Does everyone have Assistants and Speakers

For the first time since Sonos was first introduced me I was finally looking at purchasing a Sonos (or Symfonisk), but having looked at them I was disappointed to find out that althiugh they accept voice assistants, you can't link then with a google device in the same speaker group.

Do you all just use Alexa or GA or do you have Sonos as well? I'm struggling to see how Sonos would benefit me at this point, so may not buy.

GA, no sonos, here.

Alexa here and using NR I'm very happy with what I can achieve, and its FAST! Love it :slight_smile:

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Alexa here. I have a lot of routines set up and it works pretty well. Not used Sonos.

I have two google devices and two Echos, plus one Symfonisk. I love the sound from the Sonos, but surprised how often my wife will just use our version 1 Echo to listen to music, when the Sonos is literally 2 feet away.

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I have Alexa as well as sonos with the alexa integration.

I don't like the sonos integration, it can't do everything an alexa device does so I pretty much disabled it. I mainly use my sonos for listening to music anyways.

Alexa and Google and a couple cheapos connected to vlcthing.

For me the most reliable has been vlcthing.

Google and alexa are pretty solid. Just intermittent cloud issues throws them off. So long as what I wnt to play is cached vlc works 100%

Google Home for voice commands and for voice announcements via Follow Me. Music goes through Chromecast to home theater 5.1 setup, either via Shield TV or Chromecast Audio, depending what is on at the moment.

I have two friends w/Sonos, one loves it, the other felt it was way over-priced for what you get.

What are you looking to use them for?

To listen to music? TTS announcements? Both?

Alexa and I don't get along.

I primarily use Google--and have those things all over. Works well.

NR? I'm sure I'll be "duh" when you define it.

Node-red

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Duh! (See?) :crazy_face:

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Music mainly, Google minis are awful, I was looking to remove some of my 6 minis and just add speakers. Maybe I'll just go Chromecast audio instead

I don’t own any Sonos branded speakers, but I picked up a symphonisk the last time we went to ikea (it must’ve fallen into the shopping cart :innocent:).

I didn’t really need it to listen to music, I already use Denon HEOS speakers in most rooms, which integrate with Alexa just fine.

But I did end up using it to make some TTS announcements, I believe the hub sends the announcements to the speaker over the LAN, so no cloud dependency for that is nice.

The sound quality when playing music was surprising, in that I thought it might suck. But it was fine, as long as you’re not an audiophile or trying to fill a large space with just one speaker.

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Sonos and Alexa for me.

So you use Heos as Multi Room?

I've just installed a SONOS installation at a client's house.
To be very frank, it's incredibly expensive to use their equipment (an amp costs $1,500+).
The sound quality, though is quite outstanding.
For announcements I'm going to install some google minis - they have decent enough quality.

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"Alexa, buy a Sonos."

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Two days later...

Your order of two Echo Studios has arrived.

"Alexa, I didn't order Echo Studios"

It can only be attributable to human error.

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Yup!

I have a Marantz receiver in the living room (which works with HEOS since they have the same parent company as Denon), a HEOS 3 in the kitchen (grouped together in the HEOS app), and a HEOS link in the bedroom connected to a set of logitech 2.1 speakers.

@dman2306's HEOS integration with Hubitat is great too.

Edit: I have several Echo devices in those rooms too, since the family likes to use voice commands. They can play music that way through the HEOS speakers (or control other HE devices).