Everything you can say to Sonos Voice Control.If you try to go outside of the system’s comfort zone, or if there’s a general error, you get a short two-tone error sound. One notable exception is, “Hey, Sonos, what time is it?” which produces, “It’s three-oh-nine pee em,” (or whatever time it is). Sonos Voice Control hasn’t been envisioned as a general voice assistant, so virtually all of the available commands relate to Sonos functions like music playback and speaker management. Command and control Sonos Roam (front) and Sonos Move Simon Cohen / Digital Trends And saying, “Hey, Sonos, turn it up,” produced an instant bump in volume level, but no chime at all. But saying, “Hey, Sonos, ungroup all,” gave me a 15-second delay, during which the volume of the music playing dipped to almost zero, and then I got the chime. For instance, “Hey, Sonos, play The Rolling Stones,” produces a chime, followed by “Sounds great,” and then your music starts. Interestingly, the system uses a short chime to indicate that it has heard you or that it has successfully completed a command, but it’s not consistent, and sometimes you don’t hear it at all. I really appreciate that you can refer to either the speaker model (Roam), or its location (bathroom), and it works either way.
The same was true when you asked for the opposite to happen, “Hey Sonos, ungroup all,” which also took a while to complete. “Hey, Sonos, add Roam” would result in a delay of about 5 to 7 seconds as the system reconfigured itself. But some commands did take longer than expected.įor instance, using voice commands to group speakers, e.g. In general, using Sonos Voice Control produced quick responses, whether I was asking for a new song, getting the system to pause or resume, or changing volume levels. Mostly quick responses Simon Cohen/Digital Trends I won’t chime in on one side of that debate or the other, but I will say this: Sonos couldn’t have made a better choice for its voice assistant. I’ve read many critiques of the use of female voices for our AIs, and indeed, all three major voice AI companies - Amazon, Apple, and Google - use female voices as their defaults. (More options will come later, Sonos has said.) It’s one thing for a company like Amazon or Google to create a synthetic voice for their assistants from scratch, but it’s entirely different when you hear a real, recognizable human voice - especially one with Esposito’s warm and reassuring tones. Instead, those recorded snippets provided the sonic DNA for a completely virtual version of Esposito’s voice.Īrmed with that data, and a big helping of machine learning, Esposito has effectively become the voice of Sonos Voice Control, and will likely never need to record another word in order to keep the system going. Contrary to what you might think, this wasn’t to provide Sonos with a library of Esposito’s canned responses, to be played back at the appropriate moment. Speaking with Sonos Dan Baker/Digital Trendsįor Sonos Voice Control, the company enlisted the help of actor Giancarlo Esposito, who spent many hours in a recording studio, speaking a variety of phrases and words into a mic. When I tried it, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, and Sonos Radio (naturally) were available to me, but several others, including Tidal, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and, Spotify, SiriusXM, and Plex were grayed out, with the words “not compatible” next to them. Unfortunately, not all services will work as a default. That brings up your list of compatible services. Once you’ve set up Sonos Voice Control on at least one speaker, you can go back into the Settings > Services & Voice menu, tap Sonos Voice Control, then tap on Default Service. Instead of saying, “Hey, Sonos, play Sting on Amazon Music,” you can simply say, “Hey, Sonos, play Sting.” But setting a default service means you can make your commands much shorter. Just like Alexa and Google Assistant, you can ask for streaming music services by name using Sonos Voice Control.
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