Sonos in NZ

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#1937305 11-Jan-2018 16:55

Apparently you just buy a NZ -> Figure-8 (IEC C7) cord which is a couple of bucks from Cable Direct. The power supply is built into the unit and auto-detects the input voltage (apart from the Connect AMP which has a manual selector on the back apparently).

dafman

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#1937310 11-Jan-2018 18:03

Call me old-fashioned, I have no interest in talking to my Sonos speakers. I'm happy just to listen to them.

reven

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#1937323 11-Jan-2018 18:25

dafman:

Call me old-fashioned, I have no interest in talking to my Sonos speakers. I'm happy just to listen to them.

trust me its a lot easier saying "Alexa play David Bowie" than it is pulling out a phone, opening an app, clicking on artist, typing in david bowie, selecting david bowie.

i think google might be better than alexa, as you could probably say "ok google, what song goes da da da" and it would tell you and then you could say "play that". alexa isnt aware of previous conversations atm, you cant have a run on conversation with "her". you would have to ask "alexa what song goes da da da" and it would fail.... but if it didnt fail and could tell you the song you would then have to say "alexa, play me the song [insert name] from [artist]".

my only experience with google assistant is from my phone, but google is a much better searcher. alexa had the advantage of cheaper devices (echo dots) but google have cheap ones now too. they have a better keyword (more natural to say "alexa", than "hey google"). they have more skills (but this can easily change)

Dunnersfella

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#1937331 11-Jan-2018 19:12

dafman:

Call me old-fashioned, I have no interest in talking to my Sonos speakers. I'm happy just to listen to them.

I'm just happy they're not listening to me... oh, wait.

Blanch

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#1937346 11-Jan-2018 20:14

KaroriPete:

Also the Alexa skill does not support playing anything from a local server, so you can stream from Spotify etc, but you can't tell it to play a CD that you've ripped to your hard drive. This is unfortunate as I think one of the real strengths of the Sonos app is the way it searches across all sources for content. Hopefully Sonos will continue to improve the skill over time.

You can use the Plex Skill if you want to play your local content on Alexa.

KaroriPete

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#1937671 12-Jan-2018 13:15

Thanks Blanch, but I think the Plex skill would play the content on the Amazon device - I want to play it on my Sonos system. Sonos also has a Plex integration but I don't think the Sonos Alexa skill supports that either. Sigh... it's not easy finding the perfect voice controlled multi-room wireless music system....

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BlueShift

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#1937684 12-Jan-2018 13:44

KaroriPete:

I can play some radio stations by asking Alexa, but for some reason 2ZB refuses no matter what I say. This sounds like the same issue that @Summerboy has with Radio Hauraki. The only thing I wonder about is that I manually added the 2ZB URL as it wasn't in the TunedIn list. Perhaps this makes it behave differently for some reason.

Pete.

Are you asking Alexa to play 2 zed bee or 2 zee bee - remember, she's american!

KaroriPete

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#1937696 12-Jan-2018 14:01

I'm pretty sure I tried all manner of bastardized pronunciations. From memory I also renamed the entry in my My Stations list to something easy to say, but I suspect that may not be what it uses to search on.

Having done some more reading it sounds like the station name gets passed to a TunedIn search routine, and as I added the URL for the 2ZB stream to Sonos manually, it's quite likely that even if Alexa does hear me correctly and pass on the station name that Tuned In simply won't find it.

eracode

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#1962715 23-Feb-2018 10:14

@reven Quote “you can still use pandora, you just have to set your country to US to link the accounts, your address for weather/time can still be NZ. just pandora doesnt appear in non US regions.”

I am very interested in this comment - would you mind giving a bit more detail - where should the country be set to US.

Cheers.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

reven

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#1962718 23-Feb-2018 10:16

its somewhere in the alexa app, i cant remember where.. Now that amazon music unlimited has come to NZ, ive ditched pandora/spotify and just switched to that.

I remember just changing the locaiton the alexa app, then pandora radio became an option in the alexa app. Did this again just after xmas on an amazon tap I got my parents.

Stu1

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#1976571 14-Mar-2018 16:06

Dumb question been trying to order a Sonos play one on Amazon I have international shipping selected but every time I go to check out I get the doesn't ship to NZ message. Can you order it from Amazon without youshop?