Hi all,
I recently enabled Alexa on my Sonos Arc and we are having awful problems with the Arc “stealing” the Alexa response.
We have a large open plan living space and Echo devices in the dining area, kitchen, snug and hallway, the Sonos is the AV system in the living area. Before adding the Sonos system, the Echos were VERY good at working out which speaker was being addressed, you could be standing exactly between two Echos but if you turned your head towards one it would work out that was the one being addressed. So if you were standing in the kitchen area and said “Alexa play the radio” it would only play in the Kitchen. Amazing.
Since adding the Sonos Arc to Alexa system the Arc now ‘steals’ every response no matter where you are standing in the room. Weirdly even if you specifically say the speaker like “Alexa play music in the kitchen” the Arc still steals the response and will start playing. It’s like the two systems don’t talk to each other, if I’m standing in the kitchen and say “Alexa play music” the kitchen echo will start saying “ok here is a playlist you might - ” and get cut off as the Sonos starts playing in the living area.
At first I thought it was a bug with Alexa but my wife worked out that if you whisper to the Echos up close (so the Sonos has no chance of hearing) then it works as expected, so it is definitely the Sonos microphone being over sensitive.
We’ve had to disable Alexa on the Sonos now because it’s so annoying.
TL;DR: the microphone sensitivity needs to be adjustable for the Sonos speakers otherwise it’s essentially useless in an open plan space.
Question: is there a way to disable Alexa voice assistant and/or microphone but still use the Sonos to play music from Alexa by commanding it from another speaker like “Alexa play music on the living room Sonos”?
