Earlier this month, Sonos announced that its newest speaker will come integrated with Amazon Alexa, and if you are one of the many across the US, UK, and Germany who preordered the Sonos One, yours should arrive by mail soon.

With Alexa on the Sonos One, you can ask to play music, listen to your favorite podcasts, hear the latest sports reports, and more. At launch, Alexa can play multi-room music from services including Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SiriusXM, and TuneIn, with Spotify coming soon.

Buy your own Sonos One on Amazon.com.

Alexa Integration Details

The Sonos One was built using the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) Device SDK and APIs, which enable third-party device makers to bring the convenience of voice control to any connected device. Through AVS, Sonos was able to add a new intelligent interface to its smart speaker and offer customers access to many of the Alexa features people have grown to love. Plus, customers can use their Sonos One device to control audio playback on their entire Sonos home sound system, making it even easier to stream their favorite artist in the living room, kitchen, or anywhere they have a Sonos speaker.

The Sonos One uses a 6-microphone array and an adaptive noise suppression algorithm to detect the “Alexa” wake word and process the customer’s request. It also leverages voice capture technology with echo cancellation to enable barge-in, even when the device is playing loud audio. Speak to Alexa on the Sonos One when it’s playing music, and the device conveniently lowers the volume so you don’t have to shout. Best of all, Sonos One is the first AVS device to ship with Echo Spatial Perception (ESP), a new feature that polls all compatible Alexa devices in the room, and chooses the one closest to the customer to respond. We are working hard with device makers to bring this feature to more products. It requires both hardware and software changes, and we’ll have more to share in the future.

Multi-Room Music for All Sonos Customers

In addition to being Alexa-enabled, the smart speaker leverages the recently announced Sonos Skill to allow customers to use voice to control their entire Sonos home sound system, from specific rooms to carefully curated groups. The Skill was developed with the recently announced Connected Speaker APIs, which is currently in developer preview for commercial device manufacturers, and allows Sonos to continue offering a multi-room home audio experience, something its customers have enjoyed for more than 15 years.

The skill allows customers to control multi-room or single-speaker playback on Sonos One or their Sonos PLAY series of devices. You can read about the Connected Speaker APIs on the Alexa Blog.

What Is the Alexa Voice Service?

The Alexa Voice Service (AVS) enables developers to integrate Alexa directly into their products, bringing the convenience of voice control to any connected device. AVS provides developers with a full suite of resources to quickly and easily build Alexa-enabled products, including APIs, hardware development kits, software development kits, and documentation. Through AVS, device makers can add a new intelligent interface to their products and offer customers access to a growing number of Alexa features, smart home integrations, and skills. Just ask, and Alexa will respond instantly.

Have questions? Visit us on the AVS Forum to speak with one of our experts.