How To Set Up Sonos One With Alexa

The Sonos One may be the hottest smart speaker right at present, but if you lot have an existing Sonos system you don't need to spend $200 to control your system with your voice.

At present anyone with a Sonos and an Amazon Echo tin control their music collection by but speaking into thin air. "Alexa, play The Pixies in the living room," for example, will crusade your Sonos speaker in there to start belting out "Bone Automobile." Technically, Sonos is calling the capability a public beta, merely if you accept an Echo device you tin can do it now.

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The cheapest Alexa device is the Repeat Dot ($50), and if you lot own a Sonos speaker, adding one to enable full-fledged phonation control is almost a no-brainer. While owners of the One are handheld through the process, adding an Repeat takes a little bit more work. Here's how to prepare it upward.

First, install the latest versions of the Alexa and Sonos apps for either iOS or Android. If you don't have a smartphone, you can instead access the desktop app for Sonos; alternatively Alexa also has a webpage. This guide focuses on mobile setup.

Sign up for the Sonos Public Beta to have advantage of the Alexa skill
Screenshot: Ty Pendlebury/CNET

Next you'll demand to sign upward for the Sonos Public Beta. It's pretty easy: open the Sonos app, then printing the More push. Next choose "Settings", and and then "Advanced Settings". Tap "Beta Plan", and and then select "Join the Beta Programme". That's information technology -- y'all're in the gild! Regardless of if you lot use Alexa or not having the latest beta is handy as the company is always adding useful features and extra streaming services.
One thing that may come up up is that you should make certain your Sonos speakers are named something recognizable. I had mine named "Play:i" (with the colon), and Alexa couldn't discover it. Otherwise, if you named yours "living room" or something similar you're fine. That'southward about all you'll demand the Sonos app for at the moment.

Add the Sonos skill while in the Alexa app
Screenshot: Ty Pendlebury/CNET

Now it's fourth dimension to add the Sonos skill. Open the Alexa app and get to the Skills option in the Menu. At the moment the "Sonos" is one of the highlighted options, just yous may find you need to search for it. Add it, then keep clicking OK until yous become to the office where you need to give permission for Alexa to command your Sonos. Press OK again.

The app will then prompt you lot to Sign into your Amazon account. You're about at that place.

A pop-upward should appear asking you to choose your "devices." Press the discover push button and information technology should detect the Sonos devices on your system. If you add more Sonos speakers afterward, you will need to repeat this step again for Alexa to use them. Y'all can find this step via the Smart Home tab in the Alexa app.
Finally, use your Amazon Alexa app to choose your default music service by going to Music, Video and Books, selecting the service you lot desire, and if necessary, signing in. By default Alexa will apply Amazon Music, just if you'd rather use some other service such as Pandora or Spotify, choose that instead. And that's information technology. You're done.

Time to talk to the speaker

If you haven't used Alexa skills before, it does take some getting used-to. You'll demand to utter the wake word, typically "Alexa," each time y'all want to give a command. Annoyingly, there's no manner to specify one speaker every bit your default. Instead, you'll need to say the name of the speaker, like "living room," each time you begin a playback session. For subsequent commands, saying the name again isn't usually necessary, however.

Typical commands tin go like this:

"Alexa, play Meat Loaf 'Bat Out Of Hell' on living room"
"Alexa skip to the next vocal"
"Alexa, what song is playing?"
"Alexa, turn upwardly the volume"
"Alexa, cease"

Overall I found the arrangement worked pretty well, though information technology had some small issues. Request Alexa to playback Spotify Playlists didn't work and so well, and sometimes the song would be completely incorrect. While my Australian accent could too have something to do with information technology, Google Dwelling house ($75 at Walmart) seemed to work much better. Also, voice control is just really good for "snacking." If you want to sit down with an anthology on a specific service, using the Sonos app on your phone is still the best selection. Lastly, you lot also can't group speakers or transfer music from ane speaker to some other with your voice yet.

Alexa control on Sonos is relatively straightforward to fix up once you know the steps to take. If you e'er get stuck, I found that unplugging the devices from the power source and plugging them back in helped. Merely otherwise, go out there and accept fun! The future of voice command is here, information technology's complimentary, and information technology's pretty fun.