazon customer support is such a miserable experience - it always feels like they’ve just pulled people off the street (in some far-flung country where they don’t speak native English) and given them a phone headset or given them emails to answer.

Spotify is arriving 21 Dec. You can still control Music on spotify if it has been started on the Sonos app, much the same as local music control. It's clear;y a marketing ploy by Amazon to encourage new Amazon Music Unlimited users in the lead of the the Christmas season, can't say I am surprised

Amazon are doing a great job of driving me towards Google

Sonos have put out an update for the system and Alexa is much more responsive than previously. Especially when other things going on around the Sonos unit.

I’ve also seen they’ve knocked £50 off when you buy a pair of Sonos Ones.

And it turns out Alexa understands my 4 year old. Which is both good and bad...!