Sonos with voice control

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rogercruse

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#223538 5-Oct-2017 08:12

I'm a big supporter of Sonos (and have one or two of their products) and home automaton. But I haven't bothered to purchase any voice controlled solution yet... this might help me decide...

https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/04/sonos-one-first-look/

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#1877599 5-Oct-2017 08:33

It's ubiquitous now...

Denon / Marantz bet them to the punch last month with Alexa integration.

The real litmus test will lie in how well it works with Spotify etc. My Amazon Dot controls Spotify on its own fine, but it doesn't allow me to control Spotify on other Amazon compatible products.

According to some companies they will release an initial Alexa integration, then follow it up a month or two later with a far more succinct version. I wish companies would wait to perfect the product rather than rush things to market just to be first... or in Sonos's case, second.

dafman

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#1877617 5-Oct-2017 09:03

The Sonos desktop and mobile apps work great and are so convenient to use, so I don't see how voice will improve over this. And since I don't require my Sonos to morph into personal assistant, I'm not particularly excited by this. I'd rather see Sonos investing in improving their already great speakers - a mains-free portable speaker would be much more use to me than built in Google voice assistant.

reven

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#1877624 5-Oct-2017 09:17

I prefer sonos to any other speaker. I have 2 5.1 sonos setups, and another room with just a playbar. So whole house music is best for me over sonos.

I have a few amazon echos, I got these for ease of use, but for music playback, theyre just for casual listening. I would seriously consider changing my alexas in the kitchen and dining with these sonos speakers.

but they MUST be able to play music via voice over groups. the amazons echo groups are pretty poor ATM, you can only have a speaker in one group, so I have a downstairs group, but I cant have a "everywhere" group because some speakers are in the downstairs group. so annoying.

and it would be brilliant if they played google play music etc via voice too. i find google plays radio the best out of spotify and pandora.

davidcole

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#1877628 5-Oct-2017 09:20

dafman:

The Sonos desktop and mobile apps work great and are so convenient to use, so I don't see how voice will improve over this. And since I don't require my Sonos to morph into personal assistant, I'm not particularly excited by this. I'd rather see Sonos investing in improving their already great speakers - a mains-free portable speaker would be much more use to me than built in Google voice assistant.

I'd chuck my money at whoever (denon, yamaha, sonos, lg) can do POE for a powered amplified speaker. Would make being able to replace my passive inbuilts possible.

Voice? I can't see why you'd want it.

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reven

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#1877629 5-Oct-2017 09:20

dafman:

The Sonos desktop and mobile apps work great and are so convenient to use, so I don't see how voice will improve over this. And since I don't require my Sonos to morph into personal assistant, I'm not particularly excited by this. I'd rather see Sonos investing in improving their already great speakers - a mains-free portable speaker would be much more use to me than built in Google voice assistant.

trust me, its much easier to say "alexa, play [artist|song] [radio]" than to open up an app, or go to a wall tablet.

its not perfect yet, if people are talking over you alexa will fail most of the time, but as the tech improves, hopefully it would be able to ignore other voices.

I was the same, and I was going to originally wall mount a tablet (old house had these for music), but no need now with alexa.

Sounddude

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#1877630 5-Oct-2017 09:21

Doesn't work with Spotify yet :(

Love my Sonos though, looking forward to giving it a whirl.

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Earbanean

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#1877649 5-Oct-2017 09:43

There's a great Southpark episode (new season?) where they troll Alexa and it's users. Interestingly when Cartman yells commands to Alexa in the show, it was triggering Alexa in the homes of some viewers who actually had Alexa. Whether that was accidental, or deliberate who knows. But it is Southpark...

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#1877654 5-Oct-2017 09:45

burger king was doing the same with google homes. there were getting them to lookup info about the whopper on wikipedia, so people changed the info on wikipedia to say they were made from human meat etc. google quickly stopped it from triggering with a s/w update.

Earbanean

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#1877674 5-Oct-2017 09:58

Southpark was setting alarms for early in the morning and other stuff like putting "hairy balls" on their shopping lists. Gotta love Southpark.

Mistenfuru

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#1877721 5-Oct-2017 10:57

Anyone able to clarify this for me?

Does this require an existing Alexa for this to work. Or is it just utilizing an Alexa variant for its own standalone service?

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reven

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#1877728 5-Oct-2017 11:02

its a standalone device, doesnt need anything else (except wifi, or ethernet).

Think of it as a amazon echo, but instead of the amazon speaker it uses a sonos speaker, giving it the added ability to use in your sonos apps/network.

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Dunnersfella

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#1877972 5-Oct-2017 16:29

I'm assuming that you'll need a VPN to download the Amazon app to your portable device though?

In NZ this will make it a niche within a niche... hiding behind another niche.

reven

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#1877978 5-Oct-2017 16:39

you can download the APK from an apk site. you can also pretty much configure everything at https://alexa.amazon.com.

Blanch

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#1878048 5-Oct-2017 19:13

reven:
you can download the APK from an apk site. you can also pretty much configure everything at https://alexa.amazon.com.

Only the first time you set it up

Also the amazon music app hss Alexa for your phone

Blanch

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#1878050 5-Oct-2017 19:13

reven:
you can download the APK from an apk site. you can also pretty much configure everything at https://alexa.amazon.com.

Only the first time you set it up

Also the amazon music app hss Alexa for your phone

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